Ian Poulter’s Masters Fake News Derails His Match Play Finish

Match play golfer extraordinaire Ian Poulter swam thru the WGC Dell Match Play field in surprisingly easy fashion given his 58th seeding. That is until receiving some rather conflicting news regarding his Masters qualifying.

Golfworld’s Ryan Herrington reports on the weird chain of events.

Needing a solid performance at Austin Country Club to try and move into the top 50 on the World Ranking—and earn a spot in the Masters in the process—Poulter got things going in the right direction by advancing out of pool play. And when he won his Round of 16 match on Saturday morning against Louis Oosthuizen, media and officials told him that the victory would be enough to get him the World Rankings points needed to jump into the top 50.

However, some additional numbers crunching was done later that morning, and as it turned out that Poulter actually needed to win his afternoon quarterfinal match with Kevin Kisner to move into the top 50. Suffice it to say, the 42-year-old Englishman who whose streak of 10-straight starts in Augusta had ended in 2017, was none to thrilled.

“I guess I should never listen to other people,” Poulter said after the quarterfinal match. “You finish a round of golf and the press and everybody are telling you you’re in the Masters, and then you get a text message 10 minutes before you tee off to correct everybody, to say oh, we’ve made a mistake, actually, no, that was wrong, you’re not in. “

Just to let you know.. I am not in the Masters, I was told after this mornings round that I was in the Masters by Golf Channel, The Media, @EuropeanTour, 10 minutes before I tee’d off this afternoon I was told sorry points weren’t correct your not in yet. #DisappointingMistake

— Ian Poulter (@IanJamesPoulter) March 24, 2018

The good news: Poulter at least found out before the match with Kisner began, so he knew what was at stake. The bad news: it didn’t much matter as Kisner blitzed Poulter, winning 8 and 6.

Ian is now 51st in the world and needs a strong finish at this week’s Houston Open to get a Masters invite.