Henrik stenson bombs it like Tiger Woods and closes out tournaments like Raymond Floyd, but his on-course demeanor calls to mind an even more iconic figure. With his stoic visage, dark sunglasses and Nordic accent, "he's like the Terminator," says Luke Donald. Last year Stenson, a 30-year-old native of Goteborg, Sweden, made his debut at the Masters as a talented tease who wowed with his skills but had yet to develop a Schwarzenegger-like ability to blow away anybody and anything in his path. To very little fanfare Stenson shot a jittery 74-77 to miss the cut. Since then he has morphed into a ruthless winning machine. In the last 12 months Stenson has vanquished Retief Goosen and Padraig Harrington with an eagle in sudden death at the BMW International Open, holed the clinching putt at the Ryder Cup, mowed down Woods and Ernie Els in a final-round shootout in Dubai, stormed to victory at the Accenture Match Play Championship and surged to No. 5 in the World Ranking. Memo to Augusta National: He'll be back.
In fact, Stenson arrives at this Masters on the short list of favorites, even though in seven previous major championships as a pro he has finished better than 26th only once. Mindful of both his inexperience at the majors and the cresting expectations, Stenson says, "I'd be happy to have a top 10. I think that would be a pretty good tournament for me."
The words hang in the air like a bad idea, and Stenson seems to feel the disappointment in his audience. "Um, that doesn't sound very tough, does it?" he says. "Maybe I should say I'm going to crush them by 15 shots, break Tiger's record. How's that? Better?"
That's the thing about Stenson-as intimidating as he looks on the course, he's not very scary away from it. He says, "I'm useless at smiling," but he can light up a room with his boyish grin. He has a goofy sense of humor and a weakness for low-brow comedies; he can quote Talladega Nights like a holy text, and in the course of one recent conversation he dropped nuggets from Dumb and Dumber and Life of Brian. Turns out he's also a merry prankster, going as far back as his teen years on the Swedish national team, when he was busted for hurling water balloons from a hotel balcony.
Stenson is recently married-to Emma Lofgren, a fellow Swede and former member of the golf team at South Carolina-and a soon-to-be father, but it doesn't appear as if he's grown up too much. At last year's China Open in Beijing he was delighted to find, at an outdoor market, a device that looked like a pen but zapped its users with a surprisingly strong electrical current. As he gleefully recalls, "I went around for days saying, 'Hey, can I get your e-mail address?' Then I'd hand people the pen and they'd, like, freak out."
This duality-cold-blooded killer between the ropes, frat boy the rest of the time-has been forged during a short, eventful career that has had dizzying successes and glaring failures. In 2000, a year into his pro career, Stenson tore up the Challenge tour, the European developmental circuit, winning three times. In 2001, as a rookie on the European tour, he won in his 11th start. A star was born, or so it seemed.
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