After a week in which he was stung for daring to suggest that an element of the American crowd was abusive and unsporting at the Ryder Cup, Lee Westwood moved into diplomatic mode at The Belfry yesterday. Well, almost.

Westwood, who moved to the top of the leaderboard on six under par at the fog-delayed Quinn Insurance British Masters after a second round of 70, was asked what he thought about news that Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and Robert Allenby were planning to take up European Tour membership next year.

Could it be that they were simply chasing the money on offer in the Race to Dubai in 2009 - $1.6million (about £870,000) to the winner of the grand finale, the Dubai World Championship, plus a further $10million to be shared between the top 15 finishers in the season-ending standings, the No1 picking up an additional $2million - or were they fully committing to Europe? “You're talking 20 million bucks. You'd be stupid not to join,” Allenby, an Australian who plays full time in the United States, had said the day before.

Westwood pointed out that world ranking points available at tournaments would increase with stronger fields, which is a good thing. “It benefits everybody on tour,” he said. “It's great to have the top players in the world playing this tour.” And then, knowing the answer only too well, he asked: “Does that mean they are relinquishing their membership of the PGA Tour?”

To be a member of the PGA Tour in the US, players have to play a minimum of 15 events. The European Tour, by contrast, seeks a commitment to 11 tournaments, which is measly when considering that seven of those are made up of the four majors and three World Golf Championships (WGC) events, all of which, bar the Open Championship, are played in the US.

This means that Mickelson, the world No2, could play the HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai in November (for which he is paid a handsome appearance fee), the Scottish Open (his traditional warm-up for the Open) at Loch Lomond and one other, before pitching up in Dubai for his eleventh and final event.

The idea of the Race to Dubai is to strengthen the European Tour. Were, say, Mickelson or Singh to waltz off with the lion's share of the cash, having played more than half the events in the US, this would surely defeat the object.

“Playing your 11 events, according to our rules, is committing to the tour,” Westwood said, refusing to be drawn on the suggestion that the average European Tour player may resent men such as Mickelson taking most of the money. “It's for the [tournament] committee to say [if the number should be increased] and they are discussing it. They know my views.”

However, there was one passing shot he could not resist. Explaining that he would not be playing at the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship in Tucson, Arizona, next year, he said that he might reconsider when “they start playing World Golf Championships around the rest of the world”. Ouch.

A European Tour record was equalled yesterday with three holes in one on the same day, from Phillip Archer and Jeev Milkha Singh at the 7th and Álvaro Quirós at the 12th.