Tiger Woods says he has been "living a lie" and admitted to "doing some ugly things" until a sex scandal shattered his image and made him the butt of jokes by American talk-show comedians. In the billionaire golfer's first interview since he smashed his car in November outside his Florida home, Woods said it wasn't until he did some soul searching with the help of a therapist that he came to the "ugly" truth and "saw a person I never thought I would become."
"I was living a lie, I really was," Woods told ESPN reporter Tom Rinaldi. "And I was doing a lot of things, that hurt a lot of people. "And stripping away denial, and rationalisation, you start coming to the truth of who you really are, and that can be very ugly." Woods announced his return at the Masters in April after four months of self-imposed exile.
Woods conducted two separate five-minute interviews with ESPN and The Golf Channel on Sunday afternoon. He talked about his personal feelings and what it feels like to become a late-night talk show punchline but he refused to give details about the early-morning car smash or his time in a southern US rehabilitation clinic.
"A lot has transpired in my life. A lot of ugly things have happened. I have done some pretty bad things in my life," he said. He told ESPN he is starting to get his life back in order. "When you face it, and you start conquering it, and you start living up to it, the strength that I feel now. I have never felt that type of strength," the 14-time major championship winner said.
Woods has not played since winning the Australian Masters in mid-November after a sex scandal in which he admitted cheating on wife Elin, and apologised for igniting a tabloid frenzy where more than a dozen women have claimed affairs. He and Elin have a two-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son.
Dressed in a green sweater and a white baseball cap, Woods chose his words carefully Sunday as he interviewed near his home in Windermere, Florida. Woods said he reached a low point when he had to face his mother and wife with the truth. "I had a lot of low points. Just when I didn't think it could get any lower it got lower," Woods said.
"There were so many different low points. People I had to talk to and face like my wife, like my mom. "I hurt them the most. Those are the two people in my life who I am the closest to and to say the things that I've done, truthfully to them, is ... honestly ... was ... very painful." Responding to how his wife took the news, Woods said, "She was hurt, she was hurt. Very hurt. Shocked. Angry. She had every right to."