'Shadowy' Nordegren Seriously Private—Usually

So who’s this wife of Tiger Woods caught wielding a gold club at the scene of his unfortunate run-in with a fire hydrant? Elin Nordegren dabbled in modeling in her native Sweden, Jacob Bernstein writes, but is not an “ex-model” as we understand it. She came into Woods’ orbit by pure happenstance, and even turned down his awkward advances out of fear of being labeled a “gold-digger.” But true love won out—until now, perhaps.

Sources tell Bernstein, writing for the Daily Beast, that Nordegren is—was?—the consummate player’s wife, exhibiting a fittingly Tiger-like aversion to publicity. “When you talk to her, you don’t get anything out of her,” a source told Sports Illustrated in 2004. So the swirling, scandalous rumors surrounding Woods’ crash come as a surprise. “They seemed not to have any kind of conflict,” an insider tells Bernstein. “What we think happened probably did, but there was no evidence of it.” (More Tiger Woods car crash stories.)