Joy Rider

“It was devastating to lose [the Ryder Cup],” says Poulter, as we clamber into the back of a cab for the drive to his hotel. “But on a personal note it was good to turn the controversy on its head. I went through a lot that week – as did Nick – and I had a lot to prove. But I used it to make me a better golfer.”
Having to prove himself to others is nothing new for the Orlando-based Poulter, who along with the likes of Sergio Garcia and Paul Casey, successfully plies his trade on both sides of the Atlantic. Unlike his peers, however, Poulter’s route to golfing glory was anything but conventional.
Born to working-class parents in Hitchin, a market town to the northwest of London, Poulter started playing golf after following his Dad around a local public course. Sharing a set of second-hand clubs with his brother, Danny, Poulter took to the game quickly, and by 1991, at the age of 15, he had left school and was working in the pro shop of a club near Stevenage. While the likes of Luke Donald and David Howell, Poulter’s contemporaries, were competing on the British amateur circuit, Poulter was re-gripping members’ clubs and vacuuming the pro shop floor – all for the princely sum of £3.20 (HK$40) an hour. On his days off he’d help out on a friend’s market stall, flogging £10 shell-suits and discount jeans, to earn a bit of extra cash. Today, he has his own clothing company – IJP Design (www.ianpoulterdesign.com) – which he invested over US$1 million of his own money in start-up and production costs. Whichever way you look at it, it’s been quite the turnaround. “I didn’t have the chance to play full-time amateur golf like some of the other kids because my parents couldn’t afford it,” he says.