Ian Poulter will always be a legend in my book Although resident in Florida, Poulter takes delight in winding up Americans, and he was at it again before the end-of-season World Tour Championship in Dubai when he slagged off baseball. "It bores me tearless," he told a press conference this week. You want to sit there for 4½ hours eating hot dogs ...? Come on, really? We might mention that this is about the average time for a round of pro golf, and that many would rather gouge out their tear ducts with a tetanus-laden nail than endure one of those. But since Poults is as entertaining on the course - the fist-shaking, the eyeball-bulging, the fashion sense of a colour-blind circus act on LSD - as he is off it with quotes like that, we will do no such thing. If the ferocious will to win and contempt for schmoozing the media reminds one of Nick Faldo, who recalled his decision to make him a 2008 Ryder Cup wild card here on Wednesday, in another way there is no comparison as yet. Sir Nick won six majors, while Poults has come no closer than a distant second, hence a hack asking if he might hire a sports psychologist. "Are you crazy?" was the reply. Wow, that's incredible. I think people would pay me a fortune to be a sports psychologist. Maybe they would, though it is doubtful he could train the courteous likes of Luke Donald and Lee Westwood to surf the aggression as he does. Elemental aspects of a human personality cannot be taught by cognitive behaviour and visualisation techniques. Poulter is what he is, and that is hardly to all tastes. The mannerly Paul Lawrie lashes him in his memoir for tactless over-celebration, for instance, while several American golfers share the umbrage (though we will tolerate no lectures there from the oafs who partied on Brookline's 17th green like it was 1999, as indeed it was, while Olazábal stood over a crucial putt). Whether he will replicate Colin Montgomerie by failing to win a major or finally begin to emulate Faldo, time will tell. At almost 37 he has several peak years left. If ever he is in the final group and in contention with six holes of a major to play, you would not care to be the front-runner exposed to that intensity under maximum stress. Yet golfing immortality is not solely about the majors. Todd Hamilton, Rich Beem, Shaun Micheel and a whole host of other nonentities have won one, and Poults is a far rarer golfing bird than any on that forgettable list. Eager to be different, unafraid of causing offence and uncowed by the reaction when it is taken, he is absolutely his own man, with a cussed integrity unseen since Faldo retired. For that alone, whether or not he ever has the chance to thank the press from the heart of his bottom, he will not be forgotten.