Stenson earns $10M payday
ATLANTA — At this stage in his career, Henrik Stenson never expects anything to come easily.
He already had poured in hours upon hours of work to even get to this stage — a four-shot lead going into the last day of the Tour Championship, giving him a clear shot at the FedEx Cup and the biggest payoff in golf. He was reminded what was at stake when he saw the two trophies displayed on the first tee at East Lake.
“I knew it was a lot of things on the line,” he said.
He figured his best move was to play his best golf, and he delivered a 2-under 68 on Sunday to claim both trophies.
With a birdie on the 15th hole that thwarted a late charge by 20-year-old Jordan Spieth, followed by three pars from the sand, Stenson wound up with a three-shot victory over Spieth and Steve Stricker in the Tour Championship. Equally important, if not more, he captured the FedEx Cup and its $10 million bonus.
“The main thing is to block everything out and go play golf, which I was pretty good at in the long run,” Stenson said Sunday.
The short run hasn’t been bad, either.
No one has played better over the last three months. Stenson tied for third in the Scottish Open, and was runner-up a week later at the British Open. He was runner-up in the World Golf Championship at Firestone and finished third at the PGA Championship. And when the FedEx Cup playoffs began, the 37-year-old Swede didn’t lose his stride. He won the Deutsche Bank Championship to get the No. 2 seed, and then capped it off with the first wire-to-wire win (no ties) in the Tour Championship since Tom Watson in the first year of this 30-man showcase.
“Hats off to him,” Stricker said. “He played great. He played great in the playoffs. He won two of these events. He deserves to be champion.”
