PGA Tour and DP World Tour face a big call on Garcia and Westwood

The PGA Tour and DP World Tour now have an obvious decision to make with the likes of Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood.

Garcia, Westwood and Ian Poulter were three of the most outspoken supporters of LIV Golf over the past few years.

They left the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour in 2022 to join the Saudi-backed league.

Garcia has been the only one of the three to win on LIV, with victories in Spain in 2024 and Hong Kong in 2025.

Now LIV Golf looks set to fold, or at least operate on a much smaller scale.

The English duo and the Spaniard have abandoned ship.

That comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the story.

Garcia, Poulter and Westwood were following the money when they joined LIV, and now they are doing exactly the same thing by trying to return.

But the tours now face a question that goes beyond simple reinstatement.

The decision is not just about whether to let them back.

It is about whether players who behaved with what one report calls "appallingly arrogant behavior" deserve a second chance.

The source material makes clear that the biggest mistake those players made was treating anyone who criticized LIV Golf like idiots.

Westwood, Poulter and Garcia specifically talked down to anyone who had a bad thing to say about the league.

It was not just that they criticized them — it was the manner in which they did it.

They took a position of being superior.

Now the tours have to decide if actions have consequences.

The argument in the reporting is that their actions should prevent them from ever playing on the DP World Tour or the PGA Tour again.

That may sound harsh, but the reporting frames it as a matter of getting what you deserve.

Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter, in this view, do not deserve a second chance because of the ignobility of their behavior.

There is another practical point in the reporting.

None of them actually have anything to offer at the very highest level anymore.

Their games have dropped off drastically from the pre-LIV years.

The DP World Tour does not need them, and the PGA Tour certainly does not need them.

They were all so committed to LIV Golf, which is fair enough.

But they were dishonest about their reasons for joining the league in the first place.

And there is no doubt in the reporting that they should have shown more humility than they did.

Meanwhile, Westwood has publicly admitted he is currently unemployed.

On The Chipping Forecast podcast, the 53-year-old Englishman bluntly stated his current situation.

Being a former World No. 1 in this state creates a precarious spot with no tour for the upcoming season.

The uncertainty stems from a massive shift in the golf world as LIV Golf attempts to launch a new model called LIV 2.0 without its original funding from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

Several high-profile players have already left the league.

Westwood's case is unique due to a hard choice tied to a specific date.

He made these comments on the podcast recorded on November 3.

This situation is rare for a player who joined the Saudi-backed tour in 2022 and served as co-captain of Majesticks GC.

Westwood stated that no proposal he favors has been made for the new version as the league changes direction without its primary financial backer.

"There's nothing that's been presented to me that was agreeable for LIV 2.0," he told The Straits Times.

He has not heard whether he must sign after the deadlines have passed.

"There are still a lot of things that would need fine-tuning; deadlines have come and gone, and I've heard nothing on whether I have to sign or not," he said.

Westwood now faces a critical deadline to reapply for membership on the DP World Tour.

A November 12 deadline requires him to notify the tour if he wishes to play in the 2027 season.

But the price of return is steep for a player who left in 2022.

The Straits Times reports that returning would require serving a 10-tournament suspension.

Such a suspension prevents him from playing until spring 2027.

On the podcast, Westwood made the timeline clear.

"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," he said.

The Turkish Airlines Open in early May is likely to be his first game back.

The gap is visible to him after he has already reviewed the schedule.

"I've looked at the schedule, and I feel like the first event I could play in on the DP World Tour will be the Turkish Airlines Open," he told GolfMagic.

Sitting on the sidelines for that long is significant for a player of his age.

The financial pressure to stay in the game has changed for Westwood.

During his time on the breakaway tour, he earned a fortune.

It would have been foolish for him not to accept the money when it was offered.

But now the landscape has shifted entirely.

DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings recently claimed that LIV Golf had the intention of destroying the DP World Tour.

"We have to protect the Tour against an entity who spent, so we are told, over $7 billion, with one of their aims being to 'destroy the DP World Tour'," the tour chief said.

Rory McIlroy backed that claim at the Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship on Wednesday.

"I agree with Guy," said McIlroy.

"They took players; they took sponsors; they turned professional golf into an arms race."

"They were going around Augusta saying they wanted to destroy the European Tour."

"Yeah, I agree with everything."