As a seven-year-old spectator attending her first LPGA Tour event, Red Deer’s Eileen Park imagined herself on the other side of the ropes.
A decade later, her dream is about to come true.
Now 17, Park will compete alongside some of the biggest stars in golf at the 2026 CPKC Women’s Open, set for August 20th-23rd at Royal Mayfair Golf Club in Edmonton.
The amateur standout earned a tournament exemption with a victory earlier this summer in the PGA Women’s Championship of Canada.
She will be one of three players in the field with a connection to Alberta. Tillie Claggett and Aphrodite Deng are the others.
“I’m looking forward to competing in my first LPGA Tour event. It’s an incredible opportunity for me,” said Park, a junior member at Red Deer Golf & Country Club and part of Golf Canada’s NextGen team. “I actually went to the 2016 CPKC Women’s Open in Calgary. And after 10 years, to get to play in it, it feels truly amazing.
“Ten years ago, when I went to go watch, I actually told my parents that I wanted to play in this event when I was older. So my mom mentioned to me, before the final round (of the PGA Women’s Championship of Canada), that it would be amazing if you get into the event 10 years after actually saying that. The story kind of matches up crazy.”
If you’ve been following the provincial golf scene, it hardly feels crazy to see Park’s name on an LPGA Tour tee sheet.
This rising star won back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023 at the Alberta Girls U19 Championship — at 13 and 14 years old. She also captured the national junior crown in 2023 and continued to make history by winning the Alberta Women’s Amateur Championship in 2024.
Park posted a two-stroke victory last month at the PGA Women’s Championship of Canada, held at Brooke Henderson’s childhood home course in Smiths Falls, Ont.
With that win, she scored an invite to the 2026 CPKC Women’s Open. Henderson headlines this star-studded field as defending champ, while Nelly Korda arrives as the top-ranked player in the world and Lydia Ko has fond memories from her triumph when Royal Mayfair last hosted this prestigious event in 2013.
“There are so many players that I respect out on the LPGA Tour,” Park said. “It will be exciting to compete with them. I will just say everyone that I will get to meet is going to be a superstar to me.”
Claggett hopes to be joining those superstars on a full-time basis as soon as next season.
She lived in Calgary until just before her 15th birthday, grooving her swing — and growing her love for the game — at Glencoe Golf & Country Club and Pinebrook Golf & Country Club before her family moved to Texas as she was entering high school.
After a stellar college career at Vanderbilt, the 22-year-old Claggett turned professional in the spring. She has already collected three pro trophies, including a pair of wins on the Annika Women’s All Pro Tour, and earned this exemption via the She Plays Golf Championship Series, presented by Audi.
This will be her third career start on the LPGA Tour.
“But it will be my first one as a pro, which obviously comes with higher expectations,” said Claggett, who is on Golf Canada’s national team. “The LPGA is where I want to be, and that has always been the case, but it’s a little more in the immediate future now — hopefully next year for me. I just want to go compete and see if I can make the cut and finish well against the people that I’m hoping to be playing against every day really soon.”
Ask about her new job, and Claggett oozes positivity.
She’s finding joy in the practice sessions and is proud of how she has handled the pressure of needing to make cuts.
She recalled a conversation from a recent pro-am in Wisconsin that really put things in perspective.
“I was playing with four women and another pro, and one of the women asked myself and the other pro, ‘So, is your job just to play golf and work out?’” Claggett relayed. “We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ And she said, ‘That’s what I do too, but I don’t get any money from it!’ It’s little things like that that remind me how grateful I should be.
“It’s really the coolest thing that I get to go out and do what I love and try to make money doing it every day.”
It does, indeed, sound pretty good.
Although this will be her first trip back to Alberta since moving away, Claggett expects to see some familiar faces in the crowd at Royal Mayfair.
Less than two hours from home, Park will have plenty of supporters in the gallery.
But it’s not just about putting on a show for family and friends. Both realize this is also an opportunity to inspire future birdie-machines, young kids who might whisper to their parents ‘Hey, that girl is from Red Deer!’ or ‘Look, that girl is from Calgary!’
“I don’t know that there was anybody from Alberta playing in the Canadian Women’s Open when I was growing up. Most of the Canadian golf scene was dominated by Ontario, B.C. and a little bit Quebec,” Claggett said. “But when I was 10, 11 or 12, I was really looking up to the girls on Team Alberta and the girls going off to college and the girls who played at my course.
“I think there’s something to seeing people who came from where you come from going out there and doing it and living out your dreams. If I can be that inspiration for somebody, that would mean a lot to me.”
Park, that starry-eyed spectator back in 2016, is proof those dreams can be the start of something special.
“I hope I can be somewhat of their idol, like 10 years ago the pros were to me,” she said. “I just hope they will fall into the game of golfing and have the same goal as I did, and hopefully some of them will be there 10 years later with me.”