The Irish Times - Saturday, August 28, 2010
Queen of the damned
PROFILE: ELIN NORDEGREN: The former Mrs Woods: ice queen, scorned woman, modern-day Yoko. Or, perhaps, just a woman whose life is the opposite of what she intended, writes Kate Holmquist
ELIN NORDEGREN reportedly once said she wanted to be to Tiger Woods what Yoko Ono was to John Lennon. If ever there was hubris, this was it, because Yoko – a mature and forceful Japanese performance artist who was older than her husband – is not quite comparable to a former swimsuit model who was a 21-year-old nanny when she met her then husband-to-be. We never got to see any photographs of Nordegren and Woods naked in bed, like those of John and Yoko, but we did get to see a rather spectacular crack-up at Thanksgiving last year. Nordegren’s ambition to be her husband’s guiding light says a lot about the grand role she saw for herself, an ambition as doomed as that of a hot-housed golfing child prodigy expecting to grow up to have a normal life. Perhaps someone should have taken Nordegren aside and whispered, “They hated Yoko, you know.”
Nordegren’s likely $100 million divorce settlement – exaggerated to up to $750 million in some reports – has left her branded as a gold-digger, a 21st-century celebrity courtesan. One laddish US blog has ranked her among “the hottest top 20 spurned wags of all time”, as though being a Wag – short for wives and girlfriends, and coined to describe the other halves of high-profile football players – were a career choice.
One school of thought is that Nordegren played it well and got a good deal, as though falling in love, having your husband’s children – now aged three years and 18 months – then experiencing the emotional devastation and public humiliation of his betrayal with not just one but 19 (at last count) porn stars, waitresses, nightclub hostesses and models were some sort of game. Actually, it’s not just one school of thought; it appears to be the only school of thought.
For this Nordegren may have only herself, or her Swedish culture, to blame. Nordegren’s refusal to speak to the press, even when rumours were rife that she’d attacked Woods with a golf club, prompted one golf writer to quip: “If Tiger is a man of few words, Elin is a woman of no words.” That’s because in Sweden words are chosen carefully and a whisper is as loud as a roar.
Even in Sweden, she has been criticised. One comment on a Swedish news site said Nordegren is “calm like an object . . . Money can’t bring feelings”. Others defended her, believing she was exploited by a womaniser.
The most practical commentators warned her not to return to Sweden, where the tax authorities would take her money as surely as Woods took her dignity. Another felt sorry for her as, with her vast post-divorce fortune, the 30-year-old would have difficulty finding a man who loved her only for herself.
Nordegren’s silence has meant that few people know who she really is. The media has rushed to project male fantasies on this blank screen. The most famous case, internationally, involved none other than the Dubliner magazine, which in 2006 published nude photographs, supposedly of Nordegren, that had already been proven fake. Woods defended his wife’s honour by suing the magazine, which was made to publish grovelling apologies.
Nordegren, who recently purchased a house on an island accessible from Stockholm only by ferry, has shunned the Swedish press as well, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that her father, Thomas Nordegren, is a prominent radio journalist. Her mother, Barbro Holmberg, is a high-ranking civil servant who was taken to hospital with stress when visiting her daughter at the height of the Thanksgiving storm. These conservative upper-class Swedes must be wondering what they were thinking when they let their gorgeous 20-year-old daughter, whose career to date had been as a checkout girl and occasional model, go off on a gap year on the US pro golf circuit, having been invited by a golfer’s wife to be the family nanny. (Nordegren’s identical twin, Josefin, is a lawyer in London.)
Finally, midweek, perhaps aware that her silence was working against her in terms of public sentiment, Nordegren set the record straight in what she said would be her first and last interview. “I’ve been through hell,” she told People magazine, the celebrity’s paper of record. For the final three and a half years of her six-year marriage she was so busy having babies and caring for them while also pursuing her studies that she “never suspected” what was going on. She was “blindsided” when she learned of Woods’s serial affairs and was, understandably, distraught despite her intention to protect her children from what was going on outside the family home.
“Mommy, where is your boo-boo?” one of her children asked. She hadn’t been crying in front of them, she added, but looked sad, something that anyone who has ever tried to hold it together for the kids can relate to.
Nordegren, who is following her childhood dream of becoming a psychologist, seems to offer a textbook case of post-traumatic grief. “I have been through the stages of disbelief and shock to anger and, ultimately, grief over the loss of the family I so badly wanted for my children,” she said.
When she discovered her husband’s infidelities her first feeling was embarrassment, and for a time she believed she and Woods could repair their relationship. Then one revelation after the next destroyed that confidence. “I felt stupid as more things were revealed. How could I not have known anything? The word ‘betrayal’ isn’t strong enough,” she said.
One can imagine how the Woods circus, his road buddies and the birds in the trees would have known far more about the golfer than his wife did, and how this must have made her feel duped by her husband’s double life.
No matter how financially privileged her life, having two babies in quick succession with a husband who was often away must have been isolating. When Nordegren speaks of her hair falling out from stress, one can also imagine her tearing it out.
Perhaps in an attempt to dispel the gold-digger myth, she has said that she turned down Woods’s requests for a date five times before finally relenting in 2001. In 2004 their $2 million wedding took place by the 19th hole of the Sandy Lane resort, in Barbados, in front of 150 guests, including Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and Bill Gates – more impressive than your average Swedish royal wedding.
Six years later she was seeing herself parodied on the US comedy show Saturday Night Live and the adult cartoon South Park. Their satirical versions of the Thanksgiving crash outside the family home in Orlando, when Nordegren smashed a car window with a golf club – helping to bring the couple’s private problems into the open – were “pretty hysterical” and “totally untrue”, she said.
Commentators drew a mythical scenario of domestic violence in which the man was the victim of an enraged betrayed wife who chased him with a club, provoking him to escape in a car and crash into a fire hydrant and a tree at the bottom of the driveway. This week Nordegren insisted she did not attack Woods or cause him to drive into the tree. “There was never any violence inside or outside our home. The speculation that I would have used a golf club to hit him is just truly ridiculous.”
She says that it was, in fact, some time after Woods crashed the car that she became worried, went to look for him and found him trapped in the locked car. “To think anything else is absolutely wrong.” She and Woods will share custody of their children – a challenge in even the most amicable post-divorce relationships. Nordegren says she is determined to show her children that it is better to be “alone and happy” than “being in a relationship where there is no trust”.
You could say that, at the age of 30, Nordegren has had quite an education in life, if not academics. She is looking for “healing” – not just for herself, but also for her children. She says she feels stronger than she ever has and knows she will have to come to “forgiveness and acceptance” eventually if she is to be happy – “I know I will get there,” she says – although one can’t help thinking of the Swedish blogger’s implication that the beautiful Swede’s €100 million fortune, not to mention her celebrity, may make it more difficult for her to create a new life with a man in it.
Living in a fishbowl and being pursued by the media will be a high price to pay for financial independence.
CV Elin Nordegren
Who is she? Thirty-year-old single mother and psychology student.
Why is she in the news? Divorced Tiger Woods on Monday with a settlement reported at $100 million.
Most likely to say “The speculation that I would have used a golf club to hit him is just truly ridiculous.”
Least likely to say “I’m looking forward to an afternoon of golf.”
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