Tiger Woods was caught having sex with his mistress Mindy Lawton in an Escalade in 2007, years before his affair became public.
But the solution to stopping this information from leaking came from a most unlikely source: David Pecker, head of the National Enquirer.
On Thursday, on stage at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, Mr. Pecker admitted for the first time that he had bought up and buried the photos in return for Mr. Tiger’s cooperation.
Under cross-examination by Trump’s lawyers, Pecker said he bought a photo of the golf icon meeting a woman (now known as Lawton) in a church parking lot and used it under a different title. He admitted that he used it as leverage to persuade Trump to appear on the cover of Men’s Fitness. He served as CEO of American Media Inc. publishing company.
The golf world was stunned by a 12-page cover story published in Men’s Fitness magazine. In the issue, Woods shared his own exercise and diet regimen and spoke in glowing terms about his relationship with his then-wife Elin Nordegren.
“It was a complete shakedown,” a member of Woods’ inner circle told the Post. “He was completely intimidated, what could he do? He had to play ball. He had no other choice.”
Nordegren was in the third trimester of her pregnancy with her daughter, Sam Alexis, when the photo was taken. Woods, then 32, preferred a clean public persona, but feared that her affair would tarnish his public image and destroy her marriage.
“Normally Tiger wouldn’t have had anything to do with Men’s Fitness,” the source said. “He only spoke to a few trusted journalists. But the Inquirer drove him over the barrel. He hated it and I know it was stressing him out. But he did what he had to do.”
Not everyone was happy with the deal. Neil Breton, who was editor-in-chief of Men’s Fitness at the time, resigned when he learned of this.
“David Pecker knew about Tiger Woods’ affair for a long time,” Boulton told the Post the following year. “He traded his silence for the cover of Men’s Fitness magazine.”
“We were going to [do a quid pro quo with] “America’s most popular sports star, just to get his name on the cover of a magazine,” Boulton continued. “It was too much for me. That’s when I hightailed it out of there.”
At the time, Pecker denied the allegations.
“That’s absolutely not true,” he told the Post in 2009.[Boulton] A disgruntled former employee. ”
But Pecker’s sworn testimony at the Trump trial contradicted his previous denials. As the former president looked on, Mr. Pecker testified to his own “catch and kill” strategy against top athletes such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mark Wahlberg and Woods.
Mr. Pecker, now 72, admitted that AMI spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” buying up negative articles and then not publishing them.
A representative for Woods did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
As it turned out, the golfer’s reprieve didn’t last long. Two years later, on Thanksgiving weekend in 2009, the Enquirer published a cover story about Woods.
The banner’s headline reads, “Tiger Woods Cheating Scandal,” and the article details in breathtaking detail Woods’ months-long affair with New York City nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel. was mentioned.
The issue featured a photo of Uchitel checking into the same hotel as Woods during the Australian Masters. She reportedly told her friend, “Tiger Woods!” I don’t care about his wife! I fell in love! “
That story triggered Woods’ astonishing downfall. That very weekend, Nordegren chased Woods out of his family home in Florida after he brandished a golf club and broke a car window to flee.
Then the floodgates opened, with dozens more women revealing their relationships with golf’s greats. He and Nordegren went through a very public divorce that reportedly cost over $100 million.
It is not lost on the golfer that, despite cooperating with the cover of Men’s Health magazine, the National Enquirer was ultimately responsible for his death.
“He always said they were all snakes,” a Woods source says. “They promised to protect him, but even that was limited. They ran stories of his cheating anyway every chance they got. In the end, they really fucked him.”
