Woods went into self-imposed golfing exile for five months following revelations of extra-marital affairs and has struggled with his game and fitness since finishing tied fourth on his US Masters comeback at the start of April.
“It’s closer now than it ever was because of the points Tiger has dropped,” the flamboyant Poulter told reporters on the eve of the PGA Championship at Wentworth.
“If they play great for a spell of three or four months, get a couple of wins and a couple of big finishes, I can see anybody in the top 10 getting to the points that Tiger is at now… including myself.”
Americans Phil Mickelson (two), Steve Stricker (four), Jim Furyk (five) and Anthony Kim (10) are jockeying for position with South African Ernie Els (seven), Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy (nine) and English trio Poulter (six), Lee Westwood (three) and Paul Casey (eight).
Poulter said he and his two fellow countrymen enjoyed a friendly rivalry.
“I think we all spur each other on and that’s healthy,” said the winner of February’s WGC-Accenture Match Play in Arizona. “We all want to get as high as we possibly can.
“Lee has played so well over the last couple of years and has got his game back to where it was in 2000 and 2001. His consistency has been incredible.”
Poulter has never fared well at the PGA Championship, missing six out of eight cuts before taking a break from the European Tour’s flagship event in 2008 and 2009.
He returns this week partly as a result of the extensive changes to the West Course masterminded by local resident Els, especially the alterations made to the putting surfaces.
“The greens used to be bumpy,” said Poulter. “You could hit a perfect putt from three feet on the perfect line and it would comfortably miss.
“That was frustrating. That is not what I want to do, I’d rather have a week at home putting on greens where I know if I hit it on the right line from three feet it is going to go in.
“It always used to set me back a few weeks, getting over that. You think you’re putting badly but in fact you’re not.”
Meantime, Asian Tour executive chairman Kyi Hla Han has questioned the long-term future of bitter rival OneAsia after cracks appeared in the fledgling circuit’s “dangerous structure.” The Asian Tour and OneAsia have been engaged in a long-running dispute after the emergence of the ambitious new series, formed by the PGA of Australia, China Golf Association, Korea Golf Tour and the Korea Golf Association in 2009.
“A tour of 10 tournaments, long term, is not going to survive,” a relaxed Han told Reuters dressed in his golfing attire, overlooking the Orchid golf course on a stifling hot Wednesday in Singapore.
“So they have to get very aggressively very quickly and shake us up and they are seeing it is not working, it’s just a mess.”
The OneAsia Tour increased their number of tournaments from five last year to 11 for this season but have been accused by the Asian Tour of “cannibalizing” their events after taking six from them.
However, OneAsia struck problems last month after a brief boycott by Korean players of their tournaments which they blamed on a smear campaign without naming who was behind it.
“If you see what happened in Korea last month it just happened and we had nothing to do with it,” Han said. “It shows there are cracks in the (OneAsia) structure.”
OneAsia, who work with Singapore-based sports marketing group World Sport Group, have said they hope to have 17-20 events for 2011 with a minimum purse of $1 million across nine countries but Han remains skeptical.
“I think they (OneAsia) will only be there while the sports marketing company is backing it or it is going to go bankrupt.
“I think it is dangerous, we got out of that kind of structure earlier and we are structuring ourselves the same as the PGA Tour and the European Tour.”
“I would like to see them really attract the big companies to sponsor events rather than just underwriting.”
