It was a significant blow landed by the Americans – inflicting Poulter’s heaviest defeat in the event – against a player they had targeted from the off as he had been Europe’s leading points scorer in the last three events and sparked the miraculous comeback at Medinah two years ago.

“There are a few guys on our team that specifically would like to match up against Ian,” said Spieth.

“There are a few guys that came up and told us that they are very jealous that we had them today.

“But whatever it is, past history or just the fact that he’s known as being kind of the Ryder Cup wizard for the Europeans, he’s certainly not under our skin because we haven’t dealt with him before.”

Because of his heroics in Medinah, Poulter was held up as being Europe’s leading light at Gleneagles but the 38-year-old has been keen to stress there is much more to it than that.

“Obviously my record has been pretty good so taking a dent this morning I can shrug that off and look forward to tomorrow,” said the Englishman.

“Obviously it’s a loss on the board, whether that be 5&4 or one down, but I don’t look at it as a heavy loss, I just look at it as a loss.

“Ryder Cup is very black or white. It’s very simple: You lose or you win.

“I said to Stevie walking off the golf course when I played with Darren Clarke in 2004 we had our butts kicked the first time I ever played (losing 4&3 to Tiger Woods and Chris Riley) and obviously we’ve had that today. But you know what, things can change very quickly,

“This is a team game and they have to beat 12 of us. It’s not just about singling one or two guys out.

“This is about us digging in when we need to and that’s exactly what we need to do as a team.

“Me personally, I need to hole a few more putts and that’s what I didn’t do.

“I left a few putts short, which is very frustrating, but this is a strong team and a team that you’ll see fight very hard right till the end.”

Poulter was rested for the afternoon foursomes and he said that was the plan all along by captain Paul McGinley.

“I knew I wasn’t playing this afternoon. It’s very difficult to play everybody in five matches in the Ryder Cup,” he added.

“We need to keep the team as fresh as possible and make sure everyone gets a good rotation and a good amount of games.

“I knew I wasn’t playing five coming in this week, and I probably didn’t want to play five coming into this week.

“Not many people have been able to play five and win five and the reason for that is because it’s very tiring.

“I’m 38; we’ve got some younger pups on the team that might be able to do it better than I can.

“If my role is to play twice or three or four or five times then I will go out there and do whatever I’m asked to do.”