Hecklers and a chunked wedge shot set off Ian Poulter’s temper at The Players

Ian Poulter has been known to let his frustrations get the better of him on the golf course. Friday at The Players Championship, the European Ryder Cup star went a bit barmy on a TPC Sawgrass track that has given him fits in the past.

Not much was happening for Poulter, who started his second round on the 10th hole and made three straight pars out of the gate. Things began to get somewhat squirrely for the Englishman on the par-3 13th, when, at 1-under for the tournament, he missed a nine-footer for birdie that the Americans might have conceded in that biennial event at which Poulter excels.

“If this was the Ryder Cup,” intoned Golf Channel’s Steve Sands, “it’d be almost a gimme.”

Poulter, recently ranked along with Rickie Fowler as the most overrated players in golf in an anonymous survey of their PGA Tour peers, got a birdie to drop on the 14th to get to 2-under. He then slapped his putter in frustration when another birdie putt came up short on No. 17.

That’s when the real fun began.

Standing over his par putt on the renowned island green, Poulter backed off and stared at the gallery across the pond.

“Really?” he asked rhetorically before making the putt.

“Really?” Poulter repeated as he walked toward the edge of the island surface, pointed the butt end of his flat stick at someone who particularly irritated him, and continued to glare as he walked backward toward the grassy exit ramp.

Golf Channel analyst and fellow Brit, Nick Faldo, suggested that Poulter block out the noise.

“The most important thing, especially when you’re going through a tough time, or the media writing stuff about you and that sort of thing, you have to leave the golf course … each day, and you ask just yourself, ‘how was my day, was my day good?’” Faldo said as Poulter made his way to the 18th tee.

“It’s the 90-10 percent rule,” added Faldo. “Hopefully you please 90 percent, the other 10 percent you got no chance.”

An uneventful two holes passed and Poulter, still at 2-under and attempting a semi-flop shot from deep rough up a slope to the second green, went all Tiger Woods, circa Hero World Challenge. When his chunked effort at an eagle rolled back down the hill, Ian decided to do a little gardening at TPC Sawgrass.

“Oh. Go easy,” Faldo cautioned his hot-tempered countryman.

Faldo need not have worried since it turned out that Poulter had done some rearranging of the Ponte Vedra landscape before -- like that time during the 2006 Players Championship when some blades of grass offended his sensibilities (sound effects added in real time, courtesy of Golf Channel):

Poulter made a par 5 on the second, added back-to-back birdies on Nos. 4 and 5, and motored into the clubhouse with a 3-under 69, though it was certainly not smooth sailing. Despite the rough waters, the sartorially splendid IJP will cruise into the weekend at 4-under, just four shots off the front-running pace of 36-hole co-leaders Kevin Na and Jerry Kelly.

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