Tiger Woods snapped outside sex addict clinic

Thousands of paparazzi who had been hoping to earn themselves a small fortune with the first snap of Tiger Woods since he was exposed before Christmas as a serial philanderer have been beaten to the draw by a photographer employed by the National Enquirer.

Dressed in a white shirt, shorts and trainers, with a black sweatshirt partly covering his head - though still clearly identifiable as Woods - the golfer was photographed in a long-lens snap outside a rehab clinic in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he is understood to have checked in for sex addiction therapy.

Reports claim he began the six-week 'Gentle Path' programme for sex addicts at the Pine Grove Behavioral Center on December 30 in a last-ditch effort to save his marriage to Elin Nordegren.

Dr Patrick Carnes, who created the Gentle Path programme, has a formidable case on his hands: if all the girls are to be believed, the golfer managed to take on a total of 18 mistresses between the time of his marriage to Elin in October 2004 and his comeuppance last November.

The photograph of Woods outside the clinic was published first on Radar Online, the gossip website owned by the National Enquirer's parent company.

It was the Enquirer that set the Tiger Woods ball rolling when it ran a report in late November claiming that a New York party hostess, Rachel Uchitel, was having an affair with the golfer. A few days later, on November 27, Woods crashed his Cadillac into a tree outside his Florida home, unleashing an avalanche of further revelations.

At first, Uchitel claimed the story of her affair with the richest sportsman in the world was untrue. But as other women stepped forward to say that they, too, had had affairs with the golfer, the Enquirer was found to have got it right all along.

While the Hattiesburg clinic has refused to say whether Woods is a patient, the American writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis, who has himself been treated there, said a source had confirmed to him that Woods is undergoing therapy.

Denizet-Lewis claimed the golfer would find it hard to conquer the demons that led him to repeatedly cheat on his wife. "He's not going to be allowed to go out and golf in the morning," he said. "He'll do like everyone else - get up early, eat the same food and go through the same emotions... It's a really intense experience," he said.

Denizet-Lewis writes for the New York Times Magazine about sex, sexuality, and gender, and has a new collection of his articles coming out this month called American Voyeur: Dispatches From the Far Reaches of Modern Life.

He said Woods would doubtless feel intense shame to begin with. Gentle Path patients sign a "celibacy contract" that bans all sexual contact - including masturbation - while in treatment. ·