Winner: Ian Poulter
Around the wider world of golf: 14-year-old Guan Tianlang won the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in Bangkok and "punched his ticket" to the Masters; Stacy Lewis won the Mizuno Classic on the LPGA; Cassandra Kirkland won the Sanya Ladies Open on the LET; and Tom Lehman won both the Charles Schwab Cup Championship and the year-long Charles Schwab Cup.
Like I said in yesterday's post about the WGC, "The play is just too volatile to know what might happen before the end of the round... And the lead changes with almost every hole... The season of come-from-behind winners doesn't seem to be waning yet."
After Friday's second round, Ian Poulter was 9 strokes returned of then-chief Louis Oosthuizen (who changed into at an fantastic -sixteen) and failed to appear to have a chance to trap him. All Ian did become shoot sixty five-sixty five (-14) at the weekend and end up with a two-stroke victory. No, I did not see it coming.
But am I shocked? Hell, no. This is Ian Poulter we're talking about here, the original Mr. Clutch Under Pressure. He's better at riding a streak of good play than almost any other player in the game.
And it's probable really worth mentioning that players who come up huge in a Ryder Cup generally tend to play nicely in the following months. Mickelson did -- as did Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer -- and Jason Dufner also persevered to play properly, tying for 2d vicinity after a sixty four inside the very last spherical. But nobody got here up bigger than Poulter, both within the Ryder Cup or this week.
And may be more worrisome for someone who didn't even play this week. For Rory McIlroy, the big news is Ian's newfound spot in the Race to Dubai. He's now in fourth place, a little over €1.1million behind with 4 more tournaments (including the final championship) left to go. Granted, this is a big ask -- Rory will continue to make money over the next few weeks, making it harder to catch him. But Poulter has a win and a T6 the last two times he's played in Singapore -- this week's tournament and the biggest remaining purse outside the final -- and while Rory won in Hong Kong last year, Ian won it in 2010. I don't know if I'd bet against Mr. Clutch, now that he can smell blood.
I imply, just look at this photo from the WGC-HSBC Champions home page. Would you guess against this guy?
But in the intervening time, this week's Limerick Summary salutes the warlord who effectively conquered his warring parties in China. The best question is how long his barbaric assault will closing...
This week's scoreboard seemed greater like a smorgasbord
With the leaders attacking like Mongol hordes.
Though the lead turned into quite fragile,
Ian proved the maximum agile ?
His last minute charge topped the leaderboard. The top photo is from the WGC-HSBC Champions page at europeantour.com.
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