LIV’s Lee Westwood takes parting shot at DP World Tour on Ryder Cup

Lee Westwood has taken aim at the DP World Tour for “getting into bed” with the PGA Tour as the LIV Golf row took another twist this week. Every player who held DP World Tour cards that played in LIV’s opening tournament last June were slapped with £100,000 fines by the European competition.

A deadline of May 3 was set for those fines to be paid with LIV Golf trio Westwood, Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia announcing on the same day that they had resigned from the DP World Tour. They will now be ineligible to play in this year’s Ryder Cup held in Rome with the LIV Golf trio having a long-standing relationship with Team Europe.

Westwood has played in a joint-record 11 matches for Europe while Garcia is Europe’s all-time points scorer in Ryder Cup history. The 50-year-old Englishman now wants to “move on” from the saga, but took one final parting shot at the DP World Tour for their stance.

“Could you imagine them allowing Luke [Donald, the Ryder Cup captain], to involve one of us, no matter how well one of us might be playing?” Westwood told the Telegraph. “I don’t want to talk about other LIV players who might not be eligible anymore, but there will be so much experience lost now, all because the tour has gone into bed with the PGA Tour.

“That’s not the way it was. And not the way I think it should be. Like I said, it’s time for me to move on.” Westwood also hit back at suggestions he knew what he signed up for when joining LIV last year.

“People say I knew exactly what would happen, but nobody told us the extent of the punishments,” he added. “And they continue to do that. The way I view it is that, as a European Tour member, I was allowed to be a member of the PGA Tour without any problem for all those years. Tell me, what is the difference? Just because LIV is funded by the Saudis – a country where my tour used to play and where we were encouraged to play?

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“I’ve been a dual member of the European Tour and PGA Tour, but always said I was a European Tour member first and foremost and that I had fears about the US circuit basically being bullies and doing everything it could to secure global dominance. Check my old quotes, it’s all there. But now, in my opinion, the European Tour has jumped fully in bed with the PGA Tour and even though Keith [Pelley, the chief executive] says he hates to hear it, it is now a feeder tour for the PGA Tour.

“The top 10 players on the tour, not already exempt this year, have a pathway to the PGA Tour – that’s giving our talent away. That was never the tour’s policy before this ‘strategic alliance’. Sorry, I don’t want to play under that sort of regime. Like, I always played on the Asian Tour, and got releases no problem.

“But then they said I shouldn’t play in the Indonesian Open at the end of last year. Come on. No thanks, I don’t want to play that game. Anyway, I’ve said all this before. It should be obvious why I’ve resigned.”

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