Henrik Stenson is hoping to mount one of his traditional late season surges as the Swede seeks to close the gap on Rory McIlroy at the top of The Race to Dubai.
Stenson has formed a welcome habit of finishing his seasons strongly in recent times, capturing the SA Open Championship title in December 2012, then winning the season-ending DP World Tour Championship, Dubai in consecutive campaigns from 2013.
With more than two million points currently separating the 39 year old and McIlroy in The Race to Dubai Rankings, if he is to supercede the World Number Three, Stenson will need to win at least one – and realistically two – of the remaining three events in the ‘Final Series’, starting with this week’s WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai.
And whilst Stenson admits he faces an uphill task in his bid to replicate his dream season of 2013, when he ended the year as Europe’s Number One, the Gothenburg native is hopeful of at least making McIlroy aware of his presence.
He said: “It would be very nice to finish with a win, no question about it. I managed to pull it off in Dubai in 2014. The year before was obviously a great season for me, and I followed it up with the second best year of my career in 2014. I think if I could finish off with at least one win in these last three tournaments I’m playing, then I would probably bump 2014 down a place and make this one the second best year.
“So that has to be the goal. I’m still in with a very small chance of challenging for The Race to Dubai title. It’s obviously very slim at this point, but I guess there is a chance of winning if I were to go silly in these three tournaments. Even if I’m unlikely to reach all the way to the top, I still want to try to have a good finish to this season and try to put a little bit of pressure on the guy at the top.”
As always, aside from golfing matters Stenson’s press conference covered a wide variety of subjects, ranging from Sweden’s most successful Olympian to the most “James Bond” thing he has ever done on a golf course.
The latter theme was put to Stenson after he was voted by My European Tour fans in an online poll as the player who would make the best Bond.
Having polled 44.4 per cent of the votes, Stenson comfortably beat Martin Kaymer into second place, and the pair put their Bond credentials to the test in a photo shoot for a sponsor last year.
He said: “I did a black tie photo shoot in Orlando with Martin, which was a bit different. I actually did an instructional piece on bunker shots wearing a tuxedo – it doesn’t get any more James Bond than that. I’m not sure if I should be flattered that I won the vote, or if it was just a very poor selection by the Tour on future Bonds! I guess I should probably just take it as a compliment.”
