He did not admit explicitly to cheating on his wife, but Tiger Woods’ image as a perfect family man and faultless ambassador for golf was in tatters Wednesday after he issued an apology for “personal sins” that had “let my family down.”
As fresh allegations emerged that he had affairs with two women–one of whom provided a message he apparently left on her phone — Woods broke his silence with a statement on his website.
In it, he confessed that he was “far from perfect” and had “not been true to my values and the behaviour my family deserves.”
The world’s first billionaire sportsman insisted that he regretted his transgressions “with all of my heart” and promised to “strive to be a better person, and the husband and father.”
Woods, 33, has two young children with his Swedish wife, Elin Nordegren, a former model, and has faced growing speculation over his private life since a U.S. gossip magazine claimed last week that he had been having an affair with Rachel Uchitel, a New York nightclub hostess.
The speculation grew into a media frenzy after Woods crashed his car outside his Florida home in the early hours of Friday, and was rescued by his wife smashing a window with a golf club.
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Uchitel later claimed that she and Woods were just friends, but rival magazines have since named two other women as having had relationships with the golfer.
Jaimee Grubbs, a Los Angeles cocktail waitress, told Us Weekly that she was 21 when she was approached by Woods at a Las Vegas nightclub in April 2007.
She claimed they had been having a “clandestine on-off affair” since and — most embarrassingly for Woods — she had hundreds of text and voice-mail messages on her phone to prove it.
On Wednesday, the magazine placed one message on its website. Reportedly sent three weeks before the car crash, it ran: “Hey, it’s Tiger, I need you to do me a huge favour. Can you please take your name off your phone?My wife went through my phone and may be calling you.”
The caller added: “You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.”
Grubbs said she had 20 sexual encounters with Woods, adding that he “gave the impression he and his wife had separate rooms.”
She added that Woods complained that his life was “overwhelming,” but claimed he needed to work hard “because he wasn’t as financially stable as he wanted to be.”
Meanwhile, a friend of Kalika Moquin, a 27 year-old club promoter in Las Vegas, told Life&Style magazine that she and Woods had “hooked up a bunch of times.”
“Tiger told Kalika that married life isn’t all it’s built up to be,” said the friend.
Moquin told the magazine: “It’s not appropriate for me to comment one way or another.”
Woods pulled out of his own golf tournament this week after being injured in Friday’s crash, in which his 4×4 struck a fire hydrant and a tree.
In his statement on Tuesday, he insisted that a rumour his wife had hit him over the infidelity claims was “utterly false and malicious” and that she had “shown more grace than anyone could possibly expect.”
Woods’ lawyer said that he had immediately paid a $164 traffic fine imposed by the Florida Highway Patrol for careless driving.
It remains to be seen whether the disclosures will dent Woods’s estimated $100-million annual earnings.
Zeta Interactive, a marketing company that monitors public feeling towards celebrities, said Woods’s online “buzz rating” fallen significantly in recent days.
In his statement Wednesday, Woods sought privacy.
“For me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one’s own family. Personal sins . . . shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.”
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