Ian Poulter: Dandy of the fairways aims to end British fashion for failure

Lewis Hamilton didn't win the British Grand Prix but it's not too late for a Stevenage boy to do well on home turf: Ian Poulter heads for The Open Championship next week in decent form, with a firm belief that seaside golf suits his game, and as familiar with Carnoustie, which he plays every year in the Dunhill Links Championship, as any of the world's 40 best golfers.

In the past two years, moreover, he has finished 13th or better in all four of the calendar's major championships. Everyone knows now that he is more than just a pretty pair of trousers, or, as some would have it, a revolting pair of trousers. Seve Ballesteros, commentating for the BBC a couple of Opens ago, suggested waspishly on seeing an image of the Claret Jug woven into Poulter's strides that it was the closest he would get to the venerable trophy. But he might yet surprise those who would pick from his close friend Justin Rose, Luke Donald, Paul Casey and the resurgent Colin Montgomerie as the Brit most likely to prevail on Sunday week.

I ask him what will lift him from being merely a very good golfer to a place in the major-winner's enclosure? "If I knew, I'd do it," he says. "But I feel I'm getting close in the majors. Limiting your mistakes is key in the majors, but you have to accept that you will make mistakes because the courses are so tough.

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"Carnoustie won't be as brutal as it was in 1999 - when I didn't play, thankfully - and the greens are pretty flat so there are no surprises there, but it won't be easy. You have to control your emotions in the majors and know when to take punishment. If you hit a bad shot, don't go for the miraculous recovery. Accept a bogey. All that takes time to understand."

He no longer feels any added pressure teeing up on the first tee of a major championship, he adds. "I've played in enough of them now to know that you get too wrapped up in the occasion. You can over-practice, and feel burnt out by the Thursday. I think I find the right balance. I've had five good finishes in the last eight. In the US Open last year I played with Geoff Ogilvy, who won it, in the second-last group. In 2005 at St Andrews I was tied 11th with a bogey on 17 and a three-putt on the last. If I'd holed a five-foot par putt on 17 and two-putted 18, I'd have been third. That's how close I was, although Tiger was too far ahead to get into contention."

Before this year's US Open, at Oakmont, Poulter played a few practice holes with Tiger Woods, and was gratified to find that the world No 1 prepared in the same way as he did. "I'd played against him in the Ryder Cup but not in practice before. Like me, he putted to the positions he thought the pins would be, and made lots of notes with arrows to show him where the breaks were. He wasn't doing anything different to me that I could see, though I suppose he might have done extra homework at home, watching videotapes or whatever."

He concedes that his pulse races a little quicker than normal when he plays alongside Woods, but not like it does when he finds himself in the company of the guys he idolised in his youth, including, if not especially, the waspish Ballesteros.

"I played with Seve at Hoylake last year. He's an absolute legend; 85 wins or whatever it was. Obviously his golf game is not too strong any more, and maybe it's time for him to move on, but his short game is still sensational. I was talking to Ken Brown about it today, actually. Seve can still do stuff with a sand wedge, a pitching wedge and a nine-iron that nobody else can. I kept saying to my caddie last year, 'there's no way he can get up and down from there', and he would do it."

Poulter, too, has made golf fans sit up and take notice since he burst on to the scene as Rookie of the Year in 2000, but with his wardrobe rather than his wedge. He must be the only professional sportsman to have been inspired by Dorothy Perkins, the Letchworth branch of which his mother managed when he was a child. I know this because after our interview - in the comfortable chalet overlooking Loch Lomond where Poulter, his wife and two kids are staying for this week's Scottish Open - his mum gives me a lift down the road.

She tells me that her interest in co-ordinating colours rubbed off on him, and that he was a fussy dresser from the age of five, a preoccupation which led, inexorably, to those startling Union Jack trousers that he wore at Troon in 2004, which almost caused several elderly R&A members to fall off their shooting-sticks.

"Yeah, the Union Jacks were a bit risky," says Poulter, chuckling. "But I am not embarrassed by anything I've ever worn. I have no shame."

He concedes that his sartorial daring continues even now to deflect attention from the excellence of his golf. "But if you look at Tom Watson, Doug Sanders, and what they wore in the 1970s, I'm not so different. I grew up watching the late Payne Stewart, and I thought he was fantastic for the game. I loved the NFL thing [whereby Stewart was sponsored to wear outfits in different teams' colours]. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. It's too easy to blend into the norm, and there's too much norm out there. Only a few others, like Jesper [Parnevik] express themselves like I do."

