A VIP hostess who denied being Tiger Woods’ mistress is expected to change her story and come clean about her relationship with the billionaire golfer.
The well-connected website TMZ.com reported today that Rachel Uchitel, who insisted in a newspaper interview earlier this week that she had never had sexual relations with Woods, has scheduled a press conference in Los Angeles later today at which her lawyer will give details of an affair.
TMZ said it was an exchange of text messages between Woods and Uchitel which provoked the furious row between the golfer and his wife, the former Swedish model Elin Nordegren, which ended in him crashing his car outside the couple’s home in Orlando, Florida, last Friday night.
It also claimed that the only reason Woods refused to let police into his home after the crash was that there was serious damage in the “vestibule area” - apparently caused by Ms Nordegren wielding a golf club - which he did not want them to see.
Ms Uchitel is one of three women alleged to have had affairs with the golfer.
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The celebrity magazine US Weekly has posted on its website what it says is a message the golfer left last week on the mobile phone of Jaimee Grubbs, a Las Vegas cocktail waitress, asking her to change her voicemail greeting urgently in case his wife called it. Ms Grubbs claims to have had a 31-month relationship with Woods.
Woods and his wife, who have two children, are said to have started “intensive” marriage counselling sessions after he admitted his “transgressions” and apologised to his family in a statement on his website yesterday.
But their efforts at a reconciliation will not have been helped by an intervention from Jesper Parnevik, the veteran Swedish golfer who introduced the couple eight years ago.
“We probably thought he was a better guy than he is,” Parnevik told The Golf Channel from West Palm Beach, Florida, where he is in the final stage of PGA Tour qualifying.
“I would probably need to apologise to her and hope she uses a driver next time instead of a 3-iron.”
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Woods has already had to pay a $164 road traffic fine after Friday’s crash - the circumstances of which remain unexplained. He also faces a $600 bill from a local utility company to replace a fire hydrant he knocked over as well as the cost of repairs to his top-of-the-range SUV, which he also crashed into a tree and which had its rear window smashed in.
But, according to reports in the US, those figures barely register compared to the sums he may eventually have to cough up as the price for his infidelities.
The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that Woods has already agreed to pay his wife “a hefty seven-figure amount” not to walk out of their marriage - a sum to be paid immediately into a bank account in her name - and is renegotiating the pre-nuptial agreement the couple signed before their marriage in Barbados five years ago.
That agreement, the newspaper said, guaranteed Mrs Woods a $20 million settlement if the couple stayed together for ten years, but is now being rewritten to come into effect sooner and for a greater amount.
US Weekly reported today, however, that the prenup already guarantees Mrs Woods $300 million - which would be the biggest celebrity payout ever and twice as much as the basketball star Michael Jordan had to find after he split with his wife, Juanita.
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The golfer’s agents are hoping that the marriage will survive, if only because the trauma of a divorce could put Woods off his game and disrupt the most lucrative career ever enjoyed by an athlete in any sport. At risk are not just his tournament earnings but endorsements and sponsorship deals which bring in a further $100 million a year.
Woods appeared to have half an eye on those endorsements - and the relentlessly perfect image they present of him - in yesterday’s statement.
“For all of those who have supported me over the years, I offer my profound apology,” he said.
“I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behaviour and my personal failings behind closed doors with my family.”
A leading American divorce lawyer, Raoul Felder, who was involved in the marriage break-up of Rudy Giuliani, the then mayor of New York, and Mike Tyson, said that he would not count on the Woods marriage surviving.
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“There’s a separate level of hell when you’re a celebrity. You’re subject to extraordinary temptation that ordinary people are not subject to,” Mr Felder said.
“I don’t think the prognosis is too great for something like this unless she’s willing to make some kind of deal and live with it.”