Oh, Canada

Six players shot 135 or better over the weekend in Portland.

That’s nine-under par for the final 36 holes.

The No. 2-ranked player in the world, Jeeno Thitikul, won—but not without a fight from Chanettee Wannasaen and Arpichaya Yubol.

All three are from Thailand, and I saw Wannasaen’s week coming, as we hit a nice placement prop on her.

Thitikul’s odds to start the week were in the single digits. If she wins, so be it.

Yubol is an excellent ball striker and probably should have been closer to my radar.

All three players are under 24 years old and from Thailand. Needless to say, I think they were pretty familiar with one another.

Thitikul’s Sunday 64 started with six birdies in her first seven holes.

Jeeno now has three wins in 2026 and seems to have held off Haeran Ryu’s summer charge in the world rankings.

Tournament officials north of the border have been putting together an excellent event year after year at the CPKC Women’s Open.

Better known as the Women’s Canadian Open, the venues rarely disappoint.

For the 2026 edition, we’re heading to Edmonton and Royal Mayfair Golf Club.

Set alongside a bend in the North Saskatchewan River, this parkland layout will host the national open for the third time since 2007.

Talk about a Hall of Fame wall of past champions.

Lorena Ochoa won here in 2007 at 16-under, followed by Lydia Ko in 2013 at 15-under.

Ko did it as an amateur.

Thirty-four of the top 50 players in the Rolex World Rankings have descended upon Edmonton for the LPGA’s next event, including the No. 1 player in the women’s game, Nelly Korda.

The purse is $2.75 million, with $412,500 going to the winner.

A field of 156 players will compete for 36 holes before being cut to the top 65 and ties for the weekend.

Covering this event over the past five years has been a highlight of the LPGA calendar.

The venues are always fun to dive into.

Not to mention, we have two outright wins and five more top-10 finishers in that short stretch.

Royal Routing

For the second week in a row, tournament officials have flipped the nines.

Local players who may have walked Royal Mayfair Golf Club before, don’t get confused.

The players will start on No. 10 and finish their rounds on the ninth green.

A par-70 scorecard measuring 6,452 yards presents the challenge on paper.

Seventy-eight bunkers are squeezed between the tree-lined fairways.

Those who traveled to Portland last week should have an advantage, as what these women see from the tee will look very familiar.

There are three holes with water in play and the standard par-70 allotment of four par 3s, 12 par 4s, and two par 5s.

The average winning score over the two previous editions of the CPKC at Royal Mayfair is 15.5-under par.

Looking back at those two championships, Lydia Ko and Lorena Ochoa set a pretty high standard for the winner’s circle.

Between the two of them, Ko and Ochoa have 50 wins and five major championships.

Not too bad.

Course Conditions, Weather and Wind

Edmonton is way up there, so don’t expect FedExCup weather for the women.

Instead, we should have wonderful conditions, with highs in the mid-70s forecast for each round and a 40% chance of rain on Saturday.

The wind shouldn’t be a huge factor, with single-digit breezes expected and gusts reaching only the mid-teens.

The golf course is surrounded by the river on three sides, but it also has plenty of trees.

I expect a pretty tame four days.

The forecast won’t be the lead story in this national open.

The women are facing a couple of additional storylines this week.

Outside of Canadian Brooke Henderson trying to defend her title from last summer, the Solheim Cup is coming.

Scheduled for the second week of September, the United States is looking to bring its 12 best players to the Netherlands.

Seven players qualify through the points list, two more through the Rolex World Rankings, and the final three are captain’s picks.

With less than a month to go, anyone in consideration—or close on the points leaderboard—has those thoughts occupying some brain space.

Much like the men and the Presidents Cup, if making this team is a personal goal, you have a decent distraction to deal with over the next couple of tournaments.

I mentioned last week that there were 10 regular-season tournaments left on the schedule.

Well, now we’re down to nine, and four of those are limited-field events in Asia.

I bring all of this up because these women have a bunch of storylines swirling around in their heads.

Major season just ended, and the regular season isn’t far behind.

How Do You Win?

The blueprint for winning at Royal Mayfair is going to sound very similar to last week at the Standard Portland Classic.

Both are densely tree-lined parkland golf courses with the exact same agronomy.

One of the unique aspects of Royal Mayfair’s layout is the routing.

No two holes seem to run in the same direction.

As a result, getting comfortable beneath the trees while adjusting to the wind blowing above them could be one of the toughest parts of this 72-hole test.

Approach Play

The average green size at Royal Mayfair is roughly 6,000 square feet.

Those are small targets, and if you want to climb this leaderboard, you’re going to need a strong week on approach.

Hitting your yardages is one part of that equation. Controlling trajectory is another.

