Brandel Chamblee and Ian Poulter get into Players Championship Twitter fracas

Ian Poulter finished T2 Sunday at The Players Championship, but how he got there did not sit well with Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, who, after Si Woo Kim earned his three-shot victory, charged Poulter with cautiously playing for second place.

Chamblee, who has been known to throw shade at the likes of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, alleged that Poulter — who as recently as late last month believed he had lost his PGA Tour card — “clearly did not play to win” after the 41-year-old Brit laid up on the 16th hole and aimed for the middle of the putting surface on the treacherous par-3 17th peninsula green. Chamblee called Poulter’s approach shot on the par-5 16th “the worst shot of the day” and had nothing but scorn for the Brit’s strategy on 17, with Kim holding a two-shot edge.

”He’s lining up in the middle of the green,” said Chambee. “The person he is trying to beat is playing a par-5 behind him, and he’s got two shots to make up, and he plays to the middle of the green.”

Poulter, who jumped from 197th to 80th in the world rankings on the strength of his best PGA Tour finish since a T3 at the 2016 Puerto Rico Open, took to Twitter to tweak Chamblee, but explained to reporters what happened at the finish. It involved the S word.

“It was a big shock to the system to hit one of those nasty shanks when I’ve hit it as good as I have all week,” Poulter, who finished with a 1-under 71 to get to 7-under for the week, said about his second shot from the right rough some 203 yards out on the par-4 18th that squirted about 110 yards to the right. “As good as this week was, I’m still going to try and dissect it and work on certain things that need working on, the dreaded shank.”

When asked to confirm that his feeble shot was, indeed, what it looked like, Poulter said there was no mistaking it.

“Oh, it was a full one. Yeah, it was a lovely one,” Poulter said. “Make no — it was a shank. You’d like me to spell it for you?”

But about the Twitter tumult. Poulter was not happy with the criticism from Chamblee and naturally took to social media to lay a bit of sarcasm on the opinionated winner of the 1998 Greater Vancouver Open.

He then pointed out that Chamblee, who boasted earlier this year about all the folks he had blocked on Twitter, had done the same to him.

Except, according to the most stalwart blocker on Team GC, that was old news.