Getting off to a hot start during tournament weeks was one of the big goals that Brooke Henderson set for herself at the start of the 2025 LPGA Tour season in a bid to return to the winner’s circle. On Wednesday at Shadow Creek Golf Course, Henderson did just that as she began the first round of the T-Mobile Match Play presented by MGM Rewards with one of the most impressive victories of the day - a 6-and-5 win over Leona Maguire.

“First hole, Leona stuffed it to two feet, so I had to make maybe an over 20 feet birdie putt to halve the hole. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is going to be so hard,’” Henderson said after day one. “I knew this round would be challenging, so happy I was able to come out on top today.”

Henderson managed to tie Maguire on that first hole and never trailed as she went on to win the next three holes before closing out the match at the 13th hole. Henderson’s victory was made that much sweeter given Maguire’s reputation as a Solheim Cup stalwart, who showed off her match play prowess at the 2024 T-Mobile Match Play when she advanced to the Championship March with Nelly Korda.

“Playing with Leona, I knew it was going to be really, really tough because she has such a great track record with match play and she is such a great player,” Henderson said about her opponent on Wednesday. “She was playing well. It was just a really tough day out there.”

It was Mother Nature who further compounded the challenge on Wednesday, serving up an uncharacteristic weather forecast that saw temperatures peak in the mid-50s with occasional rain showers and winds gusting as high as 20 mph. It might as well have been a spring day for Maguire, who grew up competing on the links around Ireland. But for Henderson, despite spending her younger years in similar chilly conditions in Canada, a decade away competing around the world on the LPGA Tour and having a winter home in Naples, Fla., has made Henderson become admittedly far less tolerant of playing in the cold.

“When we woke up this morning, my sister texted me the weather and I was like, ‘Oh, boy.’ So it was going to be a challenging day,” Henderson said, adding that she’d layered up to the point of becoming quite hot while speaking to the media. “Just tried to do the best we could and tried to play as smart as we could and adjust to all the conditions.”

Henderson leaned on not only her sister and caddie, Brittany, to navigate the challenging weather on day one in Vegas, but also on her ball striking, one of the hallmarks that has lifted Henderson to 13 wins on the LPGA Tour and a part of her game she hopes will deliver her this weekend to not just her first top 10 of the season but also to the winner’s circle for the first time since 2023.

“I just feel like all parts of my game were working really well today, so I'm grateful for that,” Henderson said after her match. “Just hoping over the next few days, I can do something similar.”

Henderson is competing in Group 8 which also includes Maguire, Jin Young Ko and Peiyun Chen. Over the next two days of the T-Mobile Match Play, Henderson will compete against the other members of her pool in hopes of earning the most points in order to advance to the Round of 16 matches over the weekend, which Henderson narrowly missed out on last season when she lost in a four-person playoff won by Moriya Jutanugarn.

Henderson Has Hot Start at Shadow Creek, Defeats Maguire 6 and 5

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