SWEDE RELIEF
Stenson feels fighting fit ahead of Ryder Cup
HENRIK Stenson has faced his own battle of wounded knee recently but the reigning Open champion declared himself fighting fit and ready to help Europe win a fourth straight Ryder Cup at Hazeltine.
The 40-year-old Swede has not played for almost a month after pulling out of The Barclays at the start of the month with a small cartilage tear in his right knee.
But Stenson, who will be making his fourth Ryder Cup appearance, insists the rest has done him good and he is ready to aid the European crusade on US soil
He said: “Nothing is for certain, but as of now, I feel like I’m up for a lot of golf, and unless my knee tells me otherwise, that’s the way I approach it.
“I played a lot of golf, and it has been a fantastic summer for me, but being up there in contention a lot takes it out of you. I needed a breather.”
Asked if he would be able to play a maximum of five games over the three day shoot-out, Stenson was resolute in his response. “I’d say yes,” he declared.
Stenson’s best year has been one of his busiest as he was determined to play at the Olympics – and was duly rewarded with a silver medal – so having time off before the Ryder Cup has helped to refresh him. “I definitely needed it. That’s why I set my playing schedule the way I did and I knew by playing limited in the beginning of the FedEx, there was always going to be a chance of missing out on the Tour Championship and I did.” The super Swede emerged from one of golf’s greatest showdowns at Royal Troon i n July when he beat Phil Mickelson to The Open title during a titanic tussle on the final day. And Stenson would relish another chance to go head-tohead with the American in the Ryder Cup this week even though he knows the standard the duo set at Troon would take some beating. “Phil is one of the best players that’s been around for the last 20 years,” he said. “It’s always a huge challenge to go up against him and if I were to face him again I’d be trying my hardest to beat him again. “But it’s maybe going to be a big disappointment because everybody is going to expect we are going to play as well as we did at Troon and there’s a very slim chance that would happen again.”
MICKELSON, himself, is a major driving force behind a revamped US Ryder Cup set-up and he took another swing at former skipper Tom Watson’s regime. Mickelson publicly filleted Watson in the aftermath of the heavy defeat in 2014 at Gleneagles and the former Masters champ insisted the new American approach is already reaping rewards. He said: “I think that when you look back on what the difference is, when players are put in a position to succeed, more often than not, they tend to succeed. And when they are put in positions to fail, most of the time they tend to fail. “This is a year where we feel as though captain [Davis] Love has been putting us in a position to succeed.
“He’s taken input from all parties. He’s making decisions. that have allowed us to prepare our best and play our best, and I believe we will play our best.”
Mickelson emphasised the negative role of a captain by recalling his pairing with Tiger Woods in the 2004 match. American skipper Hal Sutton put them out twice in the pairs but the duo lost both matches as the US slumped to a record defeat.
Mickelson added: “We were told two days before that we were playing together and that gave us no time to work together and prepare.
“Tiger found out the year before when we played at the Presidents Cup that the golf ball I was playing was not going to work for him. We had to come up in two days with a solution.
“That’s an example of starting with the captain that put us in a position to fail and we failed monumentally.”