The often-messy private life of Tiger Woods, who values his secrecy so much that he christened his yacht “Privacy” and demands unflinching fealty from his tightly controlled inner sanctum, is playing out once again in a public display of court filings and tabloid headlines.
Erica Herman, Woods’ former live-in girlfriend, filed a civil suit in Martin County, Florida, in which she seeks to nullify a non-disclosure agreement that she said she was forced to sign in 2017 at the beginning of her relationship with Woods, who was her employer at the time. She cited the Speak Out Act, a 2022 federal law that bars an NDA from being enforced in instances of sexual assault or sexual harassment. No criminal allegations have been made. Herman claims to have been tricked into leaving Woods’ Hobe Sound mansion and subsequently was locked out.
In her suit against Jupiter Island Irrevocable Homestead Trust, which Woods controls, she is seeking up to $30 million in damages plus restitution for $40,000 in cash related to her eviction from the property.
Woods responded by filing a counterclaim in which he says he had no written or oral tenancy agreement with Herman and that he provided for alternative living arrangements since their breakup last fall.
Herman, 39, a former manager at Woods’ southeast Florida restaurant, The Woods Jupiter, was a frequent presence at tournaments and other functions with Woods, 47, and his two children. She was last seen with him in August 2022 at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York.
The legal dispute became public last week as the PGA Tour hosted its main event, the Players Championship, at its TPC Sawgrass headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Woods, still showing the effects of a surgically rebuilt right leg that was mangled in a single-vehicle rollover crash in early 2021, skipped the Players, which he has won twice, and the previous week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, in which he is an eight-time past champion.
Woods has two children, daughter Samantha, 15, and son Charlie, 14, with ex-wife Elin Nordegren. Woods and Nordegren divorced in 2010 after his serial philandering spilled into the public arena following his 2009 Thanksgiving-night crash into a fire hydrant near their Isleworth mansion in Orlando, Florida.
The latest court volleys come as Woods prepares to return to Augusta National in three weeks for the Masters, which he has won five times, most recently in 2019 with Herman by his side. He remains tied with the late Sam Snead for the all-time PGA Tour lead in victories, at 82.
In a development that the PGA Tour couldn’t have foreseen in its 180-degree shift to embrace legalized sports gambling recently, BetOnline has established a betting line on who will date Tiger Woods next. Gisele Bündchen, the ex-wife of Tom Brady, Woods’ “GOAT” counterpart in football, is the early favorite. Woods also was installed as a 55-1 longshot to win the Masters. READ MORE
Pádraig Harrington, Sandra Palmer, the late Johnny Farrell, Beverly Hanson and Tom Weiskopf plus the seven women from the LPGA’s original group of 13 founders not already inducted will compose the Class of 2024 for the World Golf Hall of Fame.
The ceremony will be held Monday, June 10, 2024, at Pinehurst (North Carolina) Resort, which will reacquire the WGHOF at the USGA’s new campus, to coincide with the 124th U.S. Open that week. READ MORE
The golf docu-series “Full Swing” has earned an encore on Netflix, the company announced. The streaming service, which began gathering content for a new series during the recent WM Phoenix Open, will offer golf fans behind-the-scenes access to the PGA Tour as it follows a variety of players on and off the course. “Full Swing” premiered February 15 and featured eight episodes from 2022 on tour. READ MORE
An anonymous tournament director voiced his displeasure at the sweeping changes to the structure of the PGA Tour, revealing to the Fire Pit Collective’s Alan Shipnuck that there is “a lot of animosity between the tour and the sponsors” and that tour leaders are “just making this stuff up by the seat of their pants.” READ MORE
There will be no match-play event on the PGA Tour next year, said Jordan Uppleger, the tournament director for the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, in confirming that the event later this month at Austin (Texas) Country Club will be discontinued. READ MORE
The PGA Tour seeks to stop competing sponsors from getting a “free ride” by changing its player endorsement policy to restrict players from displaying logos from sponsors who do business with tours or events not authorized by the tour, golf law correspondent John Nucci tweeted in a report by Front Office Sports. READ MORE
