Relaxed Poulter is boxing clever

If you want to know exactly what the most controversial figure in this year's Ryder Cup brings to Europe's party, here was as good a place as any to start. In the charm offensive which now habitually precedes the event which starts on Friday, Poulter has appeared to be just about the visitors' best weapon in winning over the locals.

While the Americans have been chucking lapel badges into the galleries, the Europeans have been throwing them Poulter, who's had them eating out of his hands with his jokes, showmanship and banter about everything from his idiosyncratic dress sense to Arsenal's chances in Kiev tonight.
He may have had to tone down his Austin Powers fashion tastes here but, with his gum-chewing, omnipresent shades and spiky barnet poking atop his visor, his individualistic streak still stands out as if he were a punk at a rotary club meeting. Yet the first impressions, according to his colleagues, is that he's already proving himself a real team player.

This is significant because Poulter has been singled out as the one striking symbol of uncertainty — and potential division — in Nick Faldo's dozen, perceived from the outside as the cocky bloke who didn't do all he could to make the team and the out-of-form show-off who undeservedly nicked the wild card place which by rights belonged to the beloved and proven Ryder Cup star Darren Clarke.

From the moment when Faldo revealed that he let the 32 year-old know of his selection with the declaration "Raquel, get your coat — you're going to the Ryder Cup", the image was created, unfairly or otherwise, of an English golfing mafia takeover, complete with laddish in-joke nicknames, playing fast and loose with the old famed pan-European team spirit.

Yet Faldo has been at pains here to insist he is the guardian, not the potential destroyer, of that fabled solidarity and chemistry. "I am very confident I won't damage the team," he declared with indignation when it was suggested that his ego might be the real impediment to an unprecedented fourth consecutive European win.
"I've got a dozen characters in the squad — I'm the quiet one in the team room right now." Poults', it hardly needs saying, is not a quiet one.

The relaxed and jokey version we've been watching on the course here — and playing pretty well considering just before the team was announced he said he was "spent and exhausted" by the controversy surrounding the selection debate — is apparently reflected in the bloke who's making his team-mates chuckle off the course too.
"He's outgoing and has quite a lot to say. He's pretty good in the team room as far as telling a few jokes and stuff like that," smiled Lee Westwood, whose great pal Clarke previously fulfilled the same role. Justin Rose reckoned he was "a lovely character with remarkable self-belief".

That self-belief will never have been more sorely tested than here, though. For Poulter is Faldo's biggest gamble, the man who won the captain's vote even though he didn't even bother to return to Europe for the final event to try to gain automatic qualification.

If he flops and Europe lose then, in the inevitable scapegoat hunt which would follow, that decision could return to haunt him.
Yet when asked yesterday what he looked for in a Ryder Cup player, Faldo replied "a big heart, strong in mind, and strong in battle" and everything persuades him after watching Poulter's stirring runner's-up performance at the Birkdale Open — even if it was his only top 10 finish since January — that his young pal is blessed with all three qualities.

Of course, Clarke is missed here, just as the absence of Colin Montgomerie leaves huge shoes to be filled but Sergio Garcia, who along with Westwood is now the obvious inspiration, shrugs "you have to move on" and believes the replacements in Poulter and co are "great guys" and "unbelievable players".

"I'm not going to kick my chest out and say I'm the leader of this team'," said Garcia.
"There are 12 leaders on the team and the important thing is we are all together." And that includes the teacher and his pet in the pink boxer shorts.