Henrik Stenson Out-Tigers Tiger

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- It took two shots for Tiger Woods to throw his club. Two. The final pairing, the red shirt, the killer instinct. You know, the usual. Except it was going to be a mind thing for Woods to win the Players Championship Sunday because his swing is all wrong.

Turned out, though, his mind was crumbling from the start. And when the real tiger stood up Sunday, he was a Swede named Henrik Stenson. A cool, calm, killer. By far, he was the toughest guy out there.

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Stenson hit the ball long and straight. He just kept coming and coming, hitting every fairway but one, never making a bogey, throwing in six birdies, and shooting 66. He finished 12-under par, winning by four strokes. At this place, that's a blowout.

"You know, the mind always wants to play some tricks on you when you're up there," he said. "Obviously, there's somebody sitting on your shoulder there coming into the back nine, and you want to fight him off, stick to business."

Someone sitting on your shoulder, you say? What was he saying?

" 'It's looking pretty good right now. You're two ahead and it's looking pretty good,' " Stenson said. "I'm like, 'Yeah, it is, but we've got six holes to go or something like that. Stay off my back.' "

OK then. At least Stenson kept his clothes on this time. In March, Stenson had a little incident, when he stripped down to his underwear and golf glove to hit a shot from a muddy spot. He didn't want to get his clean clothes muddy.

"I'll probably take that to my grave with me," he said at the time.

Yes, he will.

"One-hundred and forty-three articles when I Googled it," he said Sunday. "It was just everywhere.

"I managed to get a few new fans, which is nice. I guess I got as much attention off that thing as from my results the last 10 years."

At 33, he already was the ninth-ranked player in the world, even though no one knows that. Among European players, he's hidden behind Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington in the spotlight. Last year, when they announced him at the first tee for the Ryder Cup, they couldn't get his name right: Stevenson. Stevens.

So will this win, in what players call the fifth major, finally escalate him past all this stuff? No way. You do not strip down to your underwear during a golf tournament, not in the days of YouTube, and live that down.



Meanwhile, Woods is now, official and undeniably, in a bad spot. His defenders will point out that he has finished in the top 10 every time, with one victory, since returning from reconstructive knee surgery. He shot 73 Sunday and finished seven strokes back, in eighth place. Another top 10!

No, Woods has lost control of his shot, particularly his driver. But not only that. He was in the sand, missing the fairways all day. And even when he would get back in the middle of the fairway, he would choose the wrong club, hit too short or too far left or, usually, right.

"I'll fix it," he said with a smile. "When you're playing a golf course like this and you don't have it, and the greens are this fast and this hard, you can shoot some pretty high numbers."

It's not just that. Woods has lost his confidence. You could see from that second shot on the first hole, when he flipped his club at the start of what was supposed to be a Tiger Run. Can he get things straightened out by the U.S. Open next month?

"Yeah," he said, "I've got plenty of time."

He said his knee does not hurt. But TV analysts are talking about him dropping his shoulders, or maybe having bulked up too much. Rumors flew a few weeks ago that he and coach Hank Haney might split, though that seems unlikely. When someone asked Woods if he might bring Haney in to look at the swing to see if they can figure something out, he said, "We know what it is. It's just a matter of me doing it.

"Sometimes, as we all know, playing the game is harder to do on the golf course. I just need to do a little better job of it."

Meanwhile, Stenson said to cut Woods some slack, that everyone has ups and downs. Stenson should know. His nickname is the Iceman, but he wasn't always this cool. He saw a sports psychologist for years, and after a hot start to his career, mostly in Europe, he lost complete control of his swing.

Not just for a short period, the way Woods has. At one point, Stenson walked off the course mid-round and seemed to be finished. He mentioned several times Sunday how proud he was of his mental state all day. And as serious as he looked on the course, he kept letting out examples of a dry wit afterward.

What will you do now? "I'm going to the Bahamas tomorrow, practice some bunker shots there for a week."

Did you consider stripping down and jumping in the lake when you won? "I'll save it for a day with a bit of drizzle."

Why haven't you played more on the U.S. tour? "I would have been stuck with you guys [reporters] the whole time."

"My mom's got a sick sense of humor," he said on TV. "Happy Mother's Day, mom."

Stenson said he rented a house on the beach for his family to be with him all week. It was the first time his father ever saw him win. So this was the best day in his career, the best round at the most important time. He still needs to win a major to be a true star, but the Players Championship is the next best thing.

It was just a matter of being a tiger. Someone had to be.