PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. ?With many participants touting this week's Honda Classic as a "home game," one player that may surprise in making that claim is England's Lee Westwood.
During the offseason, Westwood moved his family to Old Palm, just down the road from this week's host venue in Palm Beach Gardens. The club, which also boasts Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen as residents, features a practice facility that Westwood described as "incredible."
"I had been looking to move for a couple years," he said of the decision to relocate from England to Florida. "Just getting frustrated with the weather in the winters, not being able to work as hard as I would have liked."
With his operations now based out of Palm Beach Gardens, Westwood feels better prepared for a full season on the PGA Tour, with this week marking his fourth consecutive week of competition in the U.S.
"I expect to feel better this year because of less travel and going through time zones," he noted. "It becomes frustrating to play a couple of weeks and then have to fly back to England and go through time zones and then come back and do it all over again."
While Westwood says that he keeps tabs now on American sports, namely basketball and the NFL, he pointed out that the move has not prevented him from watching English soccer games.
"I probably get more football (soccer) on TV here than you do back in England," he added. "Here it's on at 10 in the morning, which seems a much more reasonable time to watch football."
When asked, the former world No. 1 indicated that his family did not require much convincing before agreeing to the move to Florida.
"It wasn't a tough sell," he explained. "'Do you want to go live by the sea and the sun, by the beach?' It was a pretty quick take up."