ATLANTA — Former world No. 1 Lee Westwood said he only could laugh at the sweeping changes the PGA Tour announced Wednesday in response to the growing threat of LIV Golf.
Westwood, who was among the first PGA Tour members to defect to the Saudi Arabian-financed LIV Golf Invitational Series, said his former tour is borrowing a lot of ideas from his new one. «I laugh at what the PGA Tour players have come up with,'' Westwood told Golf Digest in an interview published Thursday. „It's just a copy of what LIV is doing.
There are a lot of hypocrites out there. They all say LIV is not competitive. They all point at the no-cut aspect of LIV and the short fields.“ On Wednesday, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced that the PGA Tour's top players had committed to compete in at least 20 tournaments, including 13 elevated events that will have average purses of $20 million.
Unlike LIV Golf events, most PGA Tour tournaments are 72 holes and have 36-hole cuts. LIV Golf events are 54 holes with no cuts. »Now, funnily enough, they are proposing 20 events that look a lot like LIV," Westwood said. «Hopefully, at some point they will all choke on their words.