Confidence Man

Fun-loving Ian Poulter is a long way from his days folding shirts at Family Golf Centre in his hometown of Hitchin, England. (Nathaniel Welch)

Poulter likes to enjoy his “toys,” which include several sportscars. (Bob Croslin)

Some wonder if Poulter is serious enough about his game to win a major championship. (Nathaniel Welch)

No more than 48 hours after “handing away” a seemingly sure victory in the Honda Classic two weeks ago, Ian Poulter posted a picture to his more than 1,836,000 Twitter followers. The accompanying comment read: “Got the toys out to breath [sic]. Doesn’t happen often enough.”

The playthings in question were his five Ferraris. Parked neatly in a row outside the palatial Orlando mansion Poulter and his family call home, the top-of-the-range automobiles not so subtly flaunt the tangible success achieved by this former assistant pro who once earned as little as £3.20 an hour performing menial tasks at the Family Golf Centre in his hometown of Hitchin, just north of London.

No one in golf more zealously promotes his brand, a fact that makes Poulter one of the game’s most polarizing figures. Even in his native England, and despite the eye-popping, five-straight-birdie heroics that famously turned the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah in Europe’s favor, this Peter Pan-like 39-year-old provokes a wide range of opinions. To those less enamored by brash verbiage or obvious displays of material wealth, Poulter is “all mouth and trousers,” a preening popinjay all but devoid of self-awareness. To his many fans he is the archetypal working-class hero, a worthy example to every aspirant of a better life.

“I want to be a new man every day,” says Poulter, who—surprise—has his own clothing line. “When I put on brand-new trousers and a new shirt, I feel like a million dollars. If you feel good about yourself then you’ve got a better chance to be successful.”

At the Valspar Championship, where he finished a credible T-24, Poulter arranged with the tournament sponsor to wear his IJP Design outfits in the paint company’s colors. For his third round, for example, he tweeted he was wearing “spirit blue with a splash of tangy dill.” Unfortunately, the ensuing 75—inflamed by a double bogey after he rinsed an iron shot on the par-3 13th with the same kind of flared miss that plagued him at Honda—took him out of contention. Afterward, Poulter vented with a tweet about “drunken fans” distracting him, with the hashtag: “#ifyoucanthandledrinkwhybother.”

Adore or abhor him, there is much to admire in the Ryder Cup hero whose stroke is matched only by his strut. Forever a man apart, Poulter’s path to prominence has been circuitous compared to many of his contemporaries. As the likes of Luke Donald, Justin Rose and Paul Casey moved seamlessly and successfully through the amateur ranks, their compatriot was first busy selling men’s fashions at an outdoor Sunday market, then tees, balls and confectionery in the pro shop at the Leighton Buzzard Golf Club.

Not many saw a future for Poulter as a player. Only himself. Hauled before an English PGA committee for some long-forgotten minor misdemeanor, the young upstart dismissed any and all disapproval of his actions with the news that “it doesn’t matter; I’m going to be a tour pro anyway.” Oh, how they laughed.

Not anymore. Without any noticeable physical or technical advantage, Poulter has built a formidable career. On his résumé are two World Golf Championships, 10 additional European Tour victories and one each in Japan and Australia. Throw in five Ryder Cup appearances (only one in a losing cause), and this supposed no-hoper has much to be proud of. He has backed up the title of his recent autobiography, No Limits.

Throughout all of the above, however, two big questions have dogged Poulter:

1) Is he really the good guy many profess him to be, or is he, in British parlance, “a bit of a plonker”?

2) Just how good of a player is he?

As for the first, strong cases can be made either way. No doubt over the years, Poulter irritated fellow players. In Hank Haney’s book, The Big Miss, Tiger Woods’ former swing coach details how Poulter annoyed the 14-time major champ by hitching an unpaid ride home to Orlando on his private plane.

Former British Open champion Paul Lawrie was similarly ticked off by Poulter’s overly animated celebration (“his fist-pumping and shouting and bawling was disrespectful to me as an opponent”) on the final green as Poulter won the 1992 Italian Open, mere minutes after Lawrie had driven out-of-bounds on the same hole to all but give the title to his playing partner.

And let’s not even get into the nude pose Poulter effected, with a strategically placed golf bag, on the cover of Golf World (in the United Kingdom) as he proclaimed the future of golf as “Tiger and me.”

As a golfer, Poulter employs a two-plane swing that gives his action an old-fashioned, ’70s look. He stands upright to the ball, tall and proud, and has to swing his arms above his body turn to get his club on a workable swing plane.

“Sometimes Ian’s change of direction gets a bit fast,” points out leading swing coach Denis Pugh, who works with former Ryder Cup players Ross Fisher and Francesco Molinari. “That’s when he tends to mis-hit the ball. But he knows what he is doing. He knows where the bad shots come from. But he’s human, so he hits a few of them.”

Poulter compensates for ball-striking inconsistency with inordinate grit and, yes, cockiness. His tendency to talk with anyone—especially about himself —is designed to irritate at times. But it has also garnered respect, because when it has really mattered on the golf course, despite his collapse at Honda, Poulter has become one of golf’s most reliable “go-to” guys.

“We saw the best of Ian at Medinah, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him,” Pugh says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he won a major. In 2008 at Royal Birkdale he stood over a 15-foot putt he felt was to win the Open or at least get into a playoff, and he holed it. He was ultimately mistaken, but that sort of thing is typical of Ian. Whatever it is you need inside to be a winner, he has it.”

Still, for all of Pugh’s enthusiasm as to Poulter’s future prospects, more than two years have passed since he last won a golf tournament. Given his near middle-age, the long-term battle he continues to wage with his full-swing technique and the fact that he has never been one of the longer hitters on any tour, there is legitimate doubt about his ability to hang around the upper echelons of the World Ranking, where he ranks 32nd after the Valspar Championship. Not that we are likely to hear or see anything even remotely negative from the man himself.

“A lot of players fake self-belief because that’s what they have been told to do by sport psychologists,” Pugh says. “Ian doesn’t, though. He doesn’t need any of that stuff. He already believes in himself, more than any player I have ever worked with. It’s no exaggeration to say most psychologists would learn more in an hour with Ian Poulter than Ian Poulter would learn in that same hour with a psychologist.

“I enjoy how Ian goes about his business. He’s an individual. Even when he does or says something I think is nothing short of outrageous, I’m a fan. With Ian, you take all or nothing. As he says, it’s ‘Go big or go home.’ ”

Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine times when Poulter looks in the rear-view mirrors of his Ferraris and sees Hitchin.