Fire still burning bright for Stenson and Garcia - Articles

Henrik Stenson and Sergio Garcia are looking to keep the flag flying for the over 40s when they tee it up at the 2020 Omega Dubai Desert Classic .

Lee Westwood won last week's Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship presented by EGA at the age of 46 and he is the latest player to prove that in golf, age is just a number.

Stenson was 40 when he won The Open Championship and, now 43, won on the US PGA Tour in December.

The Swede arrives in the Middle East from Singapore where 41-year-old Matt Kuchar was a winner and Stenson insists he has plenty more miles left on the clock at the top of the game.

"The golf course doesn't know if you're 20, 30 or 40 when you're teeing it up, right?," he said.

"It's all about bringing as good a game as you can do and we know experience is a good part in this game to have, to have played it in different conditions over the years and different courses and all the rest.

"At times we can't really compete with the longest players in the game but we can compete with other factors and, of course, that's something we try to do as good as we can.

"We certainly keep the dreams alive of winning golf tournaments.

"I don't know if it's down to possibly swing, if your swing is not taking too much toll on your body and not wearing your back down too much, you probably can keep it going.

"I've spent a lot of time on the physical side the last ten years to try and buy myself some extra time and for recovery and practice and everything else."

Garcia only turned 40 earlier this month so is still looking for a first win of his fifth decade but the Spaniard is confident he can take on the young guns.

"We know it's not easy as you keep adding on numbers to your ID but we go out there and we practise hard and we try to stay fit and play the best we can," he said.

"We believe in ourselves, we believe that we're good enough. I feel like we show it pretty much week-in, week-out.

"It gets tougher every year because there's a lot of good youngsters coming out both in Europe and on the PGA Tour but we can still go out there and perform well.

"We are competitors and we love to compete and challenge ourselves and that's what we try to do."

Stenson and Garcia are both former winners of this event, with Garcia lifting the trophy in 2017 , ten years after Stenson's triumph .

Stenson has made his home in Dubai for many years and he admits there are few places he knows better than Emirates Golf Club.

"It's great to be back and be in a very familiar environment," he said. "I know the golf course very well, I've played it probably as much as any golf course that we play on Tour and it's possibly one of the ones I've played the most out of all the golf courses in the world.

"I think at this stage I know where to be and not to be, it's a question of if I can hit it where I want to be and not the other way around."

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