Henrik Stenson breaks silence on LIV Golf relegation

Henrik Stenson has spoken of his disappointment at being relegated from the LIV Golf, but he vowed to "deal with it and move forward".

The Open champion of 2016 will get one more weekend of competition after his Majesticks team edged out Iron Heads in a one-off eliminator to qualify for the Team Championship finale.

But the Swede's future looks uncertain having failed to finish the regular individual season among the top 48 players, while team-mates Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Sam Horsfield all did just enough to survive.

In the final event of the individual season last week, Stenson gave himself a great chance to book his card for 2026 as he reached 12 under after the first two rounds.

But a one-over-par final round saw him slip to 49th place in the standings, finishing just one place behind Poulter.

"On a personal note, it was obviously a disappointing season and a disappointing Sunday for me, having done some good work on Friday and Saturday to put myself in a pretty good position," Stenson said.

"But then I had a bad start and couldn't rally back on Sunday. I made a couple of birdies coming home but not enough to make up for the start.

"Over the course of a career, you're going to have good years, you're going to have bad years. It's part of it, it's part of professional sports. You're going to have disappointment. You're going to have good times.

"On this end, I had the worst season out of the team, and I'm the one in the worst spot. You've just got to deal with it and move forward."

Stenson and Poulter suffered a 4&2 foursomes defeat to Kevin Na and Jinichiro Kozuma on Wednesday, but narrow 1up victories for Westwood and Horsfield over Danny Lee and Yubin Jang dragged the Majesticks into the weekend.

"This is the team event, so we're going to go out and try our hardest here for the next three days, Friday through Sunday, and see if we can finish it off on a brighter note than we felt we did on Sunday," Stenson added.

"Obviously it's not been a great season for us as a team, or we wouldn't have been here playing this morning. I think we have a chance to redeem ourselves in that sense."

Stenson's future remains unclear. The Swede could decide to head to the Asian Tour and try to earn his space back via the International Series. 

Alternatively, he could tee it up in LIV's version of Q-School this December. 

A return to the DP World Tour seems unlikely, given he still has outstanding fines to pay. 

Stenson is likely to harbour resentment towards his home circuit, having been stripped of the Ryder Cup captaincy following his move to LIV Golf.