8. Jaclyn Lee earns LPGA Tour card as an amateur

Coming off her best amateur season, in which she won the NCAA’s Big Ten Championship, was fifth in the NCAA Championship, third in the Ladies British Amateur, fifth in the U.S. Amateur and fifth in the individual portion of the World Team Amateur, Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee headed to LPGA Tour Q-School having not yet turned pro. Amateurs going to qualifying school is nothing new and the Ohio State University senior proved up to the task, breezing through the first two stages and then tying for sixth at the eight-round LPGA Q-Series to earn an LPGA Tour card. Lee was one of several amateurs to earn full playing privileges and she ultimately chose to forgo her remaining college eligibility to turn pro. She’ll start playing for pay in the new year.

7. Roger Sloan finishes T2 at penultimate Web event to earn PGA Tour card

Through the 2018 Web.com Tour regular season Merritt, B.C.’s Roger Sloan, a former PGA Tour player, had been just okay in netting three top-10 finishes, including a solo-fourth, to sit 49th on the money list. That qualified him for the Web.com Tour Finals Series and in the third event in Boise Sloan rocketed up the leaderboard with a final-round 63 to tie for second. The T2 came after a missed cut and T59 in the first two playoff stops and solidified Sloan’s standing inside the top 25 on the Web.com Finals money list, which came with a PGA Tour promotion.

6. Ben Silverman finishes T3 at final Web.com Tour event to keep PGA Tour card

Ben Silverman saved his best for last in the 2018 season when he finished tied for third at the Web.com Tour Championship. The PGA Tour rookie was forced to return to the four-event Web.com Tour Finals Series after finishing well outside the top 125 FedEx Cup mark and had only a T58 through the first three tournaments to show for himself. But at the Web.com Tour Championship Silverman carded rounds of 63-68-67-68, with his Sunday performance punctuated by a massively important birdie conversion on the 17th hole. The Thornhill, Ont., native ultimately finished 24th on the Web.com Finals money list, one inside the mark for regaining PGA Tour status.

5. Corey Conners earns back-to-back PGA Tour final pairings

Though neither would result in even a top-10 finish, with respective Sunday scores of 77 and 76 dropping him from contention and eventually costing him a spot inside the top 125 on the FedEx Cup ranking, PGA Tour rookie Corey Conners playing his way into the final group on Sunday in consecutive starts was über impressive. The first occasion occurred in Tampa at the Valspar Championship where Conners rubbed shoulders with some of the game’s best. The 54-hole leader, he teed off in the final duo alongside Justin Rose with Tiger Woods and Brandt Snedeker in the penultimate pairing and eventual Masters champ Patrick Reed out in the third-to-last group. A shaky start led to that 77 but in his next tournament, two weeks later in the Dominican Republic, Conners shrugged off any lingering Valspar disappointment by firing rounds of 64-71-76 to sit two back of the lead and earn another last-out Sunday pairing. Once again Conners struggled, but back-to-back final pairings for a freshman is a heck of a feat. Conners would later finish runner-up at the opposite-field Sanderson Farms Championship in the 2018-19 season, an impressive performance that could have cracked this list as well.

4. Nick Taylor saves PGA Tour card with final-round 63 at Wyndham

Nick Taylor enjoyed a nice start to the 2017-18 PGA Tour season with top-25 finishes in his first three starts. But by the regular season’s concluding tournament — the Wyndham Championship — he was outside of the top 125 players on the FedEx Cup, the cut-off mark for keeping one’s exempt status. His season had turned sour come the spring and at one point he missed six straight cuts. Rounds of 65-67-70 put Taylor inside the top 30 on the Wyndham leaderboard but he needed something extra special on Sunday to accrue the necessary FedEx Cup points to jump into the top 125. And boy did the Abbotsford, B.C., boy deliver. Taylor posted a seven-under-par 63 in the final round that included five birdies and an all-important eagle on the par-5 13th hole. He moved to 119th from 129th on the FedEx ledger to qualify for the PGA Tour playoffs and avoid having to fight for full playing privileges in the Web.com Tour Final Series. Talk about clutch.

3. Adam Svensson wins on Web.com Tour

Adam Svensson had every right to have a chip on his shoulder as he entered his third full season on the Web.com Tour. In 2017 he entered the season-ending Web.com Tour Championship in 17th spot on the money list, which meant he was a near certainty to finish inside the top 25 and earn a PGA Tour card. That remained the case even when he missed the cut in that tournament, but when weather delayed the final round into Monday a host of players who had spots in the ensuing week’s PGA Tour event on the other side of the country withdrew. That led to several others who were behind Svensson on the money list at the beginning of the week to jump up the leaderboard and collect more earnings, which ultimately pushed the Surrey, B.C., native down to 26th. Svensson was crestfallen, his PGA Tour card having thought to be such a sure thing that he’d even done some of the promotional chores that go along with graduation. But Svensson showed excellent resolve early in 2018 when he won the Web.com Tour’s second event after tying for 13th in the season opener. A tie for seventh in the third event made him a virtual lock to finish inside the mark, even if he didn’t let himself celebrate until the very end. In that victory in the Bahamas, Svensson shot 68-67-68-68 and watched from just off the 18th green as Sungjae Im missed a birdie putt to force a playoff. He became the 18th Canadian to win on the Web.com Tour.

2. Brooke Henderson wins LOTTE Championship

After letting a five-shot lead in Saturday’s third round shrink to just one by day’s end, Brooke Henderson put forth a steady performance in high Sunday winds to win the sixth LPGA Tour title of her young career at the LOTTE Championship in Hawaii in April. Most impressive was her birdie on the par-5 15th hole, where she pounded a driver from the fairway up close to the green to set up an easy pitch shot. She then put an exclamation mark on her final round by making birdie on the par-3 16th — a hole on which she had four-putted the day before — thanks to an excellent long-iron approach. Henderson won by four shots and dedicated the victory to the victims of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash that had occurred in Saskatchewan the week prior.

1. Brooke Henderson wins CP Women’s Open

She would ultimately not win the Lou Marsh Award as the country’s top athlete in 2018, but Brooke Henderson penned the year’s best sports story on Canadian soil when she captured the CP Women’s Open in Regina, becoming the first Canadian golfer to win either a men’s or women’s Canadian Open in 45 years. Under the enormous pressure that comes with being Canada’s best golfer, and with all eyes upon her every step and swing at Regina’s Wascana Country Club, Henderson was sensational all four days but saved her best golf for the back nine on Sunday when she fearlessly reeled off four consecutive birdies to pull away from the pack. Having lost both her grandfathers in the months leading up to the tournament, Henderson was overcome with emotion afterwards, and she tearfully cited the victory as the most special of her career, even more so than the major championship she won in 2016 in a playoff over then-World No. 1 Lydia Ko.