Six prospects Toronto Raptors should consider drafting 19th overall

Though it’s not star-studded, there are plenty of prospects who teams may view as Day 1 contributors or role players. Kai Gammage offers up six players the Raptors could consider taking at 19th overall.

CALGARY — Brooke Henderson didn’t even have time to finish her fruit cup, the last of a very on-the-go breakfast.

In a whirlwind stopover, Canada’s top golfer zipped from the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in Seattle to Calgary late Sunday night, to well, be Brooke Henderson at the CPKC Women’s Open media day Monday.

It doesn’t make things any easier for Canada’s best and busiest golfer to continue to be equal parts off-course ambassador and on-course assassin but playing the role of ‘Brooke Henderson’ is becoming more natural for the person herself.

And there’s no more evident time of Henderson’s summertime stretch than her upcoming red-and-white double — the CPKC Women’s Open at the end of July, and the Olympics in early August.

“It’s going to be a very busy summer. Very busy, but very exciting,” Henderson said Monday from Earl Grey Golf Club, the first-time host of the CPKC Women’s Open about 15 minutes from downtown Calgary. “When I set out my schedule for this year, pretty much the rest of the summer is all circled of weeks that I wanted to peak for.”

Some of those weeks have passed already. She missed the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open at a tricky Lancaster Country Club layout (Nelly Korda, the game’s top-ranked player and six-time winner already this season, shot a first-round 80 and also had an early exit) before finishing T22 at the KPMG Women’s PGA. That major was hosted at Sahalee Country Club, where Henderson broke onto the scene as an 18-year-old and won the Women’s PGA in a playoff for her first major title.

This week, Henderson is paired up with Lexi Thompson at the Dow Championship (the LPGA Tour’s only team event) before finally taking a break. All in, she’ll have played 10 of 11 weeks.

Henderson has five top-10 finishes so far this season already including a tie for third at the first major of the year. Her 13 wins on the LPGA Tour represent more than all of the current Canadian men on the PGA Tour’s number combined — with a couple to spare — and this is the greatest generation of PGA Tour stars this country has ever seen. She’s second on the LPGA Tour in total birdies and sixth in greens in regulation this season. Henderson is 67th in putting average, yes, but she was 71st in that same stat in 2022 – when she won twice.

During down (well, “down”) times, results-wise, there are often calls on social media to mix things up. She could, of course. But golf’s hard, and for the last decade she’s done what no other Canadian in the sport has ever done — and there’s comfort in the familiar. Brittany, her sister, is in the sports hall of fame at Coastal Carolina for golf and walked most of Earl Grey Monday morning with a yardage book while sister Brooke started her run as the face of Canada’s women’s national open. And the event has become the ultimate balancing act for her.

She won it in 2018 in Regina (and was in the final group Sunday the next year in Aurora, Ont.) before carrying the tournament on her shoulders when it returned to Ottawa after the two COVID-19 impacted cancellations.

The CPKC Women’s Open has been named the Tournament of the Year at the LPGA Tour’s year-end awards in back-to-back seasons.

“We really have a secret sauce,” tournament director Ryan Paul said last year.

For all the effort put forth by Paul and his team (it’s no small task — this year’s CPKC Women’s Open is set to have 95,000 square feet of structural build-out, the most in the tournament’s history and the most of any event on the LPGA Tour. Plus, ticket sales at this point in the year are up 30 percent year-over-year and they had to close down registration on a few volunteer committees in March because they had so many people ready to rock) the “sauce” is really whatever gets bottled by Brooke.

Henderson recalled Monday a story when she first qualified for the CPKC Women’s Open in 2012, her father took a picture of the trophy but didn’t touch