LIV Golf's Lee Westwood slams rankings system as 'mockery' - ESPN

Lee Westwood's tie for 34th at The Open Championship vaulted him 3,759 spots in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Now at No. 930, Westwood is now back ahead of his son, Sam, a mini-tour player who currently sits 2,759th. That served as Exhibit 1 for the Englishman's rant against the world rankings system.

«I think that just proves that without world ranking points it makes a bit of a mockery of the system,» Westwood said Wednesday ahead of this week's LIV Golf UK event.

The comments came after the league reapplied for submission to the OWGR last month. That submission currently is under review.

LIV originally applied for accreditation in July of 2022, shortly after the league launched, but was denied. LIV golfers can earn ranking points only by competing in major championships and international tour events.

With limited ability to amass points via the DP World Tour and other tours, LIV players like Westwood have continued to plummet down the OWGR. Dustin Johnson, who spent 135 weeks at No. 1, dropped as low as 907th before a T23 last week vaulted him back up to 571st.

The current top 50 includes only two LIV players: No. 16 Bryson DeChambeau and No. 21 Tyrrell Hatton of England.

Westwood applauds LIV's recent second submission and believes that without earning OWGR, the four major championships will have to alter their processes to include more LIV players in the future.

«I think mainly it relates back to wanting the best players in the major championships, not wanting this conversation where there's a few people missing out because we don't get world ranking points on LIV,» he said.

«We either start to get world ranking points on LIV or the major championships have to revise their qualification system, which they seem —