Lee Westwood has found the recent changes the PGA Tour has announced in the wake of the launch of LIV Golf to be comical.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan revealed on Wednesday a number of immediate changes, including a minimum salary of $500,000 for all players, a new average purse of $20million to keep pace with LIV, and immediate lifetime membership for golfers when they reach 20 wins – rather than the initial 15 years needed.
The Tour chief is believed to have given the green light to the changes as the battle against the Saudi-backed breakaway series, LIV, continues.
Former Ryder Cup hero Westwood was one of the first to defect to the rebel tour, teeing it up at the inaugural event in St Albans, London and captaining his team, the Majesticks, at the second and third events of the series.
The former World No. 1 has now slammed the PGA Tour’s changes as he branded his former tour a copycat of his new one and slammed his former peers ‘hypocrites’.
‘I laugh at what the PGA Tour players have come up with,’ Westwood told Golf Digestin 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, Monahan alsodeclared that ‘top players’ have committed to compete in at least 20 PGA Tour events per year, with 12 of the tournaments now classed as ‘elevated events’.
The elevated events, which will be announced in due course, will join the FedEx St Jude Championship, BMW Championship, Tour Championship/FedEx Cup, The Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational, The Memorial Tournament, WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship and the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
