When a golfer says ‘honey, I’m just popping out’ you would tend to assume that he’s nipping down to the range to clatter away with a bucket of balls and work on sharpening up those dinky ones from 90 yards ahead of the club championship. Either that, or he’s just going straight to the pub round the corner.
As a flash harry with five Ferraris in his driveway, Ian Poulter doesn’t do hum-drum ‘popping out’ jobs though. Yesterday, he hopped on a jet in a last-gasp, 9,000 mile dash from his Florida base to Hong Kong to maintain his European Tour membership and remain eligible for next year’s Ryder Cup.
It all sounds unnecessarily frantic and his eye-brow raising excursion will leave many wondering how a player of his stature could get himself in such a fevered, and potentially embarrassing, fankle.
Poulter dropped out of the world’s top 50 at the weekend and was therefore ineligible for the forthcoming WGC-HSBC Champions event in China. That would mean he would be unable to fulfil the 13 event minimum requirement for European Tour membership. And if you’re not a European Tour member, then you can’t play in the Ryder Cup and Poulter, a talismanic figure in the biennial battle, wouldn’t want that, even if his performances of late have not helped his cause on that particular front.
Entries for this week’s UBS Hong Kong Open, the final regular event of the European Tour season, closed a fortnight ago and Poulter didn’t submit one. The only option available to him was an invitation from the tournament sponsors. Step forward – or rather step aside – Rich Beem, the former US PGA champion who now works as an analyst for Sky Sports. The American, who was already on site in Hong Kong, gave up his own invitation to play and handed it over to Poulter, thus allowing the Englishman into the field at the last minute. Poulter was not expected to arrive in Hong Kong until tonight but he has already offered Beem some kind of reward for his generosity. “Where would you like me to take you for dinner?" scribbled Poulter on his social media site. Apparently, the Grand Hyatt Steakhouse in downtown Hong Kong does a tasty Kumamoto filet mignon for $1,550. Beem might just fancy the starter and the pudding too.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here