Maja Stark’s life changed drastically last summer. Winning a major championship—particularly the U.S. Women’s Open—does that to a professional golfer.

If you had asked Stark in the moment, it was a dream-come-true kind of victory. Every little girl, no matter where they’re from, yearns for that opportunity, hoping to one day be the one with the gold medal around her neck, hoisting the Harton S. Semple trophy. For Stark, it was a life-affirming shock.

“You always kind of know that it's possible, but there are so many good golfers on this Tour. I don't think I would be able to do it this week,” said Stark in her winning press conference at Erin Hills last year, eyes still wide in jubilant disbelief.

But golf is a fickle mistress. A string of missed cuts and poor finishes followed Stark’s win in Wisconsin, a drop off that wasn’t easily explained, least of all by the Swede herself. She switched caddies and started making changes in an attempt to force her game to round into form. The efforts were futile.

At a press conference ahead of the Hanwha LIFEPLUS International Crown in October, Stark talked about her mentality after her triumph at the U.S. Women’s Open, revealing just how tough it had gotten to deal with the internal noise that was percolating after she achieved one of the biggest goals she’d set for her LPGA Tour career.

“It was a little bit of a struggle afterwards because it's something that I'd been looking forward to for so long, thinking about it for so long, and the U.S. Open is my favorite one,” Stark said in Korea. “I had a lot of comfort afterwards, but it's probably been too comfortable because I've thought, you have your Tour card for five years, and I reached the goal that I wanted to reach, which is just win the U.S. Open.

“It was a bit of a struggle for me, and I feel like it took a few months to really come back and gain the motivation back that I felt before in my career.”

In response to the cacophony of doubts that were swirling, Stark ramped up the work she was doing with a sports psychologist to combat the mental demons that were rearing their ugly heads, efforts that settled her a bit as the 2025 season wound down. But it was still a challenge to ignore the negative thoughts that would creep in at times. Even worse were the negative remarks from others.

“You get comments and stuff saying, ‘What's happened? You just won a major? Why do you suck all of a sudden?’ That does take some energy, and it makes you focus on the wrong things,” Stark explained when asked about those efforts following her first round at the 2026 Chevron Championship. “Then I got even more stressed and anxious. I guess I felt like everything was good that week and then it was like, what do I have to do to get back to that? Then I was stuck in the past for a long time. I really didn't like that.”

It’s been a fairly ho-hum start to 2026 for the Swede in the lead up to the LPGA’s first major tournament in Houston, Texas, but through round one at the Championship’s new venue, Memorial Park Golf Course, a steady Stark posted a 69, despite making bogey on the first hole, what’s just the second sub-70 score she’s ever shot on Thursday at a major.

“I think a lot of it has to do with getting older because sometimes it feels like it's the end of the world to make a bogey, especially in a major, especially starting with it,” said Stark when asked about when she learned how to recover from a lackluster start. “But now, it's just like, well, I made bogey on my opening hole so many times before, and it doesn't have to dictate the whole round.”

And it didn’t. Stark made four birdies on the front nine to erase all memory of that opening bogey and then parred every hole on the back to polish off a 69 that currently has her sitting inside the top 10 early at Memorial Park Golf Course.

The Swede had a Texas-sized grin on her face as she met with the media, and when asked what’s settled down her anxiety since that career-defining moment last June, Stark got unashamedly candid.

“I had a lot of anxiety after the U.S. Open and switching caddies, too, after the summer and then it just felt like I didn't know what I was doing anymore,” Stark shared. “I didn't feel comfortable at all on the course, so ended up getting a lot of professional help with the mental stuff. Now, I feel like I'm back. I have a mental coach, sports psych, therapist, like I got a lot of people working to help me practice. I'm really grateful for them.

“I’ve been working on it for a long time but finally feels like it's not a big problem anymore, and I know how to handle the anxiety out there.”

And even though Stark has had to do a substantial amount of work on herself—both physically and mentally, on and off the golf course—getting Hadley Trenfield, who had carried her bag for much of her career up to the point of the pair’s split, to caddie for her once again was another choice that Stark thinks has made a big difference when it comes to her stability on the golf course.

“It was nice to go back to my old caddie that I've been working with for a few years,” said Stark. “He knew that I could play well, so he wasn't stressed at all about my game. Then it felt like after Korea, got into it a little bit more, and we're just so comfortable with each other, so that's also a huge help.”

While no one dons a bath robe until Sunday afternoon at The Chevron Championship, this settled energy from Stark lends itself to the magnitude of a major moment. She knows the exact flavor of unbothered one has to be to hoist a trophy in one of the biggest events of the year.

And if she can keep plugging away like she did on Thursday in Houston, Maja Stark just might find herself at the center of another major championship storm, demons put to bed and trophy in hand.

Maja Stark's Steady Start at The Chevron Championship Sign of Mental Progress

Related Articles