Tiger Woods: two versions of the 2.15am car crash

After a weekend of frenzied speculation, golfer Tiger Woods claimed on Sunday that the car accident outside his home in the small hours of Friday morning was his own fault and had nothing to do with him fleeing his angry wife because of an affair. "It's obviously embarrassing to my family and me," he said. "I'm human and I'm not perfect."

But the latest report from the gossip site TMZ.com says police are still pursuing the theory that his wife, Elin Nordegren, may have attacked him.

The Florida Highway Patrol are reported to be seeking a search warrant to allow them to seize medical records from the hospital where Woods was treated on Friday morning. If it turns out that his wounds are not consistent with a car crash, then she could be charged with domestic violence. 

Woods claimed in a statement posted on his website on Sunday that there had been "many false, unfounded and malicious rumours" but that "the only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false."

However, his decision not to go into any further detail, coupled with his continued refusal to talk to police about the car accident - which under Florida law he is entitled to do - means the speculation has not died down.

In a nutshell, many in the US media, led by TMZ, believe Elin, a 29-year-old former model, "went ghetto" after the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer claimed in a report that her husband was having an affair with a New York hostess and party planner, Rachel Uchitel. The report was based on claims that the two had met in Las Vegas and Melbourne.

The Enquirer quoted a woman who claimed to be a friend of Uchitel saying: "Rachel told me, 'I'm having an affair with Tiger Woods. We're in love!' She even read me text messages Tiger sent her that said 'I love you, babe. It's always going to be just you and me'. They were constantly sexting."

As a result, there are two versions of what happened in the small hours of Friday outside the Woods family home in the gated community of Isleworth:

♦ Version one: In a row over the alleged affair, Elin scratched Tiger's face. The billionaire golfer then leapt in his Cadillac Escalade to escape his angry wife. Brandishing a golf club, Elin chased him down the driveway and smashed the car's rear windows. Tiger hit a fire hydrant and then a tree. The first neighbour on the scene saw Tiger lying flat on the ground, unconscious, with Elin standing over him, still holding a golf club.

♦ Version two: Tiger decided to go for a drive at about 2.15am. He accidentally hit the fire hydrant and then the tree. His wife, hearing the accident, came out and found the doors to the Cadillac jammed shut. She used a golf club to smash the rear windows and then climbed in and pulled her husband out and laid him on the grass. She was tending to him when the first neighbour arrived.

Uchitel does not deny being a friend of Woods, nor that she was coincidentally staying at the same hotel as him - the Crown Towers - in Melbourne in mid-November. But she denies having had an affair with the golfer and has retained a high-profile lawyer, Gloria Allred.

She told reporters at the weekend: "We are just friends. God forbid Tiger got into a car wreck because of this false report of him having an affair."

The 34-year-old added: "Despite it being completely untrue, it still must have caused problems at home - if I was his wife, I would have killed him."

The US media are now waiting to see whether the world's number one golfer turns up as this week's Chevron World Challenge, which he is due to host. ·