'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.”