While the golf world came to terms with life without Tiger Woods for a while longer, former European Ryder Cup captain Bernard Gallacher turned on Sunday on “sycophants” in the superstar’s entourage.
Woods emerged from hiding on Friday to own up to his personal failings, but he left fans and other golfers guessing as to when he would return to the game he has long dominated.
“I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don’t know when that day will be,” the 14-time major champion said. “I don’t rule out that it will be this year.”
Gallacher, speaking to BBC radio, was strongly critical of the Woods entourage for allowing him to break his three-month silence at the Accenture Match Play championship, the biggest event of the golfing year so far.
“Tiger needs to take control of his life a bit more and get better people around him,” Gallacher said. “He’s got those sycophants around him but he’s also got lawyers and PR people and he needs to kick them into touch. 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 cynical attempt to undermine the tournament.”
Since Woods announced on Dec. 11 that he was taking an “indefinite break” from golf, speculation has raged over the future of the man who has been linked to affairs with 14 women. An appearance at the first major of the year, the Masters at Augusta National in April, now appears unlikely.
“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,” Gallacher told BBC radio.
Woods said only that he was heading back on Saturday to his therapy program, where he has already spent 45 days.
“I don’t want to minimize the long-term impact,” US PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said. “But the good news from today is that, one, he plans to return; two, he could return as early as this year; and three, he clearly has taken the first very visible step in the road to that return. So that pleases all of us a very great deal.”
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