Gallacher slams Tiger’s advisors

FORMER Ryder Cup captain Bernard Gallacher insists Tiger Woods needs to change the management team around him.

Gallacher believes Woods’s entourage are partly to blame for the sex scandal which has engulfed his career.

Woods broke a three-month silence on Friday in a stage-managed apology for cheating on his wife Elin with the timing heavily criticised for diverting attention from the Accenture matchplay championship.

Gallacher said: “This is someone humbled, very remorseful, a shadow of his former self, a broken man.

“He has been badly handled by his management. Badly mentored. It was the wrong timing on Friday to do it during Accenture week. It was almost a cyncial attempt to undermine the tournament.

“Tiger needs to take control of his life a bit more and get better people around him.

“He’s got those sycophants around him but he’s also got lawyers and PR people and he needs to kick them into touch.”

Gallacher believes Woods needs to change his ways professionally as well as privately.

He said: “We know he needs to change himself extra maritally but he needs to change on the golf course as well.

“He’s been swearing, he’s been throwing golf clubs, spitting. His whole lifestyle needs to change. But we should give him a chance. I don’t think that he’s given any assurance at all that he might come back to golf. He may not come back to golf.

“Tim Finchem (US PGA tour commissioner) was seriously disappointed that Tiger wasn’t announcing at his press conference that he was going to play at Bay Hill and at the Masters.

“He’s made an enormous mistake and been very vulnerable off the golf course and that’s where these mentors and so-called flashy managers have not been in a positon to help and guide him.”

Woods’ New Zealand caddie Steve Williams insists nothing will change about how he reacts to comments from the crowd whenever the world number one returns.

Williams told reporters in Australia, where he is on holiday, that he will definitely be retaining his job and he will not tolerate any cheap-shots aimed at Woods.

“When I go back to work with Tiger Woods nothing will change,” he said. “My job is to give him the best information I can and get him around in the fewest possible strokes as I can.

“And, as I have always pointed out, it is to try and give him a level playing field. Nothing will change from that aspect. I won’t do anything differently. I won’t view him any differently. I will do the utmost best to be as professional as I can.”