We all want golf back but I am more worried about my son’s health
Ryder Cup star Ian Poulter
IN the last 50 days, Ian Poulter says he has barely left his home in the gated compound of Lake Nona in Orlando. His is a gilded cage — he knows that — and, partly because of concerns about his eight-year-old son, Joshua, Poulter and his family have been scrupulously careful to follow advice about staying home and saving lives.
Even though he lives next to a golf course that has been allowed to remain open through the lockdown, European golf ’s favourite Ryder Cup talisman has not set foot on a tee, on a green or on a fairway since he shot a two-under 70 in the first round of The Players’ Championship i n Florida on March 12. The tournament was abandoned after the first day and Poulter has not hit a ball since.
Instead, he has worked on his fitness, relished the extra time with his wife, Katie, and four children and made plans to raise money for t he fight against Covid- 19 by auctioning off swathes of his lovingly curated collection of golf memorabilia next Saturday. Some will say he should have spent the time practising. ‘It is very hard to practise when there is nothing to practise for,’ he says.
AS the US PGA step up plans to return after the coronavirus crisis, at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas on June 11, Pou lt er will start to practise this week and seek further reassurances from the game’s authorities that he will not be risking his family’s health by once again playing the sport he loves.
‘From a playing perspective, I’m confident that my golf game will be where it needs to be if we start in Texas in the second week of June,’ says Poulter. ‘Where we are from a standpoint of feeling comfortable is another issue.
‘Until I see the final protocol of home testing before you leave for the event and then testing at a venue before you are even allowed into the golf course and then how testing is going to happen during the week of the event, until we see a formalised black and white plan of that, it is going to be difficult.
‘They are working hard to think of everything and give us all the options about what is planned in each state from a safety standpoint. There is so much the tour is doing behind the scenes to make this work, I’m hopeful they can get it done and, if they can do it in the way they have explained it to me, I’m hopeful they can get it started on that given date in Texas. The safety of my family is something I’m going to have look at. If we are going to start, does that mean we start and I don’t come home for the first four weeks while I play the back-to-back tournaments that are scheduled at the moment and see how that goes?
‘Joshua is our one who I would be most concerned about in the family. He has had chronic pneumonia twice from the black mould we had in our house. He has had a test for coronavirus because he was poorly eight weeks ago and we got him a test and it showed he has not had it, which is a worry.
‘ I would have been a lot more comfortable i f he had had it because, even though it’s not proven yet, that may have given him some form of immunity. Because he hasn’t had it, I’m going to have to be super careful.
‘We’d be super careful anyway because that’s the responsible thing to do but it’s an added reason why we have stayed away from everyone for the last 50 days or more. I will not leave the gates of Lake Nona until it is time for me to go and play.’
Like other sports, golf is intending that i ts first forays back i nto competition will be behind closed doors. That has prompted many to question whether it would be worth staging the Ryder Cup, which is still scheduled to take place at Whistling Straits at the end of September, because so much of its character is intertwined with interaction with fans.
Poulter, 44, who is known for feeding off his relationship with supporters — both European and American — during the competition, is still hoping that developments may mean it is possible for supporters to attend and that he can play himself into contention for a place but he is resigned to the first events of the US PGA Tour being played without spectators.
‘We are going to get used to having no fans when we first go back. It’s not something that would be totally foreign to us. Say you have made the cut on the mark and you tee off at 6.58am on a Saturday morning at an Open Championship or a US Open, no one is going to be there to watch you play so you’re not really in a great mood anyway.
‘It is going to be a mindset change more than anything else and you are going to have to get used to the lack of adrenaline that is going through your body when you are in contention in that scenario. There is not going to be as much adrenaline rush as you would have if you have fans watching.
‘As far as the Ryder Cup goes, I see everyone’s view. I understand if someone says they don’t want to play with no fans. I understand people saying it should be postponed. I understand the state saying spectators may be allowed to watch by then. I would love to play it with fans, that goes without saying. That’s how we know the R Ryder Cup. To think of it any other way would feel strange. When you have teams and fans from both sides that contribute so much to making it a brilliant atmosphere, it would be a strange feeling not to have them there.’
Poulter, an avid Arsenal fan and Formula One aficionado, is missing sport as a viewer as well as a c competitor but, helped by sponsor Aurae Lifestyle, he has channelled some of his energies into supporting those fighting the coronavirus.
Katie was a nurse training at Add en brooke’ s Hospital in Cambridge when they first met and they have organised deliveries of food parcels to hospitals in Orlando, New York and London.
POULTER is hoping that his auction later this week will raise tens of thousands of pounds for the NHS in the UK and health services in the States. He has cherished every memento of his time in golf and has catalogued them lovingly and neatly, so perhaps it should not be a surprise that there will be 235 pairs of signed golf shoes in the auction. As well as hats, shirts and gloves.
‘I’m a bit OCD,’ he says. ‘And I have always hated to throw stuff away. I’m a big hoarder, so it’ll be hard to let most of it go. But I’m hoping it will let golf lovers own a piece of memorabilia and help me help the people worst affected.’
His hope is that, amid all the suffering caused by the coronavirus, sport can help society edge back towards a sense of normality. ‘Sport brings everyone together,’ he says. ‘It is such a social part of life that everyone is missing out on right now. It is the stuff you look forward to.’