Always a flamboyant and cocky presence, Ian Poulter now has the focus to make the Masters title a realistic target
At one point he was the daft laddie in pink trousers who talked too much and won too little. Now everything, except of course the pink bit, has changed for Ian James Poulter. By becoming the first Englishman to win a World Golf Championship event, in Arizona last Sunday, the previously self-publicising chap from Woburn has entered a new phase of his pro golfer’s life and one that may properly be labelled “serious”.
Ranked No5 in the world – and bracketed by his fellow Englishmen Lee Westwood and Paul Casey in the world top 10 – Poulter is continuing to do what he has done since he was a teenage dreamer on the golf course by serially overachieving. The scary thing for his rivals is that Poulter may well not have finished this over-achieving shtick that has earned him millions. Right now it is not about “me and Tiger” as he prophesied to a cacophony of catcalls not so long ago, but actually only about him. He will be loving this thought as he tweets incessantly to a listed 977,580 Twitter followers.
Just how high Poulter’s star has risen was shown in the past few days when he was paired with the local hero Phil Mickelson for the opening rounds of the Phoenix Open. In Woods’s absence, pulling Mickelson in the draw means that the PGA Tour reckons you are worthy of marquee status. Mind you, Poulter has been starring in his own marquee show ever since he turned professional as a teenager, at which point he was playing off four, which means there was not a half-decent golf club in the land that did not boast an amateur playing off a lower handicap.
Lee Scarbrow was the club pro who decided to give this uppity youngster a chance. He is still not sure why. Scarbrow, now working at the John O’Gaunt club just off the A1 in Bedfordshire and ranked among the top 25 coaches in the country, clearly has an affection for his former, occasionally unreliable, assistant.
“Yeah, I interviewed Ian for the job. He was a cocky young so-and-so but he just had something about him so I decided to take a chance. His timekeeping was dreadful from the start but once he got to work he was terrific. It might sound daft but he was world-class at folding shirts and sweaters and displaying them well in the shop and he could sell them, too. His mum had been manageress at a local Dorothy Perkins and she’d obviously taught him something about retail. He always was a hard worker – at least once he actually got to work he was.
“Right from the start he knew he wanted to be a touring pro. I remember him playing in his first pro event, an East Region PGA 36-hole tournament. The day before he told us all he was going to win it. I thought: ‘Yeah, right Ian,’ but, you know what, he did just that. It was impressive that he shot 66-66 to win but what was more impressive was that he had a massive asthma attack after that first round, spent the night in hospital and still got up to do the business the next day.”
The relevance of this first victory sprang to Poulter’s mind when he talked this week. “That was important,” he said. “I kind of figured out that two days’ work for £1,000 sure beat working in a shop for six weeks for the same money back then. My maths was good enough to work that out and I realised I needed to get out of the shop more.”
What he has not figured out yet is quite why this generation of Englishmen is doing so well. Apart from Westwood, Casey and himself in the top 10, there is Ross Fisher at 21, Luke Donald at 23 and Oliver Fisher at 38. Compared to tennis – and that, surely, is the valid comparison here – English golf is currently enjoying unprecedented global success. Yet it is not being celebrated enough.
“I’m really not sure why it’s happened,” Poulter says. “I just think that there has been a lot of great talent in England for a long time and so it’s really nice to see guys actually deliver on the golf course. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. It still hasn’t happened for a long time for an Englishman to win a major [Nick Faldo at the 1996 Masters was the last], so the guys at four, five and six in the rankings should now step up to the plate and hopefully deliver on that. But it’s brilliant, isn’t it, that we’re all up there and that we’re all at an age when we’d like to think we’re entering our prime as players.”
George O’Grady, the chief executive of the European Tour and a man who was delighted this week to receive Poulter’s entry for his flagship PGA Championship at Wentworth, has his own theory on why these are the best of times for English golf. “It’s a cyclical generation thing, I’m sure of it,” he says. “There is always the talent around but once one of them starts winning serious titles then a few others up their own games. Plus there has been a Tiger effect so that players are fitter and more focused than probably ever before.”
Scarbrow, too, has an idea. He thinks the American college system – previously credited with creating a regiment of primed young stars – is too competitive now. “I suspect that a lot of coaches at American colleges are too afraid to alter the swings of a lot of those young college players. That often means a golfer stepping back for a bit until he gets used to the changes and the coaches are afraid for their jobs if they have a poor season.
“Over here, meanwhile, the English Golf Union have really improved the way they handle our top amateurs and my own Professional Golfers’ Association has helped to improve hugely the skills of coaches at golf clubs. So our guys now have had really good fundamentals drummed into them and I’m not so sure that is the case in the States. Look at Ryan Moore [the outstanding American amateur who has failed to live up to expectations since turning pro four years ago], who was terrific as an amateur but who has a swing like a mad axeman that simply won’t work consistently in the pro game.”
Not that Scarbrow thinks his former assistant is yet the finished article. “No, I’d like to see him use longer clubs. He is a tall guy and he could do to stand taller to the ball. I think this is why he tends to do well on the bigger stages. It’s the peacock effect … he loves all that attention stuff, the cameras and the crowds, and so he struts a bit, stands taller and hits the ball better.”
Has he told him? “Yes I have but, you know, Ian is very much his own man. He believes in himself more than any other player I’ve ever known and as he is now No5 in the world who’s to say he is wrong? He just loves a challenge and always backs himself to meet it. He was born with this self-confidence and it’s no coincidence that when Justin Rose was rooming with him Justin began to play better because it rubbed off. Look at them together on a practice ground and you’d probably pick Justin out as a better athlete with better technique but put them three holes from home with a small lead and you should back Ian every time. You know, his flashy clothes and his cars and all that bravado disguise sometimes the real Ian Poulter. I know for a fact that if you get him on his own somewhere then what you find is a totally grounded lad. He is, believe me, a top man.”
The next great challenge for this working-class hero is, of course, the Masters. He says he is preparing for Augusta big-time, intending to take off the two weeks immediately before the year’s first major because “I play better when I am fresh”. It is worth trying. Augusta National offers exactly the sort of catwalk arena that he loves and, since mak
ing his debut there in 2004, he has never finished lower than 33rd, with a high return of 13th.
Meanwhile, he is as thrilled as anyone at the resurgence of English golf. As he made his way to the tee in Arizona last Sunday for the final against his pal Casey, a British journalist confessed he was confused as to who he should support. Poulter looked at him briefly and then said: “That’s easy, mate, it’s INGER-LAND.”
Bill Elliott
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