PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — In the early LIV days, Tiger and some of his Florida Tour buddies, in the cocoon of their gated lives, had a cheeky, kinda mean take on the dearly departed: Except for Brooksie (Brooks Koepka) and DJ (Dustin Johnson), who you gonna actually miss?
Well, this guy: Henrik Stenson, the fit, droll Swede, now 49, winner of the 2016 British Open (in a Sunday shootout with future LIV golfer Phil Mickelson), once slated to be the 2023 Ryder Cup captain for Europe. Going LIV ended that. Stenson is one of four former Open champions here in the Royal Portrush field who now play for LIV. Rounding out this unlikely, you could say amazing, foursome is Mickelson (first-round 70, one under), Cameron Smith (72) and Louis Oosthuizen (77). Stenson signed for 75.
He played the first round through a soaking rain. The legendary Fanny Sunesson, coaxed out of looper retirement for this week on the Atlantic, did her best to keep him dry. Sunesson caddied for Stenson when he won the 2009 Players Championship. Also, for Nick Faldo when he won his two Opens and two of his three Masters titles. Sunesson is now a mental coach and only a very occasional caddie, working this week and earlier this month for Stenson at the LIV event in Dallas, where it was 95 degrees in the shade. She and Stenson speak Swedish on the course, and there’s a lot of it.
It’s Sunesson’s first language, too. She played amateur golf in Sweden with the Sörenstam sisters. Those two dots, on the chance you don’t know (I looked it up), are known as an umlaut. Sunesson is as precise as Stenson is loose. They were entertaining to watch on Thursday, Sunesson angling Stenson’s gigantic Callaway umbrella just so, to keep the falling rain off her boss’s golf ball while preparing to putt. But not during. T’aint legal!
“It is a lot to manage out there,” a remarkably dry Stenson said Thursday afternoon. “The rain’s coming at you, you’re trading the towel for the umbrella, the rough will soak your feet, you’re trying to keep your grips dry. Thank goodness for Fanny. She keeps you dry.” Dryish.
I sought out Stenson because I wanted to share an Arnold nugget with him. He contended several times in Arnold Palmer’s March tournament at Bay Hill and lived nearby. One year, Stenson was contending and his group got repeated warnings for their pace of play. Nobody would ever call Stenson a slow player. “I was playing with Bryson, back in the day,” Stenson said (amusingly).
Bryson DeChambeau, when he played the PGA Tour, was an annoyingly, distractingly slow player. Stenson never won the event. DeChambeau did, in 2021. A lot has changed since then. DeChambeau shot an opening 77 at Portrush.
The nugget: Arnold loved the British Open (as he called it) and won it twice, in 1961 and ’62. He loved the Old Course and St. Andrews. He loved watching it on TV. (More running, low-flight shots, less chat.) To Arnold, there really were three majors. (He won four Masters, two Opens, one U.S. Open. He never won the PGA Championship and had a certain and lifelong ambivalence about the PGA of America.) The final major he watched with intense, sustained interest was the 2016 Open at Troon. He watched at his home in Latrobe with his buddy Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania, and one of his two grandsons, Will Wears, today a good amateur golfer and an assistant golf coach at Loyola University in Maryland. On Sunday, with Stenson and Mickelson in the final twosome on a perfect Scottish summer day, Arnold was glued.
“He was rooting for Stenson,” Will told me recently. “He was invested in it. Didn’t fall asleep. Food came to us. He didn’t miss a shot. He liked the thud of Stenson’s shots. I think he wanted the guy who wasn’t in jeopardy of winning more majors than him.” Mickelson had five majors then, and now has six. Mickelson played in 16 APIs, and won it in 1997, but did not play in 2016, and Arnold was always noting those kinds of absences. But the biggest thing was Phil’s threat to Arnold’s final number: lucky 7.
“I was not aware of that, that is really nice to hear,” Stenson said Thursday. “I always regretted that I never won Arnold’s tournament and never really got to know him, except to say hi.” Stenson played all five matches in the 2016 Ryder Cup. Arnold Palmer died on the eve of the event, on Sept. 25, at age 87. The Americans won and the Ryder Cup, the actual trophy, was in attendance for Palmer’s memorial service, held two days after the event finished.
When Stenson went LIV, the European golf powers stripped him of his captaincy for the 2023 Ryder Cup. As the rules stands now, he won’t be able to play in next year’s British Senior Open, despite being 50, because of a ban on LIV players by the DP World Tour, which co-owns the senior event with the R&A. But he can play in the British Open until he turns 60. It’s kind of weird, but that’s golf these days.
On 12 on Thursday, a terrific par-5 with a row of fancy mobile homes on a hill on the fairway’s left side, Stenson hit a bad drive, a bad second, a bad third and a good lag putt, ducking under his umbrella between shots. You give touring pros five shots to get a golf ball in a distant hole and as long as there are no penalty shots, they will, 99 times out of 100. Even in a soaking rain.
Stenson spoke to reporters from Sweden for 20 minutes when he was done. There is no LIV Stockholm event, and the sportswriters and broadcasters in Stenson’s homeland don’t get to see him often. He’s not talking about what will happen when he turns 50. For now, there is no immediate path for him to play on the PGA Tour Champions, even if that is something he wants to do, if his days as a LIV Majestick should come to an end. His teammates are Lee Westwood, Sam Horsfield and Ian Poulter. Arnold had a whole second life as a player, after turning 50. But that was then. Stenson can’t know what 50 will bring. In the meantime, he will try to make a cut in this 153rd Open. Regardless, his name is on the winner’s trophy forever. Right there with Arnold’s.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
