It was a performance that will go down in both sporting and Scandinavian lore.

Had Henrik Stenson not already been aware of the history he was seeking to make on behalf of his part of the world, a reminder came from one who had tried and excruciatingly painfully failed.

Jesper Parnevik may have been something of a maverick, but he was one of the finest players in the world in the nineties and could not have come closer to winning the Open Championship in 1994, shooting four sub-70 rounds at Turnberry that year, but infamously failing to take a look at the scoreboard when it mattered most.

Clearly he has been haunted by his contribution to what has been close to an inexplicable run of failure in majors since fellow Swede Ove Sellberg became the first Scandinavian to win a European Tour event three full decades ago, closely followed by another, Anders Forsbrand, the following year.

There was, of course, the Thomas Bjorn affair, when he led the Open by two shots with three holes to play in Sandwich 13 years ago but took three in a bunker to let Ben Curtis reclaim the lead and ultimately an extremely surprising win.

Others, too, have made bold bids, Niclas Fasth at the 2001 Open at Lytham finishing second to David Duval and, much more recently, Jonas Blixt finishing tied with Jordan Spieth for second at the 2014 US Masters as Bubba Watson claimed that title for a second time, while there have been top five finishes in majors down the years for Forsbrand at that aforementioned 1994 Open, Fredrik Jacobsen at the 2003 US Open, Robert Karlsson at the 2011 USPGA, Peter Hanson at the 2012 US Masters and Carl Petterson at that year’s USPGA.

All in all it has felt all the more inevitable in recent years and Parnevik was quickly onto social media last night, pictured with beer in hand with the message “All of Sweden says congrats and CHEERS” and it was not his first message of the weekend directed at Stenson. They were well received.

“I feel very privileged to be the one to hold this trophy,” said the 40-year-old who has himself come close on several occasions, finishing in the top five at majors on three occasions and in the top three at the Open on three previous occasions, including when he was runner-up to Phil Mickelson three years ago.

“There's been many great players from my country tried in past years and decades and there's been a couple of really close calls. Jesper in particular twice. So he sent me a message, ‘Go out and finish what I didn't manage to finish,’ and I'm really proud to have done that.”

Admitting, good-naturedly, that he has found slightly irksome the repeated interrogation regarding that lack of Scandinavian success in majors he made a highly valid point that golf, which seems to spawn an endless quest to identify the finest player never to have won a major, is a sport that provides no shortage of negative angles in terms of measuring failure.

“We had it back when Padraig (Harrington) won at Carnoustie, ‘When are we going to have a European major winner?’ Then he managed to do that and then there's always another question, but it’s been there a long time,” Stenson observed.

There was, then, a sense that he has broken down a barrier on behalf of more than just himself.

“It's going to be massive for golf in Sweden,” he observed.

As to his own prospects in terms of building on this success the 40-year-old expressed confidence that there is more to come.

“We're only just getting started, aren't we? You never know once you open the floodgates what might happen,” he said.

In that regard it was one for the oldies, too and, particularly in terms of future Open Championships, Stenson was quick to identify a role model whom he had just matched in winning a glorious duel on the Ayrshire links.

“We saw Tom Watson with his remarkable performance in 2009 at Turnberry, so even a few guys that are a little bit older than I am have had success at the majors and at The Open Championship,” he noted.

“Experience definitely plays a big part of it.”