Throughout the 2008 golf season Iain Carter will be on course observing contenders for Nick Faldo’s European Ryder Cup team. The series begins in the outskirts of Delhi where the flamboyant Ian Poulter was put under the spotlight in the first round of the Johnnie Walker Classic.

Overhead vultures circle. They’re looking for dead meat and they must have been sensing Ian Poulter as possible prey.

They wouldn’t have needed to look hard to find him. The Englishman was clad in a golden shirt with dark strides embossed with crystals in the shape of the sponsor’s logo. He looked like a cross between a 70’s disco dude and a Belisha beacon.

It’s classic Poulter. He’s doing it for the sponsors, not a bet. Chest puffed out, back straight, with a typically jaunty stride he began his round on the back nine here at the DLF Golf and Country Club.

On three of the holes on the back nine there are “Environmentally Sensitive Areas” otherwise known as no-go zones. But for the markings that surround them you would think they were a legitimate part of the course, often affording a decent route to the green.

But play is strictly prohibited from these areas and should your ball end up there you incur a one stroke penalty.

This is how Poulter first ran into trouble. At the 14th – his fifth – he got a flyer and his ball ended up in a prohibited area. He compounded the setback with three putts for a double bogey seven. At the next he found a hazard en route to another double bogey.

The vultures were on alert and became seriously interested when Poulter then found water at the seventeenth. It led to another horrible six and he had dropped six shots in just four holes.

At this stage the sponsors were wondering whether he would need the special shirts they have lined up for him at the weekend.

But the body language remains good. He has an occasional chat with playing partner Vijay Singh. More and more pars are entered on the Poulter scorecard.

Four holes into his back nine and he’s over a nine iron to an elevated green. There’s dead silence from the twenty or so spectators, so a marshal feels the need to shout “Quiet Please!” Poulter’s caddie swivels round aghast, I jump out of my skin, Poulter continues to address the ball, unperturbed.

Then he’s yelling “Go, go, go,” imploring his ball to travel the full distance to the pin. It obeys for all bar the last 18 feet of it’s journey, but it is still a decent birdie chance.

The putt is hit too hard and slips by, indeed he has to wait until his last two holes to beat par. But he does on both, finishing with back to back birdies for a 76. He’s had 32 putts, struck the ball pretty well and endured those three catastrophic holes.

But it was a good, fighting finish that is one of the hallmarks of his career. It's one of the reasons he attracts so much attention. Another is that he speaks well and is always eminantly quotable.

But he still feels as though he was stitched up with the way his “it’s just me and Tiger” sentiments were portrayed earlier in the month.

Poulter admitted that his playing colleagues had been amused by the affair. He told me: “It was a day of banter with the boys to be honest with you. I got a bit of stick from the lads but that’s been about it.”

The quotes themselves were given in answer to a fantasy golf competition. Poulter added: “They were, and they were three years old as well, so they were kind of a bit dated really.”

But he makes no apology for setting lofty goals. “I’m a passionate golfer, I’m an ambitious golfer, I’m somebody that gets excited to play golf every time I step on the course.

“I speak my mind, perhaps too often, but I’m being brutally honest and that’s how I will stay. I think goals are achievable and I don’t think it is out of order to have those goals high up there. That’s what I’ve got. I want to push myself to the limits all the time and I want to get better all the time.

“There’s no problem in having big goals in my eyes. It might be a problem for other people but in my eyes it is fine.”

Playing partner Singh knows what it takes to get to the top in this game, but he restricted his Poulter observations to the Englishman’s choice of clothes.

“Maybe he should quieten them down a little, he might play better golf” the Fijian former world number one joked. “But he seems to like the hype and he says it pays the bills, so good for him.”

As for the rest of this week, Poulter’s ambitions, by his standards have to be fairly modest. Making the cut after his first round misfortune would be a decent achievement.

It would remind Faldo of his fighting qualities, make sure two garish shirts don't go to waste and would keep the vultures at bay.