Lee Westwood has branded changes to the PGA Tour as “just a copy” of the controversial Saudi Arabian-backed breakaway LIV Golf series.
Top players will play in all 12, and at least 20 events, across the season.
“I laugh at what the PGA Tour players have come up with,” said Westwood, who resigned from the PGA Tour to take part in the first LIV event in June.
Speaking to Golf Digest, the former world number one added: “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.
“Now, funnily enough, they are proposing 20 events that look a lot like LIV. And hopefully, they will be held to account as we were in the early days.”
The 20 events comprise of the dozen PGA Tour events that the top players have committed to, the four major championships, the PGA Tour’s flagship Players Championship, and three others that they players can choose.
The $20m prize fund matches the prize fund on offer at LIV events for the individual competition, with LIV offering an extra $5m for the team element at their tournaments.
Westwood is still a member of the European DP World Tour – where he was won 25 events – and says he intends to play in his 29th consecutive BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, which starts on Thursday, 7 September.
However, he is “not convinced by the strategic alliance” with the PGA Tour.
“I’ve seen how the PGA Tour has behaved over the years,” said Westwood.
“There’s not been much ‘give’. All the PGA Tour has done since Tiger came on tour is up the prize purses. In turn, that has taken all the best players from Europe away from the European Tour.
“They’ve had to play in the States, taking all their world ranking points with them. That was their strategy: ‘Put up the money, get all the players, hog all the world ranking points’, which becomes self-perpetuating.
“What we have seen over the last few months is just LIV doing what the PGA Tour has done for the last 25 years.”
LIV Golf is holding eight invitational events in 2022 with a prize fund of £200m.
A 14-tournament LIV Golf league will start in 2023 when players will continue to be split into teams for the 54-hole three-day tournaments which feature shotgun starts and no cut.
The changes to the PGA Tour came after Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods met other top players to discuss the threat of LIV Golf.
Woods and McIlroy have also launched a new “high-tech league” – intended to appeal to younger fans – that will begin in 2024.
The league, taking place in partnership with the PGA Tour, will feature six, three-man teams competing on “a data-rich, virtual course” in a stadium setting.
In a post on social media, LIV Golf chief executive Greg Norman said the PGA Tour’s changes were “a day late and a dollar short”.
