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‘Flawed,’ ‘heartless’: A look back at Tiger Woods’ dating history

Mar. 11, 2023
‘Flawed,’ ‘heartless’: A look back at Tiger Woods’ dating history

Welcome to the support group for exes of Tiger Woods.

Former Woods mistress Rachel Uchitel has extended an invitation to the golfer’s latest ex, Erica Herman, 37 to be a guest on her upcoming podcast “Miss Understood,” launching Tuesday on Apple and Spotify.

“We can both sit in silence for 30 minutes courtesy of Tiger Woods,” Uchitel exclusively told The Post.

After all, the pair both signed nondisclosure agreements with the golf great — Uchitel in 2009 and Herman in 2017.

That document is now a legal bone of contention for Herman, who yesterday set off a firestorm when her lawyers sought to get hers tossed, citing a law that allows such NDAs to be voided if there’s proof of sexual assault or harassment.

“I think everyone wants to know who she is, right? Listen, I think it’s very interesting what’s going on. I’m curious as to why she’s doing this publicly. I have a lot of questions for her,” said Uchitel, adding that Herman is “up against Goliath.”

Not that anyone knew Woods’ and Herman’s nearly six-year relationship had even ended until the documents revealed a nasty battle has been brewing since October 2022.

Herman, who met the notoriously private athlete while working at his Jupiter, Florida, restaurant, alleged in her lawsuit that her former beau booted her from his home using “trickery.”

She claimed people working for him convinced her “to pack a suitcase for a short vacation, and when she arrived at the airport, they told her she had been locked out of her residence, in violation of the oral tenancy agreement and in violation of Florida law,” according to the lawsuit.

Herman also alleged, according to the suit, that staff removed her personal things and took $40,000 in cash that belonged to her.

Said Curt Sampson, author of two books on Tiger Woods: “He probably said to [people who work for him], ‘Hey, I’ve got this problem, will you take care of it?’ So perfunctory, and heartless to me.”

(Woods’ longtime agent Mark Steinberg did not return messages seeking comment.)

Sampson, who penned 2019’s “Roaring Back: The Fall and Rise of Tiger Woods,” said Herman’s accusations echoed the coldness Woods embodied while breaking up with his high-school sweetheart.

In 1994, as the golf phenom enrolled at Stanford University and ended his three-year romance with Dina Gravell-Parr in a letter.

“He said, ‘My parents are very concerned that you’re a big distraction for me, and I have to listen to them. We have to break up,’” Gravell-Parr told The Post in 2009. “I felt I was punched in the stomach.”

Said Sampson: “I think Tiger’s quite a flawed person in terms of relationships. That may just be the fallout of being so damn good and so very dedicated to his game.”

Herman’s shocking filing felt like deja-vu all over again for the golf great, whose colorful and turbulent love life has often overshadowed his decorated career during the last 14 years.

Woods’ amorous history has included a scandalous divorce, wide-scale infidelity, a relationship with a fellow A-list athlete and a vehicular romp with a Perkins waitress, to name just a few memorable moments.

He has also reportedly used NDAs with at least three women.

While this latest battle with Herman isn’t sowing a solid a foundation for a friendship, Woods has managed to remain friendly with a couple of exes, even calling former wife Elin Nordegren “one of my best friends.” Which is a long way from how they ended things.

When Woods met the 21-year-old Swedish bombshell at the 2001 British Open, he was golf’s golden boy — a generational talent who transformed the game. She was working as a nanny for the family of Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik, who introduced them.

Initially, Nordegren was reluctant to get involved with the athlete, according to her friend Sandra Sobieraj Westfall.

 “She had her opinions about celebrities and they were not high. And she’s very shy, so the idea of joining that world was not appealing to her,” the Sobieraj Westfall said in the 2021 HBO documentary “Tiger.”

“And when he asked her out, I think she turned him down at first,” Westfall recalled. “She gradually was convinced that she should give him a chance and so they did go out.”

They married in 2004 and had two children, Charli and Sam.

But on Thanksgiving of 2009, their life was permanently interrupted after Nordegren discovered that Woods was cheating on her with former Las Vegas hostess Uchitel.

Woods was at the peak of his career when a furious Nordegren reportedly chased him out of their house with his own golf club and used it to smash in the windows of his car, which he then crashed into a tree.

It was a huge fall from grace for the golfer, who had earned millions of dollars from golf and had millions more in endorsements. He had just won the Masters in Australia and that same year he was photographed meeting former president Barack Obama at the White House.

That cheating revelation was merely the thread that unraveled his seemingly perfect family-man reputation.

Other ladies came forward, and it was reported that Woods slept with 120 women during the marriage.

One of them was Mindy Lawton, a Perkins waitress who allegedly had relations with Woods in his SUV.

The golfer and Nordegren divorced in 2010 — Nordegren is believed to have received $100 million in the settlement — and he entered rehab. He has since been publicly contrite about hurting her.

In 2015, he told Time Magazine that his relationship with Nordegren is stronger than ever.

“When it comes down to it, right down to it, it’s just having a more open, honest relationship with my ex-wife when we were married,” Woods said.

But his shame has lingered. In his 2017 book, “Unprecedented, The Masters and Me,” he admitted: “My regret will last a lifetime.”

It seemed Woods was on the way to rehabbing his career and reputation when he started dating gold-medalist skier Lindsey Vonn around 2012.

They were peers and equals: two world-class athletes who helped define their respective sports, and also transcended them.

In 2013, they made their first red-carpet appearance together at the Met Gala, and a source told Page Six that Nordegren “really likes Lindsey and thinks she is a very good influence on Tiger.”

But the power couple split in 2015, with both blaming packed training schedules that brought them to different parts of the world.

Two years later, after Woods was busted for a DUI, Vonn told Extra that she reached out to him after his DUI arrest and that they remain friendly — a sentiment in which she doubled down on in 2018.

“I loved him and we’re still friends,” Vonn told Sports Illustrated.

But she indicated that there was more nuance to their split: “Sometimes, I wish he would have listened to me a little more, but he’s very stubborn and he likes to go his own way.”

In 2015, Woods moved on to stylist Kristin Smith.

Their two-year relationship reportedly blew up after Smith suspected the golfer of cheating on her. TMZ reported that she had signed an NDA and was attempting to get it invalidated — but, in turn, Woods was allegedly threatening to release unsavory photos of her.

Sampson suggested Woods’ shrewd coldness may not be limited to women.

“Maybe the question is how he sees everybody, every other person – and not just women,” Sampson said. “From the cradle, Tiger has been told, ‘It’s you and your mission’ … Everything and everyone else is a distraction or not vital.”

After Smith, Woods quickly moved on to Herman, with the pair appearing together at the Presidents Cup in September 2017. To outsiders, the Florida native seemed like a grounding force for Woods.

While the pair were dating, he pulled off a storybook comeback — winning the Masters in 2019.

They were regularly photographed with his children, and she remained a low-key fixture on the tour, perhaps because she had signed that NDA.

“There are people who get into relationships with celebrities … They sign the NDA beforehand — this is what Erica did. She signed that,” Uchitel told the Daily Mail.

She added that her own NDA came about after she witnessed an event and agreed “to not talk about a behavior or an incident to participate in a cover up, so to speak … I signed an NDA to cover up bad behavior.”

If Herman is unable to publicly dish on Uchitel’s new podcast, the host is happy to privately advise her.

“If she wants to talk privately about this scenario, my door is always open. Because I know that publicly, it’s really, really hard to deal with this.”

As for Woods’ streak of failed relationships, Uchitel said: “A tiger does not change its stripes.”


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