Westwood to skip early PGA events due to travel restrictions: 'Not worth it'

Lee Westwood's resurgence into the top 50 of the world golf rankings - he's 31st, to be exact - automatically qualified him for the first two events on the PGA Tour schedule once play resumes.

But due to current travel restrictions that would require the Englishman to self-quarantine for 14 days after flying to the U.S., and then do it again when he returns home, he doesn't feel that participating in the Charles Schwab Challenge or the RBC Heritage would be worth it.

"Right now, I won't be playing them," Westwood told Golf Channel's Todd Lewis. "Not with having to leave here two weeks before, quarantine, then play the two tournaments, then come back here and quarantine again."

Westwood is the host of the British Masters, which is set for July 30 to Aug. 2 as the first event on the European Tour's restart plan.

"It's six weeks for two tournaments," Westwood said. "To me, that's just not worth it, and it's not worth taking the risk if everybody thinks that those kind of precautions have got to be in place. I don't feel like golf's a priority if it's that severe."

The 47-year-old's commitment to the British Masters also means he likely won't play in the PGA Championship scheduled to begin Aug. 6.

Fellow Englishman and world No. 10 Tommy Fleetwood is in the same boat as Westwood. Fleetwood is electing to skip the first few Tour events because of the amount of time he'd spend apart from his family.

"It isn’t impossible for me to play," Fleetwood said, according to Golf Digest's Daniel Rapaport. "Far from it. But two weeks of quarantine at both ends of a trip across the Atlantic is a huge issue. That factor really made my decision for me.

"To go over and play in the three events scheduled for June would eat up seven weeks of my life. That's more than double what a trip like that would normally take. I wouldn't want to be away from my wife and kids for that long."