Westwood and Pelley to face off at LIV hearing
Lee Westwood is due to face down the DP World Tour in a legal hearing in London this week that will effectively decide if the golfers who joined LIV Golf can be banned by their home circuit.
The three-strong arbitration panel at Sport Resolutions started hearing five days of arguments yesterday, with the focus solely on the Tour’s “conflicting event” release regulation and Wentworth HQ’S ability to enforce that rule.
If the Tour wins then it will be permitted to suspend the rebels and ultimately stop them from qualifying for, and playing in, the Ryder Cup. This arbitration dispute was initially thought only to feature the teams of lawyers from the two sides, but Telegraph Sport has learnt that not only will Tour chief executive Keith Pelley be involved in person, but also Westwood, the former world No1.
That could be an awkward encounter, to say the least, after the duo’s cross-media spat in Dubai last month. Westwood, a three-time winner of the Tour’s order of merit and with a quarter of a century of playing for Europe in the Ryder Cup, accused the management of “stoking tensions” with an “antiliv email to all the players” he labelled “propaganda”, before Pelley hit back claiming “unfair comments” had “upset the staff ”.
When asked about his involvement, Westwood sounded determined to front up, saying: “We all gave written statements and thought that might be enough, but I have been asked to give evidence.”
Westwood is one of 13 players appealing against the sanctions the Tour issued when the rebel golfers requested “conflicting event” releases from the DP World Tour – formerly the European Tour – to play the inaugural LIV event in St Albans last June. Those requests were denied, but the players competed at Centurion Club regardless and were fined £100,000 and suspended from the Scottish Open.
Initially, Ian Poulter, Adrian Otaegui and Justin Harding appealed against the punishments and they were stayed pending a substantive appeal, allowing the players to compete in Tour events throughout.