	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

WGC HSBC CHAMPIONS

November 4, 2015

Henrik Stenson

Shanghai, China

PAUL SYMES: Henrik, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to the WGC HSBC Champions. Give us your thoughts on prospects for the week.

HENRIK STENSON: Great to be back. It was a really good golf course. I haven't been out on it yet, but I did some practise yesterday and greens look to be in superb condition. And that's what I had heard from the other boys who have been out on the course.

Looking forward to playing on this golf course and as always, a stellar field. Best of the best are here and it's going to be a tricky week if you want to lift this trophy as always. Got to dig deep and play some good golf if you want to have a chance. Yeah, see what we can do.

PAUL SYMES: It's been a season of nearly but not quite for you this year. Does that make you perhaps more determined to win one of these next three events?

HENRIK STENSON: It would be very nice to finish with a win, no question about it. I managed to pull it off in 2014. We know 2013 was a great, great year for me and I followed up with the second best year of my career in 2014. I think if I could finish off with a win these last couple of tournaments that I'm playing, then I would probably bump '14 to the third best year and make this one second best year.

It would be nice. It's been a long year but hopefully I can squeeze something good out of the last events and a World Golf Championships, it would be nice to add one to the Match Play I won in 2007.

Q. Obviously there's been a lot of discussion about the relative number of tournaments that you have to play on both tours, particularly in Europe. Where do you kind of stand on that as a player who travels both tours?
HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, personally, I keep my membership numbers playing the minimum in Europe has never been an issue for me. I play quite a few on The European Tour. I think the hard part is always if you fall outside the Top 50 and you're still eligible to play both tours like I did in 2011, and I think Luke has had that issue now. That's when it gets a bit tricky. So I think we're looking at some changes there has that been announced already?

Q. Not yet.
HENRIK STENSON: So I think there's always room for improvement or making tweaks, and it seems like we might be heading towards one of those with the numbers in Europe or just a different way to have to fulfill your quote. So we'll see when that gets announced then, if and how and when. That's really the tricky part.

If you're a worldwide player and you play both tours, if you fall outside the Top 50, that's when it's really, really difficult. But in my personal situation, it's been more working out the schedule to get my 15 in America that's been trickier than to do my 13 on The European Tour.

Q. You played these last three events on The Final Series. Just thinking of The European Tour and The Final Series; what do you hope to gain from these three weeks?
HENRIK STENSON: Well, still in with a very small chance of challenging for The Race to Dubai title. It's obviously very slim at this point, but I guess there is a chance if I were to go silly in these three tournaments. I'm going to try my hardest to give myself a chance to move up in The Race to Dubai, of course, and even if I most likely am not going to reach all the way, I still want to try to have a good finish to this season and see how far I can get.

Q. You were rated as the player to next play James Bond. What's the most Bond ish thing you've done on a golf course of?
HENRIK STENSON: I did a photo shoot in black tie in Orlando with Martin Kaymer a couple years ago. I've been in a bunker in a black suit. It doesn't get more bond issue than that. I did actually an instructional piece on bunker shots in a black tie, yeah. That's Bond ish enough, isn't it.

And finally, I just realised that it's a very poor selection on the Tour for future Bond possibles.

Q. It's not the Tour, but the fans voted?
HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, but the selection was obviously the players on the Tour.

Q. What are your thoughts on the Olympics next year and who do you consider to be Sweden's greatest summer Olympian?
HENRIK STENSON: Why do you only have to go into summer sports?

Q. Just to make it
HENRIK STENSON: Trickier, thanks.

Q. Outside of tennis ping pong?
HENRIK STENSON: That wasn't part of the Olympics back then, tennis. Well, I'm excited about participating in the Olympics for sure. As a general sports fan, I watched a lot of summer and winter Olympics throughout my life, and I've never been to an Olympic venue, so that's exciting. It's a start. And to participate and feel the whole experience and represent your country, it's going to be great.

Yeah, if I can go over there and play well, lucky enough to win a medal for Sweden, that would be huge. It would be something you definitely remember and have with you for the rest of your life. So, excited about that chance, and looking forward to next summer in that sense.

