Westwood blasts 'hypocrites', claims PGA changes only copy LIV Golf

England's Lee Westwood says PGA Tour changes announced for next season are simply copies of what the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit is doing.

PGA commissioner Jay Monahan said this week at the Tour Championship that tour players have agreed to compete in 20 events next season, included 12 "elevated" stops with $20 million in prize money and minimum season pay amounts for fully exempt players.

Westwood, who jumped to LIV Golf for its record $25 million purses and 54-hole events, told Golf Digest in an interview published on Friday that he sees the PGA as trying to duplicate what LIV Golf has already done.

"I laugh at what the PGA Tour players have come up with," Westwood told the magazine. "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. Now, funnily enough, they are proposing 20 events that look a lot like LIV.

"Hopefully, at some point they will all choke on their words. And hopefully, they will be held to account as we were in the early days."

Several reports say as many as seven more players will jump from the PGA to LIV Golf after this week's Tour Championship in Atlanta.

LIV Golf returns with events next month in Boston and Chicago.

Three-time major winner Jordan Spieth said LIV Golf's formation was a spark to the PGA's changes, which will ensure top-ranked players face each other more often.

"It's impossible to not think that that was a catalyst for continuing to want to make sure the players that we have on the PGA Tour now stay on the PGA Tour," Spieth said.

"Would this have gone that direction this soon? Maybe not, but to say that it wouldn't have happened in general, I'm not sure.

"But I