Loredana Jolie Ferriolo, photographed by Mark Seliger. To see more photos, pick up the May issue.
Shocking details about Tiger Woods and his extramarital affairs have been trickling out ever since his car accident last November, but Mark Seal’s article in the new issue of Vanity Fair may be the most complete account to date of the golfer’s secret life.
Speaking to four of the women Woods turned to in order to fuel his sex addiction, Woods’s former adviser and lawyer, and other insiders, Seal paints a picture of the superstar at his most profligate, and explores how he got to that point. Here are just some of the revelations in “The Temptation of Tiger Woods”:
The Enablers
• Woods has said in recent interviews that no one in his inner circle knew about his affairs, but Seal’s reporting contradicts that. Woods’s mistress Jamie Jungers says, “Every time I would fly out to see [Tiger] or schedule itineraries or anything, I would always go through Bryon [Bell],” Woods’s childhood friend and the president of Tiger Woods Design. (Bell did not respond to requests for comment.)
• According to Woods’s mistress Mindy Lawton, when she alerted Tiger to the fact that The National Enquirer had caught on to their affair, he put her in contact with his agent, Mark Steinberg, of IMG Worldwide. After Lawton explained to him what had transpired (see below), Steinberg said, “We’ll take care of it.” (Steinberg did not respond to requests for comment.)
Mindy Lawton, photographed by Mark Seliger. To see more photos, pick up the May issue.
The Enquirer’s Smoking … Piece of Evidence
• Mindy Lawton says she met Woods for one rendezvous at 5:30 in the morning, before he had to leave for a golf tournament. Although she was menstruating, he insisted on having sex with her, but when the key card to access his office didn’t work, he drove to a nearby parking lot, where they had sex in his car. After they left, Lawton claims, reporters from The National Enquirer, who had been following her, picked up the tampon she had dropped in the parking lot, and later threatened to use it as part of a story exposing Woods’s infidelity. When the tabloid contacted one of Lawton’s relatives, Lawton texted Tiger in a panic, and he put her in touch with Mark Steinberg. “That’s when their brush-under-the-rug, the cover-up, happened,” Lawton says, referring to a deal that the Enquirer allegedly made with Tiger’s handlers to hold the adultery story in exchange for Woods’s giving an exclusive interview to its sister publication Men’s Fitness. (A spokesperson for The National Enquirer denies that the paper held the Lawton story in exchange for an exclusive on Tiger.)
Earl Woods’s Dark Side
• Reports have emerged that Tiger’s late father, Earl, was a womanizer, and one insider tells Seal that he was a heavy drinker as well. The person recounts sitting next to him at an awards dinner: “Everybody was in coat and tie, and Earl’s sitting there in these little hot pants—short-shorts—and a golf shirt, and he’s got a big old vodka gimlet going and a cigarette burning, and he’s sound asleep, just hammered, shitfaced. And the announcer says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Earl Woods!’ And he jumped up, spilled his drink all over the front of his shirt.… And he gets up there at the podium and starts talking psychobabble.”
Tiger’s Gambling Habits
• Woods’s preferred place to stay in Las Vegas was the Mansion at the MGM Grand, where a one-bedroom suite costs $5,000 per night. He would gamble in the ultra-exclusive V.I.P. casino nearby. According to a source known as Robin Hood 702, “sometimes the only people in the place were me, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. Each of us sat at our own private table and played big. Tiger plays big. Up to 30 grand a hand … and when you’re playing splits and doubles, you can have 150 grand on one hand.”
• “When Tiger showed up in Vegas, he was always with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley,” according to Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Norm Clarke. Years earlier, however, John Merchant had warned Woods to avoid Jordan and Barkley, saying of Jordan, “Stay away from that son of a bitch, because he doesn’t have anything to offer to the fucking world in which he lives except playing basketball.” Merchant adds, “Are they his black role models? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Tiger’s Spending Habits
• With many of his mistresses, Woods was allegedly exceedingly cheap. Mindy Lawton says the only thing he ever bought for her was a chicken wrap from Subway (he was stopping there on his way to meet her). Tiger and his mistress Jamie Jungers broke it off, according to Jungers, because he refused to help her financially.
• Of the women interviewed, Woods spent money on only one: Loredana Jolie Ferriolo, a former Playboy model he met through madam Michelle Braun. Ferriolo says she went on $15,000 shopping sprees and charged everything to Tiger’s hotel room.
