How Henrik Stenson and Steve Stricker Dealt With Slumps

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Stenson went and played in a Club Championship during his 2 year slump.

"A tournament is always a little better than just practice"

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Two summers ago, during the week of the PGA Championship, for which he didn't qualify, Henrik Stenson licked his wounds by entering a lowly club championship. At his home course in Barsebäck, Sweden, with his dad Ingemar on his bag, the 2009 Players Champion and former world No. 4 golfer finished second to a member named Henrik Hilford Brander (albeit an aspiring pro and sometime-caddie for European Tour star Caroline Hedwall).

On the bright side, it was the slumping Stenson's best individual tournament finish in more than two years.

"A tournament is always a little better than just practice," Stenson explained to a Swedish website. You've got to admire that attitude. Stenson, who can appear gloomy on the course but is a sweetheart off it, is unusually forthright for a Tour pro about his weaknesses and foibles. He is also unusually insightful about recovering from slumps, which he has managed twice in his career.

"Life is ups and downs—stock market, golf, everything kind of goes in cycles," he said here at the BMW Championship. "There's no magic potion," he said about breaking from the doldrums. "It's just hard work on the right things that eventually pays off." Stenson, who is 37 and first won on the European Tour in 2001, bottomed out in his first slump in 2003, at No. 621 in the world rankings. This time around he only slipped to 230th, but that was just 19 months ago. After winning two weeks ago at the Deutsche Bank Championship, the second of the four FedEx Cup Playoffs events, he is now No. 6 in the world and first in FedEx Cup points, just ahead of Tiger Woods. The Playoffs, and the PGA Tour season, conclude next week at the Tour Championship in Atlanta.

Motivation was part of the problem for Steve Stricker, who lost his Tour card in 2005. and fell to 347th in the world rankings early the next year. Stricker had achieved what he wanted, to make a good living on the Tour, but had trouble mustering the energy to keep pushing. The task was made harder by switching clubs after signing a lucrative equipment deal—an issue Rory McIlroy can relate to this year after switching to Nike—and by flaws that crept into his swing. His take-away was too steep and his tempo too fast.

Stricker, who fully recovered from his slump, did so by assessing his life situation—he realized there was nothing he wanted to do more than play golf—and then by working out his swing problems mostly on his own, so that he owned them. On the range at the BMW this week, you can still see him looking over his right shoulder to check his club position on the backswing, a practice he developed during his fix-it years. By the end of 2006, Stricker was PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year, then was voted it again in 2007.

The trajectory of Stenson's recent recovery tracks Stricker's: first a recommitment, then hard work on the fundamentals. His first fall from grace, after his early success in Europe, was tougher, because he hadn't really yet developed a high-caliber game he could count on.

"This time was different than '01 and '02. It was more frustration, because I knew what I'm capable of," he said Tuesday. Health issues started to wear away at Stenson's game in 2010, when he contracted viral pneumonia. In 2011 he picked up a waterborne parasite. He was also enmeshed in legal proceedings, still ongoing, to recover a major chunk of his assets lost in 2009 when Stanford Financial Group, one of his sponsors, was seized for fraud by U.S. authorities.

With his game and confidence spiraling downward, Stenson at first looked for quick fixes, but in 2012 adopted a longer-term perspective. "I came to a point where I looked at all the aspects of my game and decided this is where we're going to be in two months, not this week," he said. "That is what got me going."

With more mental space in which to operate, he was less thrown by temporary setbacks. The turning point, he said, was a win late last year in South Africa, when he charged from behind on the final holes. Another high point was at the Shell Houston Open in April. Knowing he needed a high finish to qualify for the Masters, he did so with a tie for second.

Through a series of great finishes this summer—a tie for third at the Scottish Open, solo second at the British Open, a tie for second at the Bridgestone and solo third at the PGA—he continued to work on the small things. So much so, he said, that he didn't realize until last week, answering a question for Swedish radio, that this has been the best year of his career.

Stricker, speaking from experience, said Stenson's approach is just the ticket to keep from backsliding. Knowing where you've come from scares you, Stricker said: "You don't want to go back there, so you work at it and put in the time and remember what is getting you to the point that you're at and try to build on those things."

How long does Stenson expect his good play to last? a reporter asked after the Deutsche Bank. "Forever and ever, of course," he said.