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

Stenson with his family after claiming the Tour Championship and overall Race to Dubai titles

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?

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?

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 top 10 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 long term bigger picture, bigger plan together.

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.

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