In the June issue of Vanity Fair, Mark Seal continues his investigation of the Tiger Woods scandal by examining the world of the billionaire golfer and how his advisers handled the Thanksgiving night catastrophe.
His article supplements Part I, in which Seal illustrated the “temptation of Tiger Woods” through conversations with his infamous mistresses. Interviews with the mistresses revealed a snapshot of the superstar at his most profligate; Tiger went through women like rapid fire, and pursued them with an intensity that fits his name.
In “The Temptation of Tiger Woods, Part II: Losing Control,” Seal meticulously deconstructs the series of events that landed Woods in the hospital that November evening. Since the beginning of his career, Tiger’s image was fabricated and managed by his parents and, as he grew up, by his representatives at IMG Worldwide. The problem with a career so tightly managed, however, is that it was bound to unravel. Mark Seal writes:
On December 1, the Florida Highway Patrol issued a Uniform Traffic Citation to Eldrick Tiger Woods for a ‘non-criminal traffic violation,’ along with a fine of $164 and four points on his license, and the case was officially closed. But it was just opening for a squadron of women who were about to come forward with shocking stories of their relations with Tiger Woods.
Steinberg’s [Mark Steinberg, Wood’s current agent] habit of always saying no in order to protect the superhuman image he had created for Woods backfired when his mistresses started saying yes.
Seal touches on a number of factors contributing to the crash and subsequent outpouring of mistresses in the article, including Team Tiger’s efforts, the women (he interviews three more), the love affair with Rachel Uchitel, famed women’s-rights attorney Gloria Allred’s role, and Wood’s celebrity friends.
To read the full text of Seal’s article, Vanity Fair’s June issue, featuring photographs of mistresses Siwik-Daniels, Rist, and Grubbs, hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on May 5th and nationwide on May 11th.