West wood hopes to put Stenson under pressure

SWEDEN’S HENRIK Stenson believes he is one good performance away from becoming European No 1 for the first time — but LeeWestwood still has his eyes on securing a third such title. Stenson holds a lead of 425,573 (£362,660) over Graeme McDowell at the top of the Race to Dubai heading into the BMW Masters in Shanghai — the first of four events in the inaugural Final Series.

But with a first prize of 850,000 (£725,000) on offer at Lake Malaren and a total prize fund of almost £20 million in the four events, Westwood has not given up hope of overcoming a deficit of more than 1.1m.

“It’s four big weeks coming up starting here at the BMW Masters,” said Stenson, who was second in the Open at Muirfield, third in the US PGA Championship at Oak Hill and then won the Deutsche Bank Championship and Tour Championship to capture the £6.2m bonus for winning the FedEx Cup.

“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 (actually 39).”

Westwood has also had injury problems to contend with and admits he does not know whether he will be “fresh or rusty” after five weeks off.

The former world No 1 said: “At the end of the FedEx Cup series I had a bit of a bad back so I went home for five weeks and did a bit of rehab on that, plenty of gym work and some stretching and that’s back to normal now and I’m able to concentrate on the end of the year.

“It’s a big four tournaments coming up. I’m quite surprised actually, I have only played nine events on the European Tour this year and I still have a chance to win the money list. I am looking forward to it and finishing off strong.

“The focus is to play well in the last four tournaments and see what happens from there. They are massive tournaments with big prize funds so a win or a couple of wins can really shoot you up there.”

Several other big names are in the field, including Rory McIlroy, Ian Poulter and Luke Donald.

There are five Scots — Craig Lee, Marc Warren, Scott Jamieson, Paul Lawrie and Stephen Gallacher.

Picture: Getty Images. Henrik Stenson in action at a pro-am event in Shanghai yesterday.