English golfer Lee Westwood appears to have targeted Queens Park Rangers midfielder Joey Barton in a Twitter rant against "haters".

The 40-year-old's account was filled with an array of angry messages, one of which claimed that his "trolls" should be "locked up by the twitter police".

Westwood later hit out at Barton, tweeting: "Joey . Back down lad. You can't compete! Not on just 80k a week ! Haha!"

Barton replied to the abuse by writing: "Right, got to go training. Twitter was fun this morning! 300+ blocks and A top sportsman, maybe tipsy and tweeting. Decent."

Westwood, who slipped out of the running following an opening round of 66 at the US PGA Championship over the weekend, later claimed that his account had not been hacked, but that he was just being "honest".