INTERVIEW | HENRIK STENSON
The
Comeback
King
Henrik Stenson, who headlines this month’s Thailand Golf Championship at Amata Spring, went from world number 230 to winner of the FedEx Cup and Race to Dubai in a little less than two years. The Swedish ace, now number three in the rankings, tells Alex Jenkins how he did it. Do you appreciate what you have done now more because of the difficulties you've had in the past, and what did it take for you to make this remarkable comeback?
Yeah, but if I tell you, you're going to tell them and then everybody is going to come back and kick my butt. That wouldn't be very smart, would it? [Laughs]. No, I think it started in the beginning of 2012. I was pretty much fed up with playing poorly after the 2011 season, so I just decided that things are going to change. I was digging deep to just try and get some results on the board, and I managed to make that happen. I played the season with whatever game I had for the time being and wrapped up some decent tournaments in the States. I got back to Europe in the summer and I had a couple of top10 finishes and I felt my game was getting better and then I contacted my old coach, Torsten Hansson back in Sweden who I worked with between 1995 and 2008. We got back together and got more of a longterm bigger picture, bigger plan together.
AFP
Stenson (opposite) may have lost millions as a result of Allen Standford’s Ponzi scheme in 2009, but he’s all smiles now
Well, I think you always appreciate the ups more when you have had a down or two, and no one in my line of work is going to go through 15 years on Tour without having a couple of bad seasons. I've had probably two slumps have been deeper or worse than I would have liked them to be, and you learn a lot through those times, and you probably appreciate the good times even more afterwards. You know, to come back to where my game is now is taking a lot of hard work and patience and dedication. I've got a great team around me that's been helping me, and of course family support and everybody else around me, as well, so it's been … the comeback journey or whatever you want to label it as. It's something that probably started about a year and a half ago or something like that, and it's taken a lot of hard work and patience to get my game back to where I know I can have it and play the kind of golf that I know I can do.
How did you do it exactly? All of the players are putting in a lot of hard work and training hard and looking at their game, but they are not getting the same results. Can you put your finger on exactly what happened to make it become this good?
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“I was pretty much fed up with playing poorly after the 2011 season, so I just decided that things are going to change. I was digging deep to just try and get some results on the board, and I managed to make that happen.” Then it's been more working at all the different aspects and different processes and trying to make every little part better, and then eventually you get the full – the holistic view on it. You get the whole thing together and that obviously happened more throughout this summer. Then I've just been a little bit better in every department, and then I did so many different things and tried to make everything just a little bit better and then eventually you get the benefit. And how do you keep that up going forward? I think just trying to be wary of my time and making sure that I can dedicate enough time with all the different parts that really got my game into good shape. I know there's a lot of room for improvement still, a lot of areas where I can become much, much better and certain areas I'm going to benefit more from improving on than others. Again, we know it's going upanddown. Hopefully I can stay away from playing the
You mention the stock market. You had a welldocumented financial issue a few years ago [Stenson lost a reported US$8 million in a scheme set up by convicted fraudster Allen Stanford]. How much did that affect what happened to your game? It was obviously not great news back in whenever it was, February of 2009. But then again, I can't really say that affected my golf that much, because I won the biggest – up until now, anyway, my biggest achievement was winning The PLAYERS Championship in May 2009. So that was three months after that whole thing was revealed. It wasn't like I've got it for five days in the middle of May and then all of a sudden I was reminded of it after. You know, it's not something that you have to do, to have part of your investments … being caught up in a thing like that.
AFP
The Swede said he wasn’t at his best at the Open Championship (above) earlier in the summer but nonetheless finished in a share of second to maintain a brilliant stretch of results; the 37-year-old poses with his family after claiming the Tour Championship and overall Race to Dubai titles last month (opposite)
way I did in 2011 going forward, but you can never guarantee it, and there's always going to be up and downs, and part of the year where you're going to play better and worse and so on. That's just part of life and part of golf. The stock market is not going in a perfect up all the time, either. I just have to manage my time and make sure I still dedicate enough focus and time to all these processes that have – instead of doing interviews with everyone from around the world. [Laughs].
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Then again, that's only one little part in a bigger picture, and I can't say that I played poorly since 2011 because I potentially lost a chunk of money in 2009. It wouldn't make it – to just blame it on something like that. After a season like this, what are your goals for 2014? Everyone is talking about Majors … Yeah, I mean, seeing as how I managed to win both the FedEx and The Race to Dubai – yeah, a major championship would obviously be the one thing missing on my result roll. I'm going to try my hardest. It's one of the tougher things to achieve. That's why they call it a Major championship; they’re the biggest events against the strongest fields on some of the toughest courses. But again, it's about developing my game, trying to become better, and hopefully I can prepare well and put myself in good position at any of those events going forward, and that's what makes you win golf tournaments; being up there on Sunday afternoon. The more times you can put yourself in contention, the more times you will win. That's what I've done so many times this year by playing solid, good golf, and then I managed to win my fair share, as well, as a consequence of that. HKGOLFER.COM
“I can't really say that [losing millions because of Allen Stanford] affected my golf that much, because my biggest achievement was winning The PLAYERS Championship in May 2009 just a few months later.” Sweden is a great golfing nation, but one without a male Major winner. Is there any added pressure on you because of that? Not really. I'd love to be the first male golfer from Sweden to win a Major championship. That would be great. But if one of my colleagues from Sweden would win one, you know, that would be great, too. All credit to whoever manages to do it, to win the first one. For me, it's more about trying to give myself chances to win one, and whether I'm first or second, that's going to be of less relevance, as long as I can win one. But again, you know, looking ahead, I've got a lot of experience at this point, but I might have four or five good years hopefully ahead of me and in that 15, 20 times, you can eventually win a Major championship. So it's not like you get a million chances. I don't think I will go there with added pressure. I think I will go there with more confidence after being able to achieve the things that I've achieved this season, and I'm also very excited because I felt like at The Open Championship and the US PGA, I probably didn't play the best out of all these weeks that I've played and I still came that close. If things were going my way, I could potentially have won both those Majors this summer, and hopefully another time I'm the one who makes the extra putt and things go my way. It's all about being patient and preparing and trying to put myself in the mix again. HK GOLFER・DEC 2013
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