Elin Nordegren learned of Tiger Woods’ affair by sending fake text messages

This week marks four years since Tiger Woods notoriously crashed his car on Thanksgiving, an even that led to the unraveling of his personal and professional life.

In commemoration of the notorious night that forever changed Tiger’s life and career, the New York Post on Monday wrote a long story recapping what happened that led to Tiger crashing his Escalade and ending up unconscious and taken to the hospital. In their story, they referenced some details shared by The Daily Beast in 2010 about how the whole night unfolded. Some news outlets and websites have mistakenly said that these are new details from a new report. Though these details are actually from an old report, they’re new to me, which is why I’m sharing them.

According to the old Daily Beast report, Elin learned about the affair between Tiger and Rachel Uchitel (the one the National Enquirer first exposed) by stealing his cell phone, reading his text messages, and pretending to be him in text messages sent to Uchitel.

Tiger apparently gave Elin a heads up that The National Enquirer would be running its story alleging that Tiger and Uchitel were having an affair. Tiger supposedly convinced Elin that the relationship between him and Rachel was platonic, and he even organized a 30-minute phone conversation between Elin and Rachel to convince her that nothing was going on.

Elin was supposedly satisfied after speaking with Uchitel, but she learned on Thanksgiving that Uchitel met Tiger while he was in Australia for an event. That led to bickering between him and Elin, and Tiger supposedly took an Ambien to go to sleep to end the fighting. That’s when Elin got all snoopy on him.

The Daily Beast describes what happened next.

After Woods fell asleep, Elin looked through his cellphone, both sources confirmed. There she found text messages to Uchitel’s number—Uchitel was apparently listed in Tiger’s cellphone under her real name—and among them she discovered one that said, “You are the only one I’ve loved.”

Shortly after 1 a.m. in Florida, Elin began texting Uchitel, pretending to be Tiger, according to both sources. Elin wrote, “I miss you,” and asked, “When are we seeing each other again?”

Rachel supposedly texted back and expressed surprise that Tiger was awake, which was a sign that Uchitel and Tiger had spoken earlier in the evening. Elin then called Uchitel from Tiger’s phone, said something like “I knew it was you,” and Uchitel responded something like, “Oh f—,” and hung up.

Elin became enraged after that, woke Tiger up by screaming, and then things got real.

Tiger, still dazed from the Ambien, managed to lock himself in the bathroom to avoid Elin, but when he emerged, she got a hold of his phone again. She supposedly saw that he had been texting Uchitel in the bathroom and even mentioned something along the lines of a divorce. That led Elin to become enraged again. She threw the phone at him, which led to his chipped tooth, and grabbed a golf club and began swinging it at him. He then ran out of the house barefoot, jumped into his car, and crashed in a panic as he was trying to escape her. Oh, and it sure as heck sounds like Elin broke the back window of the car by wildly swinging her golf club.

After that night, the Tiger sex scandal kicked into high gear. Almost every day a new mistress of his came out and exposed him. That lasted a few weeks before the story started to die out. Tiger then went into sex rehab, finally emerged and made a public statement. Elin divorced him, he lost a ton of endorsements, gained some of them back, and now he is finally starting to play better golf. But he still hasn’t won a major since the US Open in 2008.

The truth is four years isn’t very long, but it seems like ages ago that Tiger had the sex scandal. He and Elin have moved on, and now Tiger’s making headlines for his relationship with Lindsey Vonn. It’s crazy how much things have changed.

If you’re interested in reliving parts of the Tiger sex scandal, you can follow this link and read all our stories from it in the archive.