Kamaiu Johnson responded on Twitter that he “got a little overwhelmed in the moment” after he was disqualified from the Arnold Palmer Invitational under Rule 3.3b(3) after having signed for a lower score (6) than he made (7) on the par-4 ninth hole at Bay Hill in the second round. Johnson, who was playing on a sponsor exemption, was criticized by playing competitor Nick Hardy, who told Golfweek’s Adam Schupak that “it looks like there may have been a cheating situation.” READ MORE
The BBC has turned down an offer to broadcast PGA Tour highlights for free, frustrating leaders of the U.S. tour in its effort to reach the U.K. audience beyond the tour’s deal with Sky Sports, Ewan Murray reported in London’s The Guardian newspaper. READ MORE
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Resorts World Sentosa will be the first sponsor of a LIV Golf tournament, the tour announced. The fifth event of LIV’s 2023 season, the LIV Golf Singapore presented by Resorts World Sentosa, will be played at Sentosa Golf Club’s Serapong course on April 28-30. READ MORE
The Gallery Golf Club in Marana, Arizona, is under investigation by the Arizona Department of Agriculture after a video surfaced online of workers chopping down two saguaro cacti, which are protected under state law, to make room for hospitality tents associated with this week’s LIV Golf tournament, The Arizona Republic reported. The club blamed the incident on a landscaping company, which it said did not seek club permission or state approval for the removal. READ MORE
Before he jumped to LIV Golf last year, Phil Mickelson claims on Twitter to have lined up $1 billion from a current PGA Tour sponsor for eight elevated events in which the players would have equity and ownership, but commissioner Jay Monahan declined any interest in the proposal.
LIV Golf has taken a cue from the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open and will create a stadium hole during the rival tour’s tournament next month in Australia, 7News of Sydney reported. The par-3 12th hole at The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide will feature a stadium-like enclosure for the April 20-23 event, though daily attendance at the LIV event is not expected to top 20,000, which is far below the 700,000-plus drawn annually to TPC Scottsdale for the WMPO.
Cameron Smith, who was barred by the PGA Tour from defending his title at last week’s Players Championship when he signed with LIV Golf after winning the Open Championship last year, could have been the greatest Australian golfer of all-time except for “a lot of bad advice” that he got from LIV CEO Greg Norman and others, analyst Brandel Chamblee said on Golf Channel. Smith was spotted playing golf in Ponte Vedra Beach, where he makes his home in the U.S., at The Yards, a nine-hole public facility about one mile from TPC Sawgrass. READ MORE and MORE
To golf observers who might be wondering whether Saudi Arabia and its sovereign wealth fund have the long game to sustain LIV Golf, know that money isn’t likely to be the issue. Aramco, the state-owned oil producer and the world’s most profitable company, reported record annual earnings of $161 billion in 2022. The news follows the transfer last month of $80 billion in Aramco shares – about 4 percent of the company’s value – to the Public Investment Fund, which underwrites LIV Golf. READ MORE
TAP-INS
Dick Smith, who served as the PGA of America’s 27th president in 1991-92, died March 8, the association announced. He was 80. READ MORE
PXG has laid off 125 employees in a company-wide “right-sizing,” with 60 of the casualties coming in the Scottsdale, Arizona-based equipment manufacturer’s retail operation, according to a report by Tony Covey of mygolfspy.com. READ MORE
Chambers Bay, a municipal course in University Place, Washington, that staged the 2015 U.S. Open, will play host to two national championships within the next decade: the 2027 U.S. Junior Amateur and the 2033 U.S. Amateur. READ MORE
The USGA awarded five tournaments through the next 28 years to Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: 2026 U.S. Junior Amateur, 2032 and ’42 U.S. Senior Opens, 2038 U.S. Women’s Amateur and 2051 U.S. Amateur. READ MORE
LPGA legend Annika Sörenstam has joined the movement to provide aid to residents of East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a toxic train derailment last month, by creating the website AnnikaForEastPalestine.com to solicit donations. The village (population 4,761) near the Pennsylvania state line, is the hometown of Sörenstam’s husband, Mike, the son of the late four-time PGA Tour winner Jerry McGee. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon