Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Lee Westwood has been very vocal in making his position known on the controversy between LIV Golf and European players playing in LIV Golf. However, the Englishman may have gone a bit overboard in his latest charge on the subject.Westwood recently gave an interview to iNews in which he once again addressed the exclusion of himself and some of his LIV Golf colleagues from Ryder Cup eligibility.Highlighting what he sees as inconsistencies in the way the DP World Tour has handled the issue, the 51-year-old did not hesitate to throw fellow Saudi-backed league stars such as Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton under the bus.”The Tour have not treated everyone the same way,” he said. “They have not treated [Jon] Rahm and [Tyrrell] Hatton the same way they treated me, Poults [Ian Poulter] and [Henrik] Stenson and the like. They have manipulated the situation.””They [Rahm and Hatton] haven’t paid their fines either, but their appeal dates have been pushed back until after the Ryder Cup. They have basically kicked the can down the road for those players. They keep fining them but they will be eligible for the team. This is another aspect that has to be addressed if we ever sit around the table.”
Lee Westwood of England and team Europe, Sergio Garcia of Spain and team Europe, Jon Rahm of Spain and team Europe, and vice-captain Luke Donald of England and team Europe watch during Sunday Singles Matches…
Lee Westwood of England and team Europe, Sergio Garcia of Spain and team Europe, Jon Rahm of Spain and team Europe, and vice-captain Luke Donald of England and team Europe watch during Sunday Singles Matches of the 43rd Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits on September 26, 2021 in Kohler, Wisconsin.
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Rahm and Hatton have used various means to avoid, at least temporarily, the fines and suspensions imposed by the DP World Tour on players who have gone to LIV Golf.The truth is that, on the one hand, they managed to play the minimum of four DP World Tour tournaments in 2024 to keep their tour card and. On the other hand, they have had results that keep them in the orbit of the attention of the European captain, Luke Donald.An interesting case is that of Sergio Garcia, who initially refused to pay the fines and resigned his membership of the circuit, but recently decided to change his stance to be eligible for the Ryder Cup.Westwood, for his part, feels he has supported the Tour more than the Tour has supported him.”I have £857k [approximately $1.13M] worth of fines that I appealed against,” Westwood said.”The appeal went the way of the Tour so I resigned my membership because I wasn’t prepared to keep getting fined. I would love to sit down with them and carve a way to come back together.””I have supported the Tour since the early 90s. During Covid I was one of the few to support their tournaments. Everybody was going back to America to play there because it was easier. I played all the little ones, but they just seem to have forgotten that.”
Westwood is the eighth most successful player in DP World Tour history with 25 titles. His Ryder Cup career as a player was no less successful, with 11 appearances and seven victories.However, at the time of joining LIV Golf, he had been winless for two and a half years, and in his most recent Ryder Cup appearance (2021), he managed just one point in three matches, earned by defeating Harris English in singles.In contrast, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton were two of the world’s top golf stars when they joined LIV Golf and have not lost that status to this date.Rahm, a double major winner, won two league tournaments in 2024 and finished as the season’s individual champion. The Englishman, meanwhile, has won once in the league and twice in the LIV postseason, including the highly coveted Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in 2024 and the Hero Dubai Desert Classic in 2025.As they say, winning takes care of everything.More Golf: Shane Lowry Details Tiger Woods’ ‘Chess-Like’ Approach to the Masters
