CHICAGO, Illinois: Europe’s Ryder Cup wild cards Ian Poulter and Nicolas Colsaerts are a contrast in styles and character, but both could be crucial to their team’s hopes of retaining the trophy this week.
Whereas Poulter is the epitomy of Ryder Cup passion and a veteran of three previous appearances, Colsaerts is all wide-eyed and hushed tones as he makes his first appearance in the tournament.
Englishman Poulter, who has won eight out of his 11 Ryder Cup games and has yet to share a point, was spitting fire when he attended his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday.
It may not be war, he agreed, but come Friday the battle-lines, albeit temporarily, will be drawn.
“This event is unique,” he said.
“I mean, I hate to say we don’t get on for three days, but there is that divide, and it’s not that we don’t like each other.
“We are all good friends, both sides of the pond. But there’s something about the Ryder Cup which kind of intrigues me how you can be great mates with somebody, but, boy, do you want to kill them in Ryder Cup.
“It’s great, I mean, it’s passion like I’ve never seen before. I love it.”
Poulter has been in this situation before, four years ago in Valhalla, Kentucky when Nick Faldo chose him as a wild card to take on the Americans.
It was a controversial choice to select the Englishman ahead of cup stalwarts Colin Montgomerie and Darren Clarke, but Faldo was vindicated as Poulter finished the top individual points scorer from either side with four wins and one loss, playing in every session.
The result of course was a different matter with the United States winning, but Poulter made the team by rights two years ago and he contributed greatly once again with three wins and one loss, including a crucial 5 and 4 thumping of Matt Kuchar in the singles.
If Poulter was a shoo-in for a wild card berth, Colsaerts was less so with many feeling three-time major winner and Ryder Cup hero Padraig Harrington should have got the nod from captain Jose Maria Olazabal.
But the Spaniard has been impressed with the progress made by the Belgian over the last two years after half a dozen years of struggling to fulfill his potential in the lower divisions of European golf.
“When you look back and you see where I was like three years ago, I’m just the perfect example that if you want something really bad and you put your work into it, if you’ve got the heart and the passion, anything is achievable,” the 29-year-old from Brussels said.
“It’s funny, because I thought about it, I don’t know if it was last night or this morning — it’s almost like I feel like I’ve come back from the dead, which is a bit of a weapon.
“We all go through different phases in our lives, especially when you’re an athlete. You don’t really have a lot of examples that everything goes according to plan. I’m certainly not one of them, but I’m kind of proud of my story.”
Colsaerts will be the first Belgian to play in the Ryder Cup and he believes that his country’s location at the crossroads of western Europe makes him a good “hybrid” fit for the Ryder Cup.
“We speak a different couple languages in our country. We’ve got different types of people back home, you know, Flemish side, French speaking side,” he said.
“I’ve traveled the world since I was 15, so I was always, in a way, mixed up with a lot of different nationalities, because I traveled on my own and I had to find people to talk with.
“It’s pretty easy for me to get along with a lot of different personalities, different nationalities, and different sense of humors.”