Henrik Stenson believes he is one good performance away from securing The Race to Dubai as the inaugural Final Series begins with the BMW Masters presented by SRE Group in Shanghai this week.
The Swede holds a lead of €425,573 with four events remaining – but with the big purses on offer at the end of the season the World Number Four knows the likes of Graeme McDowell and Justin Rose could soon be catching him if he does not maintain his recent incredibly high standards.
The 37 year old was outside the top 200 on The Official World Golf Ranking at the start of 2012, but since winning the SA Open Championship towards the end of last year has gone on to enjoy remarkable success this campaign.
A run of third in the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open, second at The Open Championship, second at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and third at the US PGA Championship propelled Stenson to the top of The Race to Dubai, and he then won the Deutsche Bank Championship and Tour Championship to capture the US PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup.
Rather than rest on his laurels, however, Stenson is keen to become the first player to win the FedEx and Race to Dubai in the same year.
“It's four big weeks coming up starting here at the BMW Masters,” he said. “There's a lot of points and money up for grabs in these events. It's only one top finish from any one of the guys or a couple of the guys behind me to catch me or move beyond.
“So I'm just going to focus on my game and try to have some good weeks and hopefully I can get one really good week out of these four and that should hopefully give me a shot at the overall title by the time the four weeks have finished.
“Obviously I’m delighted with my season. It was the best even before winning the FedEx Cup - I had all those good finishes and a nice win. Of course, the TOUR Championship and winning the FedEx didn't make it any worse.
“It's quite nice to sit there at age 37 - I'm not old, old but I'm not young, young, either. It's nice to have my best year at this point. I took some inspiration from my buddy, Robert Karlsson. I think he had his best season winning the Order of Merit when he was about 40 or something like that.”
Only Tiger Woods has garnered more Ranking points than Stenson in 2013, although a wrist injury in the build-up at Lake Malaren has hampered his preparations somewhat.
“It was feeling quite bad for a while there but my physios managed to do some request work yesterday and the movement came back and most of the pain is gone,” he added. “I was able to hit some shots on the range a little while ago and I’m going to try to play the Pro Am.
“You can wish for a lot of things when you are healthy, but when the hand felt bad yesterday, all you want to do is get better and be able to play, good or bad, doesn't really matter. You just want to be able to hit shots and play, so I’m very pleased with the progress and I hope it stays.
“It wasn't a nice scenario to get problems with the wrist starting a big stretch like I am. I've got my crew out here so they can treat it in the weeks to come and keep it under control I hope; hopefully it won't bother me.”
