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Sir Nick Faldo has launched a stinging broadside at former rival Greg Norman and the players who have joined his LIV Golf League.
Speaking to Sky Sports News, the six-time major champion delivered a blunt assessment of the new Saudi-funded enterprise and those attached to it.
A UK arbitrator will rule next month on whether or not the likes of Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia can continue to play on the DP World Tour – and, by extension, the Ryder Cup – having joined LIV.
If it was up to Faldo, they’d be shown the door once and for all.
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“They’re done,” said the Englishman. “It’s a rival tour. If you work for a company for 20 years and you then leave to go to a rival company, I can promise you your picture won’t still be on the wall. You’ve moved on. Fine, off you go.
“They made that decision and I’m sure they knew it was going to cost them. They were playing the maths game.
“They were getting a huge chunk of money up front, and they knew it was going to lose them sponsors, but they thought ‘I still win‘.”
On the prospect of any of those players representing Europe in the Ryder Cup this year, Faldo said: “They shouldn’t be there because they’ve gone off and you’ve got to move on.
“They’re all at the age where Europe needs to find a new breed of 25-year-olds that can play half a dozen or more Ryder Cups, and I think we’re going to have that.
“It really gets me when they fly across the world to a country that’s been playing golf for 100 plus years and say, ‘we’re growing the game of golf.’
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He added: “If they keep saying they want to grow the game of golf, go and take it to new regions. Countries in the early days of being interested in golf now. Try that rather than just trying to antagonise everybody.”
As for the man behind it all, LIV CEO Greg Norman, Faldo was withering in his views.
“He was a great golfer. He really was a charismatic, exciting golfer and he’s absolutely wrecked all of that.”
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