Ian Poulter vowed to never give up in his search for success after a maiden PGA Tour victory went begging at TPC Sawgrass last night.
Poulter took home a runners-up cheque for US dollars 1.026 million at The Players Championship, after finishing four shots behind Sweden's Henrik Stenson, both players having started the day tied for second place, five strokes back on Germany's Alex Cejka.
It was the Englishman's second top-five finish in a row in America and the supremely confident Poulter said his father Terry had passed on a stubborn streak to keep trying.
He said: "I'm very, very similar to him in every sport that we play, and he's sort of ingrained that in me.
"I'm a tame version of my dad, I guess, a realistic version. He wants to beat me whenever we play pool, snooker, whatever, so he'll keep going until every frame is over. So I guess I've instilled some of that confidence where you never give up and you think you can achieve anything.
"It's a very stubborn way of looking at everything, and he is very stubborn, and I guess I've taken some of that, and I'm using it as confidence."
Poulter has honed that stubborn nature to benefit his golf game in his decade on tour.
He said: "It's just the will never to give up, really. I've learned over the last 10 years on the golf course, I was very far in the first couple years, I was very hit-and-miss, but I've learned to try and use confidence in a slightly different way and to never give up.
"It was all or nothing, where now I think I'm a more consistent player and I understand myself a bit more and I understand when to attack and when to kind of back off."
Poulter felt that having shot a 75 on Saturday he needed to make amends during the final round.
"I made a couple of key up-and-downs (on Saturday)," he said. "You know, up-and-downs on 13, 14, 15, which were unbelievable, to be honest.
"It kind of kept me in the position where I could take a bit of momentum and feel that I could go out there and make a few birdies and have half a chance of winning this golf tournament.
"My short game has been, as my caddie said, ridiculously good over the last few weeks, but that certainly kept me in the golf tournament [on Saturday]. I held it together well over the last six holes, and then I actually played well today."
Poulter thought beating world number one Tiger Woods, who was also tied for second overnight, would be enough to land victory but he had reckoned without Stenson.
"I was thinking that if I could finish in front of Tiger, that might be good enough," he said.
"I thought Alex would actually be under a lot of pressure. I'm surprised that he found it as tough as that.
"I felt I just had to finish in front of Tiger to win. But I wasn't expecting someone to go out there and shoot 66."
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