Why Did Westwood And Poulter Miss Open Qualifying?

Lee Westwood will miss his first Open in 28 years after deciding to miss this week' Final Qualifying events ahead of the showpiece at Royal Liverpool.

Fellow LIV players Brandon Grace, Charl Schwartzel and Westwood's team-mate Laurie Canter all made it through, while the likes of Sergio Garcia and Graeme McDowell just missed out, but Westwood and Poulter opted not to take their chances on Wednesday.

"I'm 47. Lee is 50. It's not easy to play 36 holes, travel back obviously from Europe. Obviously I'd like to have made the Open Championship, but I'd like to have made it obviously through the World Ranking points system, which we know is obviously not there," explained Poulter.

"It's about having the right amount of time off to be fresh and ready to play golf. I've got a big tournament this week to play (at LIV London). Team Majesticks need me as fit as possible. Being 47, I'm not a spring chicken anymore, I've played quite a lot of Opens.

"It's one of those decisions that I had to make, and I made the right decision golf for my golf. 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."

Part of Westwood's thinking was that he was hoping to play in the Senior Open at Royal Porthcawl but he was banned from that due to alleged unpaid LIV fines.

"I sit down at the start of the year, do a schedule, and see when the qualifying was for the Open Championship. I knew this (LIV London) was going to be a busy week, knew that I played Valderrama, thought it was a good opportunity to play my first ever seniors event and it be the Senior Open Championship, which is the week after the Open.

"So I'd entered and committed to that. Unfortunately, the Senior 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.

"My goal was to go and play in the Senior Open the week after, being 50 and it being my first opportunity. I thought that was going to give me the best opportunity to perform well and have a chance at winning that. You can't always be right. There's always ifs and buts in there. But yeah, I'd planned a schedule."