He has been a proud member of the European team for the past decade but Henrik Stenson is happy to do things the American way if that is what it takes to claim a first major championship win this weekend.

The Swede has made his living on the PGA Tour in the USA for the past nine years having played on the European team that beat the Americans in the Ryder Cup at The K Club the previous year, a feat he repeated two years ago at Gleneagles.

However this year’s sole major in Europe is being played on a course at which Americans have excelled, the last six winners of Open Championships at Royal Troon hailing from the other side of the Atlantic – Arnold Palmer, Tom Weiskopf, Tom Watson, Mark Calcavecchia, Justin Leonard and Todd Hamilton – and rather than see that as ominous from his perspective Stenson preferred to draw the conclusion that he has been honing his game in the right place.

“I play a lot of golf in America, so that's good,” he observed, drily.

That applies to all of the leading European contenders of course, but it seems unlikely that any of those taking part will struggle to cope since recent weather conditions mean the course is nothing like as linksy as it can be, with the risk of quirky bounces minimised, reducing its natural defences.

“It's fairly soft,” Stenson observed.

“I guess it's had its fair share of rain in the last couple of weeks and it’s a fairly short front nine when the wind is in the prevailing direction.”

To that extent it will be very much the standard challenge on this strip of land with those seeking to set the pace needing to pick up shots on the early holes, ahead of the notorious ‘Postage Stamp’ eighth hole, the shortest hole in championship golf which retains its card-wrecking potential.

The ninth represents a further scoring opportunity before players turn for home and things get tougher.

“It's downwind off the right going out. Short par-4s, and then that's where you need to make your scores,” Stenson confirmed.

“That way when you hit the turn, you want to hang on a little bit. It's definitely harder to make up the score in the back nine. So it's important to be on from the first hole and try to give yourself as many good birdie chances as you can for those front nine.”

Having hit a vein of form in recent weeks Stenson, who first played in the Open in 2005, a year after it was last hosted in Troon, is confident he can perform well over this terrain.

“I think it's a course that definitely can fit if I play well, which I have to at any golf tournament, never mind the majors,” he said.

“You've got to play some really solid golf to be up there. Given how difficult the back nine can play, I think it's something that suits me pretty good.

“I'd say Muirfield was my favourite (on the Open rota) and Birkdale. Outside those this would be pretty close to be there on Birkdale grounds, so I'm looking forward to the week and I might be able to answer that better once we've played the four competitive rounds as well.”

As to the prospect of gaining any sort of psychological advantage over the Americans should their stranglehold at this venue be ended ahead of this year’s Ryder Cup, he suggested that in a season that has already seen England’s Danny Willett become the first European to win a green jacket at the US Masters since 1999 it could be useful to serve notice of individual form.

“I don't know if it makes a difference. I think any player wants to win, of course, and the Europeans want to win as badly as the Americans, whether it be a Ryder Cup year or not, but, yeah, potentially it might be a little bit of an advantage if we were to have a lot of European major champions in the Ryder Cup year,” said Stenson.

“Certainly those players would come into the Ryder Cup with a little bit more confidence and that wouldn't be a bad thing for the European team, of course.”