Stenson was one of the few players, along with countryman Robert Karlsson and Sergio Garcia, who did not play on the course during the Tuesday practice day.  Instead both of the Swedes had intense and structured practice sessions on the range in close consultation with their caddies.

Stenson's practice session of around 2 hours had the sole aim of determining exactly how far every club was travelling in the heat and high-altitude at Sun City.  Stenson had played the tournament the previous 2 years and had done pretty well, and so could have just relied on his notes from last year or simply added 10% to his distances as many players do.  The attention to detail that Stenson and caddie Fanny Sunesson showed, paid great dividend as any approach shots that were slightly out in distance control were severely punished by the deep kikuyu grass around the clover-leaf shaped greens.

Stenson provided a classic case of playing to his strengths while negating his weakness.  This year his driving accuracy ranking has been 119th on the European Tour (59.2%) and 140th on the PGA Tour (60.11%).  While the driving accuracy stat is not always the most important barometer for success on tour, around the Gary Player CC hitting the fairways is essential to good scoring.

While Stenson is not the most accurate, he is certainly one of the most powerful. He took advantage of this strength of his game by choosing to take 3-wood off the vast majority of tees.  Even when his faithful club broke in the final round he reverted to 4-wood and 2 iron to maintain his strategy of keeping the ball in play.