Who would be the greatest summer Olympian from Sweden we've got I mean, I'm ashamed to say, I can't recall who has done what, and if I say a name here, then I might make a complete fool out of myself.

Q. That's the idea.
HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, that's the idea, thanks. And Google doesn't work in China, either. So I'm in for a good one here, ain't I. I mean, ping pong, as you mentioned, we're in China. You know, ping pong is huge here and JÃ¶rgen Persson has been a fantastic player in that sport for so many years. He's called the Everlasting Trees is his nickname in China because I think he played against three generations of Chinese players. And whenever you have access to Google, you can check his record and tell me if it was a good choice or not. And then I'll meet you somewhere where it's dark and we'll work this out, you and me (flexing). Very Bond ish.

Q. As a follow, I'm wondering
HENRIK STENSON: Who is second on the list? (Laughter).

Q. A number of sportsmen like yourself and sportsmen, sports fans, wonder how much of the appeal of the Olympics is the competition and how much of it is being part of it for a few weeks and seeing other things, and what have you. What's the greater appeal?
HENRIK STENSON: It's going to be hard to guess or judge that now. I mean, the best thing is going to be obviously to talk about this when we're finished, because since it's the first time that golf is back or since it's on there now in modern times, we don't know what to expect and how it's going to work out and all the rest of it.

I guess as of now, I guess the participation is really exciting and the competition is going to be I think more and more so once we get there and you realise, okay, in a week's time, we're actually going to play in the Olympics.

We're going to play for a Gold Medal and whoever is winning that Gold Medal, it's going to be historic because it's the first one back and I think it would grow on you as time goes by if you win a medal or especially the one who wins the Gold Medal.

Like I said, you're going to be historic; you're going to be remembered forever for it, and I think the achievement is going to grow with the years. You know, it's going to be slightly different because it's going to be a smaller field and it's going to be 60 players. It's going to be players that normally are not in the biggest events in the world and majors and so on.

So probably going to be half and half, 30 guys are going to be ones who have won major championships and some, the other 30, a couple might not even be on the main tours in the world. So it's going to be a bit of a mix there. But I guess that's the whole case for a lot of the sports, because it's a quota per kin try and so on.

So I'm sure there's a lot of athletes who participate in the Olympics that normally wouldn't be the ones fighting it out for the No. 1 spot.

I remember Eddie the Eel, he wasn't really a top swimmer, if I recall it right Eric the Eel. Okay. I made a crumble (laughter). I wouldn't imagine that the quality of golf is going to be slightly higher than the ski jumping and the swimming then it appears.

For the record, can we get which journalists asked which questions

PAUL SYMES: That can be arranged.

HENRIK STENSON: Perfect, thank you. (Laughter).

Q. If you just look at your career in the last few years, maybe five years ago, the beginning of the season was really good for you. You used to come out of the blocks really hot and used to play very get great results early in the season. But in the last three, four years, it's the back end of the season that you are more
HENRIK STENSON: I'm getting older.

Q. Your performances, you're warming up a little late maybe. What has changed? Is there some adjustments that you have made?
HENRIK STENSON: No, it's a tricky one. When I look back, further back, as you say, I tended to play really well early on and late in the year and summers weren't really that good. Partly might have been energy wise with my grass allergies and so on. I just didn't get the results.

You're going to have a cycle where you're going to go up and down. It's hard to be on top of your game the whole year around. I think with the busy schedules that we have and we play all year round, at times, you just run out of energy, and mental freshness and all the rest. And then you're going to get a bit of a dip and then you pick yourself up and get going again.

I don't know, I can't give you a perfect answer on that. I think the shorter the break is from when you finish one season until you kick on the next one, that might if you don't have much time, you're going to try and give yourself that break and then you're not really ready to go when you kick on the next season.

It's been a couple of disappointing start ups the last couple of years, and I think that's for that reason; that you've got four weeks off, five weeks off. You want to have that break and then you're not really ready to go when you start up again.

Other than that, it's up and downs; stock markets, life in general and all the rest of it. Nothing is on a straight line. I'm just happy to have been able to produce a lot of strong results in the last four or five years and hopefully I can continue, especially in August next year then.

PAUL SYMES: Thanks for the enjoyable 30 minutes, Henrik. Good luck the rest of the week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297