By Tim Dahlberg

MEDINAH, Ill. he magenta shirt suited Ian Poulter well, even if it wasn’t quite his taste.

His usual pink would have been better, but that wasn’t the European uniform Saturday at the Ryder Cup. So magenta it was, because a good teammate wears team colors.

And, oh, what a teammate Poulter was Saturday in a fist-pumping, gut-roaring, bug-eyed display of golf that left his playing partner, the No. 1 player in the world, shaking his head in amazement.

“It’s intense. It’s very intense,” Rory McIlroy said. “He just gets that look in his eye, especially when he makes one of those big putts, and he’s fist-pumping, and he’ll just look right through you.”

If the look was impressive — Poulter’s signature bulging-eye glare that he concedes “can be a little scary to most” — the golf was even more so. Medinah Country Club was set up by the U.S. side to make birdies, but what Poulter did bordered on ridiculous.

With European chances fading as fast as the light on a beautiful day in the Chicago suburbs, he ran off five consecutive birdies at the end to steal a point from the U.S. in a Ryder Cup performance made even more remarkable because it was done before a hostile crowd while most of his teammates couldn’t get out of the way of their own putters.

With a final 12-footer on the 18th hole that just had to go in, he almost single-handedly rescued his teammates and gave them hope to play another day.

No, the Englishman whose first job was folding shirts at a golf center didn’t win the Ryder Cup for the European team. No one player can do that, including Tiger Woods, who can’t even win a point for the Americans.

But he stopped a potential rout. And he made sure that Sunday will now be a lot more interesting.

“It’s not about me, it’s about the team,” Poulter said. “We have kind of recovered a little bit (Saturday). It was not looking good.”

If it was fantastic, and it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Poulter may be in the running for the title of best player to have never won a major, but he excels when it’s us-againstthem and that’s what the Ryder Cup is all about.

The fans yelling at his ball to go in the water or stay out of the hole merely made him that more determined.

“I love the fight of it,” Poulter said. “You get to stare your opponent straight in the face. Sometimes that’s what you need to do.”

It’s that kind of attitude that endears him to his colleagues and irritates his opponents. He’s become the guy on the European team no one likes to face, as much for his fiery demeanor as his impressive record.

Olazabal said Poulter reminded him of the late Seve Ballesteros, who thrived in the format.

“I think the Ryder Cup should build a statue for him, you know? You know, that’s Poulter,” Olazabal said. “That’s why we say that he has such a special character for this event.”

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