Ian Poulter say it feels nice to make up for last year’s loss to Kevin Kisner on day one of the 2019 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. World number 32 Poulter, who won the event back in 2010, lost 8&6 to Kisner in the quarter-finals 12 months ago but he managed to avenge that defeat on Wednesday with a 2UP success over the American.
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The 43-year-old Englishman, who will take on Keith Mitchell on Thursday, says he is happy with the battling victory and picked out the penultimate hole as a huge moment in the match. “It was a different mindset last year,” Poulter told Sky Sports.
“A little bit of a good news, bad news situation probably affected me and I didn’t want that to carry over today. “He probably realised I wasn’t going to be as easy to roll over as last year. It was a good match and pivotal to birdie the 17th and get up and down on the last.”
Elsewhere, it was good news for several of Europe’s 2018 Ryder Cup winning team, with Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Paul Casey, Francesco Molinari, Thorbjorn Olesen, Henrik Stenson, Tyrrell Hatton, Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia all picking up victories. Of the 12 men who beat the US at Le Golf National, Sweden’s Alex Noren was the only to taste defeat as he went down 5&4 to China’s Haotong Li.
