Frustration
His lack of physical fitness inevitably led to a downturn in results and the beginning of a vicious circle for a player who admits he is, at times, hamstrung by his own quest for perfection. 2011 yielded just a solitary top-10 finish and, as his ranking slid, his frustration levels grew.
After a season of underachievement, Stenson admits that the need for a couple of big results led him to adopt a short-term view that did him no favours.
"When I was out of form, I was chasing my tail a little bit, trying to find something that would work for the week all the time instead of looking at the bigger picture and having a bit more patience and calmness about it," he stated.
They are words that will undoubtedly resonate with many pros who are only too aware how quickly a loss of form can translate into a career-threatening spiral in a sport where the examples are numerous and seemingly never forgotten. Just ask Ian Baker-Finch, David Duval and Nick Dougherty amongst others.
An analysis of Henrik Stenson's swing
But Stenson insists his overriding emotion was not anxiety but frustration. While his slump may have been pronounced, he claims it held no fears having been in the grip of a downturn considerably more severe a decade earlier.
Having ostensibly introduced himself a one of the continent's rising young stars after winning the B&H International at the Belfry as a 25-year-old back in 2001, he would embark on a frankly disastrous run that saw him miss the cut in 35 of his next 64 events.
With the help of Cowan, he would come out the other side and insists the bad times ultimately taught him invaluable lessons in the long run.
"I had a lot of experience from going through a bad period back in '01 to '03, the slump before that I've been through mainly since 2011 season was nowhere near as I had it back then. I think when you've gone through a rough time once before, you kind of have the experience of that and it's not going to get you as bad. I think if I would have completely thought of giving up back in 2001, I wouldn't have been sitting here, because I was playing awful for quite a long time and had to dig deep to get out of that.
"It was more frustrating this time. Back then I was really, you know, lost and confused with my game and with my swing and everything. Now it's been more down to poor playing and the frustration of dealing with that. I've done enough good results to know I can play this game at a very high level and not to be able to be anywhere near that standard is, of course, is frustrating."
But while Stenson may have had faith he would emerge from the doldrums again, he still found himself in an increasingly uncomfortable predicament as poor result followed poor result.
And so in the spring in 2012 he decided it was time for a change of mindset. Gone was the weekly tweaking on the range and, after sitting down with his team, in came what he describes as a more "holistic" approach.
Importantly that team - of which caddie Gareth Lord was an important new feature - also included a familiar face that he had jettisoned a few years previously. Sports psychologist Torsten Hansson, (who numbers fellow Swede Peter Hanson amongst his clients), had worked with Stenson since his days as a teenager on the Swedish national team.
Stenson acknowledges he dispensed with Hansson's services as he looked for newer ideas with people he now describes perhaps not entirely flatteringly as "smarter". But having reached out to rekindle the relationship, he is in no doubt about the significance of the role his old mentor has played.
The Swede practices under the watchful gaze of his long-time coach Pete Cowan
"One of the important things that I felt with my coach, Torsten, when I won him back was that was that we put more of a long term, process orientated plan in place. If we need to work on the swing with Pete, for instance, let's give it two months or three months' work on it, and sooner or later, you get the rewards," he explained.
"That was a big, big part of things to give myself more time. And mentally on the course it's just down to patience and being decisive. When you're not playing great, you're not deciding how you're going to hit the ball, where it's going to start and all these things. And when you're playing well, you're crystal clear, okay, it's a 7 iron, it's going to start at that bunker and draw three yards, and you hit the shot. There's no magic involved, it's just doing the right things, really. We're not reinventing the wheel.
"He'd (Hansson) been my coach for 12 years or something, I think, and then I had a couple of years where I saw smarter people, and for a while I was on my own. No, it's good to have somebody to kind of bounce ideas with and someone that kind of keeps you on the right track, as well."
That last phrase is telling as for all that he is portrayed as a happy-go-lucky character, Stenson has a fiery temper and makes little secret of it.
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