Oh, how they sniggered. Ian Poulter would arrive on the practice area and if Tiger Woods happened to be there at the same time there would come: “Hey, what’s up No 1?”

People would guffaw in mid-swing. Poulter had set himself up as a patsy. He might as well have walked around with a bulls eye target on his back.

Many believed that the Englishman deserved to be sneered at, having suggested in 2008 that if he could ever really get his game together there would only be he and Woods up there at the top with the rest nowhere.

He was ranked world No 22 time at the time.

No one, far less the as – then un-frocked high priest of the game was going to take him seriously.

To the Americans, especially, he was just an upstart to be put down and anyway; it was Tiger making the wisecracks. Hey, dude! Hilarious!

Poulter has often had a way of being too loud, not just in the way he dresses but in the bold statements he made about himself and that particular one, back then, was about as bold – or stupid – as it gets.

There have been times, in fact, when even some of his fellow Englishman have wished that Poulter would put a pink sock in it while the men in badged-up blazers were known to find his statements, his stance and his clothes - sense as being somewhat tiresome to say the least.

Poulter, to them, was more akin to an all-mouth-and-trousers chav from football’s Premier League than a potential champion to be cherished.

Well, you know, you just don’t SAY those sort of things, old boy.

And what’s wrong with wearing dark blue and grey on the course anyway?

But my, things are looking a whole lot different now.

Tiger might as well be singing along to Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan: “Once upon a time you dressed so fine. You threw the bums a dime in your prime. Didn’t you?”

Poulter might have been considered a bum back then in certain quarters. Not now.

While Woods analyses this and analyses that in the rehab, Poulter is now the holder of the WGC-Accenture Matchplay Championship having beaten his fellow-countryman Paul Casey, another of the not-so-shy brigade from Blighty who have begun to trouble the scorers on the US Tour.

Poulter is no world No 5, one place above Casey, one below Lee Westwood.

He said he had game. He’s proved he’s got game. There are no sniggers now.

The Peacock has more than just the plumage. He is now ruffling feathers in a quite different fashion.

All last season Poulter suggested that he was on the brink of something really big as his performances in the major championships tended to back him up.

Now he has one of the things he wanted most: a first tournament win on American soil.

He now lives and works in the US and while that decision may be to the detriment of the European Tour it is helping him to realize ambitions that seemed even to his supporters, perhaps a tad unrealistic.

To his impressive long game he has added touch with short irons and found inspiration with the putter – the club that let him down too often when he got himself into good places last season.

Now he’s good to go for the Major he has always, is that in-yer-face way of his, said should be his destiny.

Mark Twain said that clothes maketh the man and Poulter is living proof of that.

Twain also said that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

Poulter backs that one up too. He works like a dog, too.

He wants it and he wants it bad. And by the time Tiger gets back – next season, by the way – he wont’ play in a major or the Ryder Cup during 2010, Poulter could well be waiting for him and there won’t be any sneering then.

In fact other of Dylan’s caustic commentaries on life comes to mind. For the times they are, indeed, a changing:

Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin'. For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'