For a Swedish professional golfer Henrik Stenson is quite a comedian. "We rented a house on the beach this week, which I will now have to buy,'' he said after his stunning final round of 66 at Sawgrass secured him victory at the Players Championship. He could certainly afford it. Recession may have bitten some golf tournaments fairly hard, but not this one. With a total prize fund of £6m, and a winner's cheque of around £1.2m, no one should doubt the determination of the PGA Tour to elevate its flagship event to the status of major championship.
Unfortunately for the tour, there are some things money can't buy and two of them are history and prestige. Still, this is undoubtedly one of the game's pre-eminent tournaments and Sunday's victory, and the manner of it, cements Stenson's membership in the club of elite players. Tiger Woods is undoubtedly the best player in the world, but those seeking to supplant him are edging ever closer and their identities are changing. Where once the likes of Ernie Els and Vijay Singh might have been seen as Woods's principal challengers, the mantle has now shifted to players such as Geoff Ogilvy and Stenson.
The Swede is no one's idea of a cocky so-and-so but, in the aftermath of Sunday's victory, even he was prepared to accept his position in golf's new world order. "I think if you look at my résumé, it's been a case on quite a few occasions that I've won tournaments with very strong fields, and that's obviously very pleasing, as well. I won the Match Play, I won in Dubai when Tiger was in, played with Ernie three or four days and beat him down the stretch. No, it just seems to bring the best out of me when I have to, playing the best players, and obviously now I feel like I'm up there where I belong when I'm playing good,'' he said.
The next and most obvious step will be for Stenson to win a major championship. He will get his next chance in June at Bethpage, venue for the 2009 US Open and a golf course that might suit his long-hitting but always thoughtful approach to playing the game. He is certainly long and straight enough to win there and, thanks to his recent work with sports psychologist Bob Rotella, who has been whispering sweet affirmations of impending greatness into Padraig Harrington's ear for some time, Stenson now seems tough enough to win golf's most taxing challenge.
The fact is, if he could keep his head, and keep his score significantly below par, on a golf course that was playing as tough as Sawgrass did on Sunday, he can handle anything the game throws at him. It would help his cause, too, if Woods continued to struggle with his golf swing, which let him down badly on Sunday. The world No1 doesn't have an especially good record at the Players in recent years but when he went out in Sunday's final pairing alongside the German player Alex Cejka it was expected that one member of the two-ball would play poorly under the pressure. Cejka certainly did that, stumbling to a seven-over par 79. But to everyone's surprise so did Woods, although he turned a potential 79 into a respectable 73 – the best score possible given the number of exceptionally poor shots he hit.
It says something about Woods's abilities that he could play so badly and still finish eighth, but as he made the usual noises about just how close he is to recapturing his very best form it was possible to detect just a smidgen of concern – but only if you listened very closely. "I'll fix it,'' he said of his errant swing. "It's not that bad. If I had a two-way miss, then obviously I'd be a lot more concerned than I am now, but just a one-way miss."
Rich men have made themselves poor by underestimating Woods, but every once in a while overestimating him is also fraught with the possibility of disappointment, as Ian Poulter, who finished second to Stenson on Sunday, will testify. "I thought if I beat Tiger I would win,'' the Englishman said afterwards. Once upon a time, this might have been true. But no more; not for the time being at least.
