Former World No.1 Lee Westwood feels the resumption of the Official World Golf Ranking ‘doesn’t seem fair’ with the PGA Tour the only professional tour to start back up so far amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial CC in Texas marked the return of professional golf and the OWGR decided to unfreeze the points system with the resumption of action on the PGA Tour.
Worldwide Golf spoke exclusively to Westwood on the topic after current World No.1 Rory McIlroy said the European players who opted not to travel to the United States for the PGA Tour’s restart should not complain about losing out on world ranking points.
“Rory’s entitled to his opinion but what he fails to explain in there is that only handful of European Tour players are eligible for those PGA Tour events,” said the 2020 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship winner. “European players ranked from 50th upwards couldn’t get in those events and that’s the issue with the World Ranking starting up.
“You’ve got all these American players playing in these events for World Ranking points and they’re going to go past the Europeans in the OWGR because they have no tournaments to compete in. The World Ranking is very important in regards to getting into the Majors and the World Golf Championships and that to me doesn’t seem fair that the Europeans, South Africans and Australians that play on the European Tour lose out purely because of a global pandemic that’s hitting the world.
“It seems like the rest of the world are treating this pandemic a more seriously than the United States. You listen to people who talk about where the last PGA Tour event was (Hilton Head Island) and they say the area is open with people eating in restaurants and the beaches are packed while the rest of the world is still basically on lockdown.
“I did send Rory a text and we had a little chat about his comments. He’s probably had a rethink.”