Get those iron shots above the tree line repeatedly, and you may start losing a little proximity control.

Of course, the shorter the iron players are hitting into these greens, the easier that control becomes.

We saw the same thing last week in Portland.

Hitting fairways was important, but the overall ball-striking test really came down to two questions: Who could hit the most greens in regulation, and who could create the most realistic scoring opportunities inside 25 feet?

Driving Accuracy

It helps to hit the fairway if we’re counting greens in regulation.

This is another alley-like layout.

Much like Columbia Edgewater Country Club, not only are these fairways tight, but they move.

Twelve of the landing areas bend in one direction or the other, constantly challenging players to move the ball left to right or right to left.

The best Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee players start every par 4 and par 5 with a significant advantage.

Add in the fact that there are only two par 5s, and I’m increasing the weight on accuracy rather than simply looking at total driving.

The average par 4 measures well under 400 yards at just 392.

The ability to play from the fairway on those 12 holes will far outweigh whatever advantage a player may gain by being 20 yards farther down the hole but sitting in the rough.

The course simply isn’t that long.

In many cases, the doglegs will also limit distance and force the longer hitters to club down.

Alongside accuracy, par-4 scoring will be heavily weighted when filtering this field.

Bogey Avoidance and Short Game

The Portland Classic is a shootout.

Last week, 13-under par didn’t even crack the top 10.

Six of the last 10 CPKC winning scores, however, have finished somewhere in the teens.

This becomes one of those weeks where bogey avoidance, birdie-to-bogey ratio, and scrambling really matter.

Canadian tournament officials do an excellent job of keeping the final score under control for both the women and the men.

Considering how good these players are, anything in the teens is a solid championship score.

The average winning score at this championship over the last three years is 12.3-under par.

Not all of the best LPGA players have elite short games.

Haeran Ryu and Jeeno Thitikul playing Portland and skipping this week makes sense.

They’re replaced by players like Miyu Yamashita and Lydia Ko, while Nelly Korda is also back in the field.

That certainly helps the odds board, but keep in mind she is the best woman in the world.

Putting

The course and conditions call for around-the-green acumen and the ability to convert putts from inside 10 feet.

I believe Putts per GIR is a great measure for converting more than just birdie opportunities.

Putts per round is another metric I monitor closely.

Think about it: players who average more than 30 putts per round for the week while also posting an above-average GIR percentage generally don’t win.

The fewer strokes you need on the putting surface, the better. Pretty simple.

These greens should perform much like they did last week at Columbia Edgewater.

Only 14 of the first 25 players on the odds board competed in Portland, but we already have a good idea of who rolls it well on this type of surface.

That brings me to the last factor.

Looking through recent CPKC leaderboards, a couple of players have been remarkably consistent.

Brooke Henderson makes sense based on talent and nationality, but there are a couple of others.

It sounds crazy, but not every player cares equally every week.

Look at the conversation surrounding Rory in Memphis.

Sometimes it can be impossible to guess who really wants to be there, but that’s one of the reasons I go on-site as often as I do.

You can’t exactly ask, and you won’t always be right, but body language, practice routines, coaches, and caddies can give away plenty of clues.

There’s a reason RTL has 47 outright winners over the last four-plus seasons.

I love the two Canadian Opens.

If I had to pick one to cover in 2026, it would be this one.

TPC Toronto is not the best venue, but Royal Mayfair Golf Club is, and I expect a very entertaining weekend in Edmonton.

Three of our four outrights finished inside the top 25 on Sunday last week.

Each had a chance to make it their week.

Contending matters, but not nearly as much as winning.

Let’s cross the finish line north of the border.

LPGA Free Picks

Brooke Henderson (+2400, DraftKings)

Welcome to the Brooke Open.

In nine professional CPKC starts, Brooke Henderson has two wins—in 2018 and 2025—and seven top-15 finishes.

If you’re looking for a player who really wants to win this week and has also been playing great golf this summer, Henderson is the pick.

Runner-up at the Evian and T29 at the AIG Women’s Open, Brooke has been striking the golf ball extremely well.

Get the putter rolling in her home country, and she can win back-to-back national championships.

Pajaree Anannarukarn (+5500, FanDuel)

Pajaree Anannarukarn is a solid ball striker.

She ranked second in the Portland Classic field in Strokes Gained: Total and finished T5.

Add a third-place finish at the Scottish Open, and Anannarukarn has clearly been trending this summer.

Known for her name, Pajaree also has two wins to her credit and is another Thai player who specializes on tree-lined parkland layouts.

An excellent iron player, her specialty is par-4 scoring, which gives her a significant edge on this par-70 layout.