Why are Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood skipping The Open Championship? Real reason explored
The final major of the men's golf season, The Open Championship, is less that two weeks away. Before the tournament begins, LIV Golfers Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood shared their respective reasons about the decision to skip the event.
Niether of the golfers have won the major tournament nor they rank in top 50 in the OWGR to get direct entry at the event at Royal Liverpool Golf Club. Their only way to get to the upcoming major was to perform at a qualifying event. But they skipped that too.
Both European golfers, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood, decided to skip the qualying events as their dates collided with the LIV Golf Andalucia event.
Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter share their repective reason on skipping The Open Championship 2023
English professional golfer Lee Westwood turned 50 in April this year. He spoke with Golf Mothly and shared that he did not have any plans competing for The Open Championship even at the start of the year.
Westwood added that he knew the qualying events for final major of the season would be in between of two busy weeks. So, he already decided to compete for his first senior event, The Seniors Open Championship.
He said:
"My idea and goal was to go and play in the Seniors Open Championship the week after, being 50 and it be my first opportunity. I thought that was going to give me the best opportunity to perform well and have a chance at winning that."
But the organizers barred him from playing at the event. Therefore, Westwood is now more committed to plat at LIV Golf's events.
"So I'd entered and committed to that. Unfortunately, the Seniors Open doesn't look to be as open as the Open Championship, so was barred from playing in that. So now got three weeks off, and then I'll go into more LIV events," Lee Westwood said.
His fellow countryman Ian Poulter, on other hand, shred that he had missed number of majors in his career and all he thinks is if he could have had direct qualification at The Open Championship.
He emphasized on getting OWGR points and move up in the rankings to automatically qualify.
Later on, Ian Poulter added that he has 14 events on his calender already and it is probably a shorter season he has ever played. But he agreed with Lee Westwood about The Open Championship qualifying events being sandwiched between two LIV Golf events.
He said:
"I feel better, fresher, stronger, when I'm competing here on LIV, and as Lee said, if the qualifying date wasn't the date it was, maybe I'd have qualified or attempted to try and qualify. But to sandwich 36 holes right in the middle of two tournaments that I'm working hard to play well on didn't make sense for me at the time."
The Open Championship 2023 is the fourth and final major of this season. It will be a 72-hole strokeplay event which will be played at Royal Liverpool Golf Club from July 20 to July 23.