DUBAI — Ian Poulter dropping his ball onto his marker contributed to the only playoff loss of his professional career, a bizarre one-shot penalty that decided the 2010 Dubai World Championship against Robert Karlsson at the season finale.
Poulter arrived in Dubai in elite match-play form after starring at the 2008 and 2010 Ryder Cups and winning the 2010 WGC-Accenture Match Play over Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia and Paul Casey, plus a victory in Hong Kong the previous week. Karlsson began the final round three shots adrift of Poulter, but the pair finished tied for the lead after Poulter missed a 15-foot putt on the 72nd hole to force a playoff. On the second playoff hole, Karlsson held the advantage with four feet for birdie while Poulter faced 30 feet.
Before Poulter could apply pressure, he went to replace his ball and dropped it from two or three inches above his coin, pitching it directly onto the front edge and flipping the marker over. Though he believed the ball came to rest in exactly the same spot, Poulter immediately called in the referee and was assessed a one-shot penalty. "Bizarrely, Terry handed me the ball back and I've gone to mark the ball, and literally the ball slipped from two or three inches above the coin. And it's pitched right on the front of the coin and the coin flipped over. One-shot penalty," Poulter said. "It's a strange one. I mean, you know, if it pitches in the middle of the coin, the coin won't move. It's heavy enough. But it just pitched right on the very front and it just flipped itself over. You know, it's one of those rules I guess."
The penalty turned his 30-foot birdie attempt into a par putt, which he missed, leaving Karlsson a simple task to secure the victory with his birdie. Poulter insisted afterward that Karlsson would have made birdie anyway was no consolation, knowing the pressure would have been far greater had he made par. Three years later Poulter again finished second to a Swede at the same event, this time to Henrik Stenson, who finished six shots clear.