Legendary NBA star Michael Jordan was never intimidated by someone else on the basketball court. The golf course, though, is a different story.
The six-time NBA champion recently admitted in an interview with Stephen Curry that he got a little intimidated at the Ryder Cup.
Jordan, an avid golf fan, has attended the Ryder Cup with consistency for a decade-plus. The North Carolina native told Curry about the time he got intimidated by European golfer Ian Poulter.
“I’m not scared of anybody… but Ian Poulter. I used to go and watch him all the time. If I’m in any of his matches or walking down, he finds me after he makes a good putt, and it’s like, ‘Man, I didn’t do anything. I like you. I support you.’
I stay away from him when I’m walking. I won’t go watch him,” Jordan told Curry.
Poulter, though, has made it clear he’s a fan of Jordan.
“I am a Michael Jordan fan. I love basketball, so MJ being there was giving me a buzz,” Poulter told Alan Shipnuck of Sports Illustrated for the Golf.com podcast, per sportscasting.net. “Then as that match was closing out, he was becoming more prominent and his position of where he was standing was becoming more and more invasive, shall I say. The closest he got was when he kinda gave me a little jab in the chest going from the 16th green after I’ve holed the 25-footer downhill left to right. I’m walking off the green and I just see him. He’s right in my walkway as I walk to the 17th tee. And he kind of just wags his finger and kinda shakes his head as if to say, ‘You son of a…how dare you hole that putt?’ And as I was walking past him, he gives me a little jab, and I’m saying to myself, ‘You know, you’re going to have to hit me harder than that.’
“I was trying to stick it to everyone, but it was like, how dare he be in my space, how dare he be in my zone, how dare he be on my court, giving me s—? So I’m like, ‘OK, if that’s how you want to play it, this is what you’re gonna get.’”
Perhaps we can get a special Poulter vs. Jordan golf match at some point…
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