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Westwood laughs off McIlroy rivalry

Golf: Lee Westwood goes head to head with Tiger Woods at the start of the PGA Tour’s Florida Swing tomorrow

Wed Feb 29 2012 - 00:00

Golf:Lee Westwood goes head to head with Tiger Woods at the start of the PGA Tour's Florida Swing tomorrow. But there was still no escaping questions about a possible rivalry with former stablemate Rory McIlroy on the eve of the Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens.

The two Ryder Cup stars clashed in the semi-finals of the Accenture Match Play Championship last Sunday, with McIlroy coming from three down to win on the 17th green. The US Open champion then failed to take the world number one spot off Luke Donald by losing the final to American Hunter Mahan, but with Donald now on a week off McIlroy will go top with victory this Sunday.

“If I am going to have a rivalry I would like it to be with Rory because he’s arguably the hottest player on the planet at the moment,” Westwood said when questioned about it today. “I am willing to go along with that if you want to write about it. I’ve been around a long time now — this is my 19th year out here —

and there’s been various rivalries thrown at me during my career.

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“I really don’t pay much attention to them. You learn through playing golf for a long time that the only thing you can control is your own game. That’s all I try to do. I figure that if I’m going to keep playing well and getting in contention for tournaments Rory’s pretty much going to be in a similar position, so we’re going to be playing together a lot.

“It’s going to go backwards and forwards. One of us will get the better of the other, as I did in Dubai two weeks ago (Westwood came second, McIlroy fifth), and then Rory got the better of me last week. That’s just the way it is.”

Westwood’s defeat to American Mark Wilson in the third place play-off in Tucson means he cannot regain the number one position this week. But what matters more to both of them is proving their games are moving in the right direction with the US Masters now little more than a month away.

British Open champion Darren Clarke, Graeme McDowell and Justin Rose also hope to hit back from their first-round exits in the first of this season’s world championships. The second is coming up next week in Miami and the only way Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington could be there is by winning this week.

At 87th in the world Harrington cannot make the world top 50 in one jump, but the top 10 on the FedEx Cup standings earn places in the WGC-Cadillac Championship as well.