How the U.S. Women’s Open winner got her swagger back

It’s early December, six months removed from her breakthrough win at the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open, and Maja Stark is finally starting to feel her competitive fire again.

That might sound like a strange thing to say about a major champion and top 20 player in the world, but Stark’s recent form has been missing something. Despite her Open victory at Wisconsin’s Erin Hills in June, the months since have been somewhat of a struggle.

“When I won, I kept thinking, Well, I’ve just done the biggest thing I’ll probably ever do in my career,” Stark says. “For weeks, maybe months, I couldn’t stop thinking about that week. And it made me lose some motivation. I didn’t really know what to chase next.”

The 26-year-old Swede is describing post-achievement depression, something only those who’ve reached the summit are familiar with: the emotional letdown after a peak accomplishment. She’d fulfilled a dream she held since childhood. All of her dreams, in fact: Solheim Cup winner (with Team Europe in 2023); Olympian (for Sweden, at the ’24 Games in Paris); LPGA Tour winner (the ISPS Handa World Invitational in 2022); six-time winner on the European circuit; and now, major champ. All of a sudden, the résumé felt  … complete.

“It was like checking off the last big box,” she says, calling from her home in Nashville, Tenn., where she moved after her stellar run at Oklahoma State University. “I’ve experienced so many amazing things already, and I wasn’t sure what else there was after that.”

In the wake of her Erin Hills triumph, Stark missed seven of her next nine cuts. That’s when her team stepped in.

“They helped me understand what was going on,” she says. “We sat down and started creating new goals. Small ones at first.”

They weren’t lofty — example: two more top 10s before the 2025 season ended. And she didn’t always meet them. But they served their purpose.

“I needed something short term to feel stressed about,” Stark says with a laugh. “In a good way. I needed something to chase.”

That renewed sense of the chase is central to who Stark is—not just as a competitor but as a technician. Her Open win didn’t come from riding a hot streak. In 2025, she had just one top 10 prior to arriving at Erin Hills. It came from solving something.

“I had really low confidence going into that week,” she remembers. “Nothing was clicking. I was trying to find anything at all.”

That “anything” turned out to be a simple trigger. While prepping with her coach, Joe Hallett, Stark noticed something about her putting routine: She always hovers the putterhead slightly above the ground before taking it back. What if she tried the same thing with her irons?

“I thought maybe it would help me let go of control and start the swing smoother,” she says. “I had a million thoughts in my head, and I just needed one that cleared the rest out.”

There was another small key too: keeping her eyes locked on the ball longer through impact, preventing her hips from firing too early and spinning her open. The combination helped sharpen her contact. Perhaps more importantly, it helped quiet her mind.

Stark remembers the moment she sensed that something big might be brewing. It wasn’t on Thursday of that week. It wasn’t on Sunday. It was Wednesday, on the front nine of her practice round.

“I was hitting really good irons, and [Golf Channel course reporter] Karen Stupples came out to the tee where we were,” Stark says. “When someone like Karen — a past major champion — is watching, you want to show you’re good. I flushed a 4-iron into the 8th to a really scary pin and made birdie.”

It wasn’t a predictor of victory, but it was a hint, a surge of belief that showed up at exactly the right time. When the week ended with her lifting the trophy, the gravity of it became real. Calls poured in from her parents, her coach and, most memorably, fellow Swede and mentor Annika Sörenstam. “She took time out of her little Alaska trip to call me,” Stark says. “That was really cool.”

Now, months later, Stark’s perspective on that week is more grounded. She’s grateful for the win but equally grateful to feel “normal” again — to feel the healthy pressure of improvement, to care about the present rather than the past, to return to the chase. Short-term goals still guide her day-to-day, but a new long-term vision is taking shape too. The major didn’t mark the top of a mountain, it marked the beginning of another climb.

“I feel stressed about my golf again, and, for me,” she says, smiling, “that’s a really good feeling.”