Henrick Stenson recorded a two shot victory on the labour day Monday finish of the Deutsche Bank Open and with it moved to number one in the Fed Ex Cup rankings, where a $10 million purse awaits after two more rounds.
Its arguable that non-one is playing better golf than the tall Swede, who finished second in the Open Championship at Muirfield this year and has now followed that up with a final round 66 to win yesterday. Its a testimony to his hard work and perseverance that his recovery is complete after walking off the course at the K Club in 2001 with a shocking case of the “Driver Yips”. His coach, Pete Cowan, said at the time “He had trouble hitting the world with his driver”, in an interview with Golf Digest. Its consolation for all of us struggling club golfers that these mental problems affect even the very best as anyone who watched the final round will have seen not just the final round putting woes of Sergio Garcia but also the effect that has on his normally flawless ball striking. You simply can not back him going in to a final round he cant get it done and this is surely just the mental scars of too many lost battles on the all important Sunday. Perhaps too, Tiger should spend a little time with Pete Cowan as he hasn’t hit two fairways in a row with a driver in 6 years.
The tour moves on and heads to Illinois this week with the 3rd round of the playoffs being the BMW Championship to be staged at Conway Farms GC. Its logical that Luke Donald will be shorter in price than you might expect given that this is his home practice club and one he knows extremely well. That course knowledge is not to be taken lightly as very few of the pros have played here before as this is the clubs first major tour event. It did host the Worlds Best Amateurs back in 2009; such is the progression of this new build that it is deemed strong enough to stage this all important play off.
We will go up with our golf selections late tomorrow when we see weather forecasts and get a better understanding of players views on the course and how it sets up
