For nearly a week Tiger Woods has clung defiantly to his status as the Mr Perfect of golf, denying allegations of an extramarital affair and other “false, unfounded and malicious” rumours about his private life.
Yesterday he finally cracked under pressure and confessed: “I have let my family down.”
In a statement on his website under the headline “Tiger comments on current events”, he added: “I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behaviour my family deserves.
“I will strive to be a better person and the husband and father that my family deserves. For all of those who have supported me over the years, I offer my profound apology.”
The golfer’s fall from grace began in the early hours of last Friday when he crashed his car outside his home. His wife, the Swedish model Elin Nordegren, was seen standing over his injured body clutching a golf club.
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She said that she used the club to smash the rear window and free her husband from the damaged car. The full story of what happened remains a mystery and Woods has refused to be interviewed by police.
Rumours that the crash followed a row over his affairs swiftly spread, and the media published a series of allegations about Woods, 33, who has two children with Nordegren, 29.
The five-paragraph message on his website, which veered between a mea culpa and a rebuke of the media for finding him out, said: “I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behaviour and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone.”
His confession came after Us Weekly magazine released a recording said to be of him pleading with Jaimee Grubbs, a Las Vegas cocktail waitress who claims to have had a 2½-year affair with him, to help him to cover his tracks.
“Hey. It’s, er, it’s Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favour,” an anxious voice is heard telling Ms Grubbs’s answerphone. Sighing and sounding strained, he adds: “Can you please, er, take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and, er, may be calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that and, um, just have it as a number on the voicemail, just have it as your telephone number. That’s it. OK. You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.”
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The message was left on Tuesday last week, one day before National Enquirer magazine published a story alleging that he had been having an affair with Rachel Uchitel, a nightclub hostess in New York. Woods and Ms Uchitel had denied the story.
Meanwhile, Life and Style magazine has a report naming a Las Vegas club manager, Kalika Moquin, as a third alleged mistress.
A report from the Florida Highway Patrol, which has issued him with a citation and $164 fine for careless driving, revealed that he was not wearing a seatbelt when he crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree and classified his injuries as “incapacitating”. Damage to his car was estimated at $8,000.
Woods denied claims that his wife had set about him with a golf club before the crash after she discovered that he had strayed.
He said in his website statement: “Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realise the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. For the last week, my family and I have been hounded to expose intimate details of our personal lives. The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious.”
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Woods, who has earned $1 billion not only through his success on the PGA tour but from sponsorship deals with companies such as Gillette and Nike, argued that his personal life was no one else’s business.
“No matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions. Whatever regrets I have about letting my family down have been shared with and felt by us alone.”
High infidelity
? Bill Clinton had strenuously denied an affair with Monica Lewinsky but was eventually forced to admit it and apologise on national TV: “I misled the people, including my wife,” he said. “I did have a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part.”
? David Letterman was prompted to make a confession during his Late Show after a blackmail attempt. The talk show host admitted having extramarital affairs with women working on his programme. He said: “The creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. Now. My response to that is, yes I have. And would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would. But what you don’t want is a guy saying, ‘Oh, I know you had sex with women so I would like $2 million (£1.2m)’. ”
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? Mark Oaten, Liberal Democrat MP, who was married with two daughters, admitted in 2006 to having a year-long affair with a rent boy. The MP was forced to step down as home affairs spokesman for the Lib Dems and apologised for “errors of judgment in personal behaviour and for the embarrassment caused”. He later said that a “mid-life crisis” and the stress of going bald were partly responsible for his infidelity.
? Ron Davies resigned as Welsh Secretary in October 1998 after accepting a dinner invitation from a stranger on Clapham Common who later stole his car. “It was a moment of madness for which I have . . . paid a very, very heavy price,” he said.
? Hugh Grant was caught having sex with a prostitute called Divine Brown in his white BMW in Hollywood. On Larry King’s TV show he said later: “In the end you have to come clean and say, ‘I did something dishonourable, shabby and goatish’.”