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Within a few months of that victory, he was in an all-consuming slump. Stenson is a self-described "big-time perfectionist"-early in his career he traveled with his own bread and muesli to ensure that his breakfasts were just so-and he tried to build on his maiden triumph by tinkering with his mechanics. That led to swing problems that begot a crisis of confidence. He hit bottom during the 2001 European Open, at the K Club, where he needed three tee shots on his first hole before he could put one in play. It got worse from there, and Stenson walked in after nine holes. "For a long while he couldn't hit the fairway; he couldn't hit the golf course; he couldn't hit the planet," says Torsten Hansson, a sports psychologist who has been working with Stenson since 1995, when both were affiliated with the Swedish national team.
With help from veteran swing coach Peter Cowen, Stenson spent the next three years putting his game back together, but, he says, "the problems were more mental than physical." To help Stenson dig out of this epic slump, Hansson put him through what he calls extensive mental-toughness training. The idea was to expose Stenson to situations in which he felt uncomfortable and force him to handle them. Among the drills was walking on a balance beam blindfolded. Stenson also hit buckets of balls wearing a blindfold to learn to trust himself again. All the work paid off with his second career victory, at the European tour's The Heritage in '04. He's been on a roll ever since, finishing eighth on the European money list in '05 and then beginning his ascent as a world-class player last spring.
According to Hansson, "We are now seeing a catch-up effect from all the hard work he did when he was stuck in the mud. That was a dreadful time, but he developed a toughness to handle all that tension and frustration. Now his mind is unbreakable."
That strength was obvious at the Match Play during a quarterfinal tussle with Nick O'Hern, who was still flying from having beaten Woods the day before. After Stenson won the 17th hole to square the match, his errant drive on 18 cozied up to a cactus. No sweat. He took a penalty drop onto the desert hardpan and then stuffed his approach to two feet for an improbable par. It was the shot of the tournament, and it proved decisive when a rattled O'Hern made bogey. Stenson had displayed the same killer instinct a month earlier on the 72nd hole at the Dubai Desert Classic, when he got up and down for the winning birdie, sinking a never-in-doubt seven-footer to beat his playing partner, Els, by a stroke and Woods by two. Even more than the Match Play, at which he beat U.S. Open champ Geoff Ogilvy in the final, Dubai stamped Stenson as a big-time player. Those around him have detected a different swagger ever since.
"It's funny with golfers-everybody else might know how good somebody is, but until you believe it yourself it doesn't really matter," says Chris DiMarco, a buddy of Stenson's. "It was a huge boost for Henrik to birdie that last hole in Dubai with Tiger and Ernie breathing down his neck. Now he realizes how good he is."
As he heads into Augusta, one of Stenson's biggest challenges is managing expectations-his and everyone else's-which have only been heightened by his strong play at last week's CA Championship, in which he finished 19th. He arrived at last year's Masters as a trendy dark horse pick, thanks to a tie for third two weeks earlier at the Players Championship. Stenson was actually fighting his swing at the Players, but prospered thanks to what he calls the best week of his career on the greens. Still groping to find his swing during the first round of the Masters, he was in the process of grinding out a decent score until he made a sloppy bogey at the 17th hole. No course frays the nerves quite like Augusta National, and with one bad chip Stenson lost his cool. "I'm working on it, but I can still run very hot," he says. "There have been a few shafts gone to pieces in my career." He promptly double-bogeyed 18.
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