“My dad was a pretty decent golfer and we fell in love with golf at an early age, and I also fell in love with football.”
Until he was about 15, Poulter played a lot more football than golf. He was the man up front sniffing glory at every opportunity until he developed asthma and dropped back to centre-half.
Even so, he still made sure he took all the free-kicks and corners. “I had this competitive spirit in me,” Poulter recalls. “I detested losing. I wasn’t the best sportsman at school but I did most sports.
“I played cricket, basketball, pole-vaulting. I had a go at everything because I just really enjoyed sport, the competitive spirit of it and what a difference it made to me.
“Sitting in a classroom putting my head in a geography book, to be honest, really wasn’t that interesting to me. But going out on an athletics field doing 100m hurdles or throwing a discus, that to me was a challenge.
“It was no surprise to me that I came through to do a sport – even though it wasn’t football, my first love.”
Poulter wanted to play for Arsenal and had trials for north London rivals Tottenham, but it didn’t work out. By this time the golf bug had struck and at the relatively late age of 15 he decided his future lay in the game.
“I started working in a golf shop at Chesfield Downs, external [in Stevenage]. I was playing off a four handicap so I really wasn’t much cop at that time. I won my club championship and that was really about it to be honest with you,” Poulter said.
His real talent was a firm work ethic and the enthusiastic technique to earn commission on sales of golf equipment. Eventually he became an assistant pro.
“At that stage I always had the dream to become a golf professional,” he says. “You could be an assistant off a four handicap, so I signed my handicap certificate card and sent it off to the PGA.”
However, self-certification, enterprising as it is, is not the prescribed method so now he had to back up his claim that he was good enough to be a PGA pro.
“I passed my playability test in the first four events, opening up with rounds of 66 and 66,” he says.
He was on his way, with a self-belief that has never left a player who now boasts a dozen titles worldwide including two World Golf Championships.
