PALM HARBOR, Fla. – When Luke Poulter watched Stewart Cink win the RBC Heritage with son Reagan on the bag, he asked his father when he could caddie for him at a PGA Tour event. Turns out it would be sooner than even he expected.
Ian Poulter announced on his Instagram that Luke, who is 16 and home-schooled, will be on his bag at the Wells Fargo Championship this week. Poulter’s steady sidekick, James Walton, is turning 40 this week and his wife is planning a celebration.
“He’ll be relaxing somewhere on a beach,” Poulter said.
That left an opening for Luke to fill in for the first time at a professional event. Ian recalled caddying for his son at a U.S. Kids event at Walt Disney World in Orlando in 2014, but this will be the first time that roles are reversed.
“It will be nice for him to get a real inside look at what goes on inside between these silly ears and inside the ropes and give him a little look,” Poulter said at the Valspar Championship. “It will be great for his learning experience to become a Tour player himself.”
Luke is ranked No. 141 in the AJGA Rolex Rankings and finished T-6 in his most recent tournament at the Sergio and Angela Garcia Foundation Junior Championship in March (71-73-71). (He’s ranked No. 275 in the Golfweek Junior Rankings.)
“He wants to do what I do. It’s the only thing going on in his brain,” Ian said. “He fully believes in his mind if he continues to work hard and keeps improving, he’s going to have an opportunity. I believe that because of what I see. He is way further advanced than where I was, but yet I wasn’t that advanced at 16.”
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Luke enjoyed a learning experience last week attempting local qualifying for the U.S. Open. He was 1 under coming up the last hole, which wasn’t going to be enough to advance, before hitting two drives out of bounds and made a quadruple bogey.
“He’s got me for distance, he’s got me on club speed and ball speed. That crossover has happened and it’s only going to grow,” Ian said. “Where he doesn’t have me beat is on the golf course. We rarely play but when we do play, he hasn’t beaten me. I’m going to make him earn that. I want him to earn it and to reward him when it does.”
Ian said he grinds harder to beat his son than he does to make a cut on the PGA Tour.
Ian famously turned pro as a 4 handicap and worked as an assistant pro back home in England, but he said Luke will benefit greatly from four years in college.
When asked to pick Luke’s biggest victory, he said, “It will be when he puts pen to paper and signs for college. In my opinion that will be his biggest victory so far because I was never in that position.”
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