'Unemployed' Lee Westwood Still Undecided On Future As He Defends LIV Golf Move
A "currently unemployed" Lee Westwood won't be annoucing where he's playing golf next once he's decided his next move, but it won't be with LIV Golf as he explained why he wasn't
Lee Westwood has no regrets about joining LIV Golf, where he's "made a fortune" since signing up, but will not be playing in 2.0 despite thinking it could well get off the ground.
Westwood joined fierce LIV Golf critic Eddie Pepperell's podcast 'The Chipping Forecast' to talk all things LIV and his future - which remains undecided as yet.
The former World No.1 insisted he'd have been stupid not to take the LIV cash that was offered, responded to the criticism he's received since then and fully backed his decision.
He also explained what his beef with the DP World Tour was really about, why LIV Golf 1.0 failed, why 2.0 could succeed and had his final say on all the 'growing the game' talk that so often follows him around.
Westwood 'made a fortune' on LIV Golf
“A massive financial package was put in front of me - I would have been stupid [to turn it down],” Westwood told the Chipping Forecast about the major reason for signing for LIV in the first place.
“That wasn’t solely the reason that I signed up with LIV. I have no problem saying part of it was financial. I’ve made a fortune over the last four and a half years.”
With huge signing bonuses and huge prize money, the Saudi PIF ploughed upwards of $5 billion into LIV before deciding to withdraw funding, leaving Scott O'Neil to take the company into bankruptcy to clear the decks and try to get LIV 2.0 off the ground.
Westwood says "there was too much waste" in LIV 1.0 which led to its failure, but does believe "there's a business there" with 2.0.
He also reiterated his stance that LIV was never given a chance to work with the two main tours from the very start.
"They’ll still have great tournaments, which kind of takes me back to the very start of it - there was room in the calendar for 14 events but how much was the discussion had?
"It felt like when LIV came on the scene, the door was pretty much slammed shut straight away.”
Westwood undecided on his future
The list of players to have signed up for LIV Golf 2.0 and those who've ruled it out is pretty one-sided so far, and while Westwood won't be continuing with LIV he hasn't settled on his future plans yet.
“I currently am unemployed," said Westwood. "I haven’t signed up to anything anywhere. There’s nothing been presented to me that was agreeable for LIV 2.0. There’s still a lot of things on that that would need fine-tuning.
"So, yeah, I haven't made a decision on anything yet.
“I'm yet to have everything put out in front of me. I've not really had any sort of dialogue with the European Tour. I know that if I sign up on the 12th of November, I've then got to serve a 10 tournament suspension, which takes me through the South African Open.
“I've looked at the schedule after that. I feel like the first event I could play on the European Tour would be maybe Turkey, which is the first week in May. So I haven't looked any further than that.”
And even when he does decide where he'll play, he won't be posting a statement on his future like many other golfers have done.
“I’ve seen everybody’s statement and I just don’t get it. I won’t be making a statement. It’s nobody’s business, but mine, where I go and play golf,” he added. “And I don’t feel like I’ve got to put a press release out where I go and work.”
Growing the game, DP World Tour beef & facing critics
The 'growing the game' line was trotted out by many members of LIV Golf, so often in fact that it became a running joke among critics - but Westwood fiercely defended his record on that matter
“I’ve been playing the game of golf for 33 years," he told The Chipping Forecast. "And I have been growing the game for 30 odd years. I’ve played all around the world, which I consider is growing the game.
"When I’ve been world number one, I’ve gone to other places around the world. So that insinuation that people weren’t growing the game on LIV - a lot of us have been growing the game for years.”
Westwood has had some strong words about the DP World Tour becoming a 'feeder' for the PGA Tour, and he's still not convinced how healthy the relationship is.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens at the end of 2027 with future funding from the PGA Tour," he said. "What they will ask of the European Tour, and what assets they will want in return for dollars."
And as for those numerous high-profile social media spats: “I don’t have any regrets about what I said. I probably could have phrased them slightly different,” he conceded.
But overall he's more than comfortable with how he made his decisions and how he handled himself - feeling some of the responses that came his way were over the top.
“It’s just a game. Everybody got way too emotional and wound up about it. I am comfortable in my own skin. I made all the decisions that were right for Lee Westwood. And when you’re making decisions in life, you got to make the right decisions for you.”
