What to expect in 2013: No. 4, Ian Poulter

Since the Mayans were wrong, it appears the 2013 PGA Tour season will actually happen. There are plenty of big names set to make some noise in the upcoming season (the year kicks off on January 4th!), so we’ve picked our ten guys we think will have huge impacts next season and preview them here. We continue with Ryder Cup hero Ian Poulter.

Ian Poulter

Age: 36 (turns 37 on January 10)

Career PGA Tour wins: 2

Career major wins: 0

What he did in 2012: It was a funny year for Poulter, who started off his season fairly cold, got hot in the middle of the season with top-seven finishes at both Bay Hill and the Masters.

It was really the majors that brought out the best in Poulter, who finished seventh at Augusta, T-9 at the British and T-3 at the PGA Championship (his lone finish outside the top 10 in the majors came at the U.S. Open, where he finished T-41). This past season was the first time Poulter had finished in the top 10 in multiple majors in the same season, but he had a hard time on the PGA Tour other than those events, finishing in the top 10 just that one other time at Arnold Palmer’s event.

But we all know what happened toward the end of the year. Poulter did what Poulter does at the Ryder Cup, finishing 4-0-0 to help push the Europeans past the Americans on that epic Sunday. If the Euros needed clutch, Poulter was there in every form, and it was he who basically gave his team hope on Saturday with an incredible finish to his afternoon match alongside Rory McIlroy that saw Poulter card five birdies over his last five holes to win their match 1-up.

After the Ryder Cup, Poulter kept the momentum going, winning the HSBC Champions, his second World Golf Championships win of his career.

Why we like him in 2013: Because Poulter is too talented not to bring that Ryder Cup type of play to the golf course on his own, and it seems like this year is setting up to be his.

If you made a list of players without a major championship win who are most likely to change that in 2013, Poulter would be near the top, and after the way he closed out 2012 it seems he’s destined to tear it up in ’13.

I like Poulter to win multiple times in ’13 and I see him contending at both Augusta National and the Open Championship.

Devil Ball Golf – Golf – Yahoo! Sports