As Tiger Woods embarks on a sporting comeback, a new biography charts the Shakespearean rise and fall of a global icon. This edited version reveals his double-life and explores what drove his betrayal of wife Elin.
Early in the summer of 2004, the Boys & Girls Clubs honoured Denzel Washington with a lifetime achievement award at a black-tie dinner held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City.
The guest list was a virtual Who's Who of the Hollywood and sports industries.
Tiger blew off the dinner, choosing instead to attend the after-party in Denzel's suite.
A couple of days later, he was with Elin at the clubhouse at Isleworth when he ran into a neighbour who had attended the dinner at the Waldorf. She knew Tiger had been invited, and she wondered why he'd skipped it.
His secret life in Las Vegas and all the temptations that besieged him begged the question: Why get married?
The answer may lie in the fairy-tale life that Woods desired — a heart-stopping wife and adorable children living with him in the six-bedroom mansion on Deacon Circle that he had purchased four years earlier.
It was the image that he saw in the marriage between [fellow golfer and friend] Mark and Alicia O'Meara.
For Tiger, Elin Nordegren represented the key piece of that puzzle — blonde, beautiful and adoring. They would live happily ever after, right down the street from the O'Mearas.
There was another important factor: Elin was the first woman who fully measured up to the lofty expectations of both [Tiger's parents] Earl and Kultida.
Tiger had been in love before, and he'd been very close to more than one woman who would have been much more likely to try to rein in his vices and insist that he stay on the straight and narrow.
But it soon became clear that he wanted it both ways — the picture-perfect marriage and the freedom to walk on the wild side.
Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren had the picture book marriage until things went horribly wrong. Photo / Photosport
In that respect, he was a lot like his father — but with one big difference: unlimited opportunity.
On October 5, 2004, Tiger and Elin exchanged vows in Barbados at the exclusive Sandy Lane Resort. To ensure ultimate privacy, Tiger spent a reported $1.5 million to rent the entire resort for the week, filling the time with fishing, boating, golf and snorkelling.
Shortly after getting married, Woods sat for another interview with People magazine writer Steve Helling, who focused his attention on a single subject.
"I knew that Elin was a special woman pretty soon after I met her," Tiger told him.
"I knew that she was the one for me. She's a special person, and I know how lucky I am to have her. We're at the beginning of our life together, and that's an exciting place to be."
Unlike the previous two times when Tiger had met Helling, on this occasion, Woods asked a lot of questions.
Helling had just covered the break-up of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, and Tiger wanted to know if Angelina Jolie was really the other woman.
He also asked about Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.
Woods had never met any of these actors, but he talked about them as if they were all part of the same club.
When Helling brought the conversation back around to Elin and asked why Woods had married her, he offered a superficial answer.
"I married Elin because I see a long future with her," he said.
Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren. Photo / Getty Images
Woods may have envisioned such a future, but his present, much like a critical part of his past, was proving to be a myth.
Just months after making that statement to Helling, Tiger was back in Vegas, seated at his VIP table just off the dance floor at Light, the nightclub at Bellagio.
His high school friend Bryon Bell and his Stanford friend Jerry Chang were along for the ride.
Woods spotted a woman in tight jeans and a form-fitting top that showed off her figure.
She was partying with friends when Tiger's VIP host approached with the magic words: "Tiger would love to meet you."
Twenty-one-year-old Jamie Jungers was a small-town Kansas girl who had come to Las Vegas in search of good times and a better life.
Standing five feet nine (1.75m) and weighing just 105 pounds (47.6kg), she quickly found part-time gigs as a model, doing some charity work with a group called Angels of Las Vegas.
She also landed a job in construction that put a little money in her pocket.
After being pulled away from her friends and pointed toward Tiger's table, she strolled up, and Tiger greeted her.
A few hours later, Jungers found herself more than a little drunk and alone with Woods in his suite at the Mansion.
The confidence he had long displayed on the golf course had found its way into the bedroom.
"It started out just making out, and then it turned very wild," she would later say about that initial encounter.
"Different positions. It almost seemed like he had known me for a while, like he was comfortable with me already."
