{"id":604237,"date":"2026-08-25T15:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T15:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/604237\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T15:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T15:08:10","slug":"at-least-im-not-english-how-rory-mcilroy-and-lee-westwood-have-traded-insults-down-the-years-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/604237\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018At least I\u2019m not English\u2019 \u2013 How Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood have traded insults down the years \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe the most newsworthy thing about Lee Westwood having a go at Rory McIlroy<\/a> over the weekend was the fact that it made the news at all. You\u2019re dealing here with two golfers who have had more beef down the years than Salt Bae, Larry Goodman and Ronald McDonald put together. Any jawing between them has been dog-bites-man stuff for a long time now. <\/p>\n

It is, of course, a slow sports month in the content world so maybe that explains it. The Premier League is just starting back on this side of the pond, the NFL is imminent in the US \u2013 anything that feeds the machine through the grind of late August is going to get the last bit of juice extracted from it. The demise of LIV Golf<\/a> is a godsend in this respect.<\/p>\n

And so McIlroy was asked in his pre-tournament press conference at the BMW what he thought of the idea of LIV players coming back on the PGA Tour<\/a> and whether they would bring value. Like the scorpion who can\u2019t help but whip out its sting, Rory replied: \u201cI mean, I would argue, have they brought value to LIV?\u201d <\/p>\n

The clip went viral \u2013 or at least as viral as a golfer talking in a non-Major tournament\u2019s press conference can go viral \u2013 meaning that the LIV dudes were obviously going to be asked about it at their tournament later in the week. When asked, Westwood harrumphed that it was \u201c\u2026 just typical of Rory, really \u2013 not very well thought out\u201d. Cue headlines everywhere from Sky Sports to Golf Digest to, eh, The Chuson Daily in Seoul, South Korea.<\/p>\n

McIlroy and Westwood have been chirping at each other for well over a decade and a half at this stage. What started off as mostly good-natured piss-taking between stablemates who shared an agent grew increasingly scorpy over the years, before LIV drove a permanent wedge between them. Neither has been overly inclined to hide their disdain for each other for quite a while now.<\/p>\n

Golf is a small world and the professional end of it is a tiny enclave within that small world. However much the protagonists bitch behind each other\u2019s backs, it\u2019s reasonably rare for them to air anything vaguely off-colour in public. But Westwood has always been a welcome exception, frequently piercing a lot of the pomposity surrounding the old game.<\/p>\n

\"RoryRory McIlroy and Lee Westwood during a practice round ahead of the 2009 US PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota. Photograph: Sam Greenwood\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

So when his manager Chubby Chandler signed the up-and-coming prince of the sport in 2007, Westwood had no problem welcoming McIlroy to the fold, while at the same time reminding him that he was playing with the big boys now. When the pair of them were going head to head for the Dubai World Championship in 2009, McIlroy said in the build-up he was happy not to be playing with Westwood so he could concentrate on his own game. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing worse to say than that if you\u2019re Rory,\u201d Westwood said with no little glee after taking the title on the Sunday. \u201cHe will learn from that, and there\u2019s nothing better for me than a competitor to say they are glad they are not playing with me. I read it in the press. I wouldn\u2019t have said it, but I\u2019ve been on tour 16 years and he\u2019s been on tour three.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, Westwood was ranked number four in the world, while McIlroy had just that week broken into the top 10 for the first time. If it felt like a slightly needless gloat to some, it was mostly just Westwood being himself. He\u2019d been through massive ups and downs in his career and battled back from falling outside the top 300 in the world \u2013 he wouldn\u2019t be human if he didn\u2019t see the anointed one coming for his lunch without wanting to razz him a bit along the way.<\/p>\n

A bit less gracious was his response the following April after McIlroy\u2019s Augusta meltdown. \u201cI\u2019ve played with Rory and he does snap-hook under pressure,\u201d Westwood said, referring to the grisly driving that let McIlroy down in the infamous final round of the Masters. <\/p>\n

And as time passed, the pair got increasingly closer to the line with each other in their public utterances. When McIlroy was going out with Caroline Wozniacki, Westwood niggled him about being \u201chalf-Danish\u201d. McIlroy\u2019s response was cutting: \u201cAt least I\u2019m not English\u201d. <\/p>\n

Soon after, when McIlroy changed management companies to join Horizon Sport, Westwood took to Twitter to call it \u201ca bizarre decision\u201d. McIlroy responded by unfollowing both Westwood and Chandler \u2013 in the heady days of 2011, this more or less passed for a declaration of war. <\/p>\n

\"SergioSergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy and Ian Poulter celebrate Europe’s win over the USA at the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles in Scotland. Photograph: Ross Kinnaird\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

In time, it all calmed down and things ebbed and flowed between them for most of the 2010s. As Ryder Cup team-mates, they generally supported each other in public. When they met in the semi-finals of the World Match Play in 2012, McIlroy moved to dampen the chat that they were at each other\u2019s throats: \u201cHe\u2019s obviously a rival of mine on the golf course and he\u2019s one of the best players in the world and a great ball striker. It\u2019s totally fine. There\u2019s no ill feeling between me and him or Chubby or anyone. It\u2019s all been very, very positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

So much so that Westwood, always an inveterate Twitter user, regularly took to social media to defend McIlroy through the years that followed. Sometimes it was after Rory said something dumb in a press conference, sometimes it was when he would catch a few strays for not playing in an Irish Open. They were never friends but they weren\u2019t enemies either.<\/p>\n

And then LIV happened. And Westwood fell on one side of the divide, with McIlroy the figurehead on the other. Meaning that whatever latent tension there had been between them over the years now had a focus. It was never going to be pretty after that.<\/p>\n

For the next few years, McIlroy couldn\u2019t appear in public without being asked a LIV question and he very rarely dodged them. When he said in 2022 that he felt a sense of betrayal from former Ryder Cup colleagues, it didn\u2019t take much sleuthing to work out who he meant. He meant Westwood, Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, etc. <\/p>\n

And so it goes. Westwood has had a swing back at McIlroy on plenty of occasions. He has described LIV\u2019s detractors \u2013 with McIlroy chief among them \u2013 as being brainwashed, as being hypocrites, all the rest of it. When McIlroy called the new LIV format for 2026 peculiar, you could almost hear Westwood\u2019s eye-roll from miles away. \u201cI don\u2019t pay too much attention to what Rory says, really. He\u2019ll change his mind next week.\u201d <\/p>\n

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