Next week, to paraphrase The Fast Show sketch, Poulter will mostly be wearing loud. Has he chosen his outfits yet? "I will be wearing four outfits from the range," he says, by which he means Ian Poulter Design, a new clothing range launched this week. "And hopefully I'll perform very well in it," he adds, "which means it might sell. We've been careful in our first season not to go too outrageous, because it would be easy for me to go overboard too quickly."

The thought of people on golf courses around the country looking like Ian Poulter is not one for the faint-hearted, I venture. He laughs. "We needed to design things that appeal to me, but that people will want to wear. It came about when we realised that if we could have one-off pieces made, surely we could have hundreds or thousands made. So now we're up and running. We've got six people in the office, my brother's one of the UK salesmen, we've been finding factories in Hong Kong and China; it's very exciting."

And what might sales be like if he wins The Open? He smiles. "I should think the phone would ring off the hook," he says.

And if he doesn't, what chance a compatriot? Or merely a fellow European? The Open's return to Carnoustie issues a reminder that no European has won a major since Paul Lawrie did so there eight years ago, but it is a topic that riles Poulter.

"People don't understand how hard it is to win a major these days," he says. "And if you look at the last eight years, what percentage has Tiger won? Then look at [Phil] Mickelson, Retief [Goosen], Vijay [Singh]. They're the best players in the world, and it doesn't leave many for the British guys to win. But one of us will. Justin, Donald, Casey, [Nick] Dougherty, [Lee] Westwood, Colin, myself. We're all knocking on the door."

If it is Rose who bursts through the door, might his delight be tempered by just a little envy? "Not at all, no. We're big mates, and we have some banter about who is highest in the rankings. He's in the top 20, and I'm 31 after Colin managed to sneak past me last week. But there's no jealousy. Justin is just one of 155 competitors I want to beat."

As for Monty, Poulter wishes him well at Carnoustie but wishes he were not currently using an extended "belly" putter. That, and the so-called broom-handle putter, should no more be at The Open than torn denim shorts, in Poulter's considered view.

"Why should you stabilise the butt end of a golf club? It's not how the game was ever meant to be played. And some guys use them when they take a two-club drop; out comes the 50-inch long-handled putter, and all of a sudden they're in a much better position than I would be. That's down to a little bit of etiquette, but it is within the rules, and I've played with someone who did it."

Who? "I'm not saying. But it's not part of the game's tradition." Tell that, I say, to Sam Torrance and Bernhard Langer, and others whose competitive careers have been extended by long putters. "Yeah, and Langer's a good example. He won in America a couple of weeks ago and if the long putter were banned he probably wouldn't even be playing. The game would lose some of its all-time greats. But in my overall view it's not right, and I don't like clubheads getting bigger and bigger, either."

That said, he recently teed off with a guitar when playing in a pro-am with members of the band INXS (and hit it straight, too). As for his outfits and his artfully mussed-up hair, his interpretation of golfing traditions might cause Peter Alliss to choke on his kummel, but all power to his brightly-clad elbow in his battle against the stuffy conservatism of the game. The spirit of Payne Stewart lives on: indeed, Poulter has been known to wear Arsenal colours on the golf course.

He is an Arsenal nut, and duly troubled by the departure of Thierry Henry. "But I think it was good business, after an amazing eight years of service. Arsène Wenger is a very clever businessman."

What might he swap, from his golfing career, for the opportunity to see his beloved Gunners win the Champions League (he was in Paris for the final last year, and teeing off in the Irish Open at 7.50 the next morning).

"I wouldn't swap anything," he says firmly. "At The Open a couple of years ago a journalist said to me, 'how are you feeling today?' I said 'what do you mean?' He said 'what's been the effect on your golf, hearing that Patrick [Vieira] has gone?' I said 'are you serious?' I will play golf to the best of my ability whether Patrick goes, Thierry goes, or Arsenal get beat 3-0. This is my job. Although saying that, it's enabled me to buy two season tickets, which is very nice. If I can't go my dad can go, which is great, because he only ever took me once when I was a kid. That's all he could afford."

Nor were his parents able to afford to enrol him at a private club, so Poulter took a job in the pro's shop at Chesfield Downs GC, where he was forced by his boss to pay a full green fee every time he wanted to play in a competition. That rankles even now.

"It cost me £25 every time I wanted to play in the monthly medal. That's why my handicap stayed at four, because I didn't play in competitions. I didn't even know about the Walker Cup. My handicap was still technically four when I turned pro, aged 19." Yet he overcame such inauspicious beginnings to become a very wealthy fellow, with a collection of fabulous sports cars. There must be something in the water in Stevenage.

Ian Poulter is a TAG Heuer ambassador