Tiger Woods in action. Photo / AP Photo
During an interlude, she asked Woods if he was married.
It wasn't very often that Tiger met a woman who didn't know his marital status, but Jungers didn't follow golf and hadn't paid attention to the tabloid coverage of his marriage to Elin.
He told Jungers that his wife was back in Sweden visiting her twin sister.
Jungers left the suite early the next morning, figuring it was a one night stand.
Then her phone rang later that day.
"Hey, it's Tiger," he said. "I had a great time last night, and I'd love to see you again."
It was the beginning of an 18-month affair filled with passion, a cute nickname (Tiger called her "my little coffee cup"), and insight into Woods' deceptive method of operation.
For starters, he gave Jungers his personal cell phone number and told her to store it under a different name.
Next, Bryon Bell checked in with Jungers. He was the facilitator, the one who passed her instructions from Tiger.
The first place he wanted her was in Chicago in his hotel suite.
From then on, every time Tiger wanted Jungers to fly somewhere, Bell would make all the travel arrangements, always in coach.
"I would always go through Bryon," Jungers said.
Woods eventually brought Jungers to his villa in Vegas, where she learned that the words "I'm Jamie, and I'm with Tiger" opened the Mansion's gate like Aladdin's cave.
Years would pass before Jungers would discover that she was just one in a parade of women Woods was using for personal gratification. Like so many, she was swept up in the thrill of secret rendezvous with the most famous athlete in the world.
When looking at Tiger's quest for sex outside marriage, it's easy to rely on well-worn clichés such as like father, like son, or the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Perhaps. But sex addiction experts see serial infidelity in a more complex light, particularly among high-powered narcissists used to being in control.
In general, they say, narcissists build a brick wall around their soft-hearted centre and fragile self-esteem.
Only after treatment do they come to realise that their vulnerability drives the addiction. What they think instead is, I'm impenetrable.
Another factor is something called conditional worth, which is self-worth that's based on performance: the more success, the more worth, and the more pressure — pressure that seeks release.
Tiger Woods makes first statement after crash. Photo / Getty Images
Finally, there's the hero child living the legacy of his dad, which can lead to a concept known as eroticised rage — anger funnelled into sex. I could never rage at you when I was young and you were too strong. But now I can.
For reasons that had nothing to do with his wife, Woods was never content to stay at home. Nor did he limit his infidelity to Las Vegas: he was losing control over his impulses, straying from Elin right down the road from their idyllic home in Isleworth into Orlando nightclubs like the Roxy and Blue Martini.
And just two months after Tiger and Elin were married, Club Paris opened in town.
Owner Fred Khalilian paid Paris Hilton millions for the use of her name and occasional appearances.
Tiger quickly became a familiar face, standing on the owner's balcony at one in the morning, overlooking a jam-packed dance floor, cocktail in hand, waiting for the waitress he fancied to get off work. Woods liked to hang with Khalilian, smoking cigars in his huge office, talking sports.
Khalilian knew celebrities, which meant he knew the shy, quiet guy sitting across from him was in pain. What he saw in Woods, he had seen in others.
"I got to hang with Michael Jackson for a long time," said Khalilian. "Tiger reminded me a lot of Michael. He was that kid who never lived that childhood life. And he wanted to be bad. He wanted to do whatever he wanted. He wanted to do, in my opinion, what he thought he shouldn't do because he always had to do what he was told to do."
Yet there were no signs that his duplicitous life off the course was having any deleterious effect on his performance inside the ropes. On the contrary, Woods played some of the best golf of his life in 2005.
He won six Tour events, including the Masters and the British Open, while finishing in the top four at both the US Open and the PGA Championship. He averaged a career-high 316.1 yards off the tee, second-best on the Tour; took home another scoring title; and was named PGA Tour Player of the Year for a record seventh time.
On the cusp of turning 30, Tiger had done something far more remarkable than anything that could be measured in awards or statistics. Under [instructor] Hank Haney, he had reached a turning point in his new mechanics, and for the third time in his career, he had mastered a new swing and established himself as the most dominant golfer in the world.
Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian is available in NZ on Wednesday. Published by Simon & Schuster, RRP $39.99.
