Tiger Woods says he's dating champion skier Lyndsey Vonn

TIGER WOODS has announced his "first serious relationship" since 2009, when he was exposed as a "serial philanderer with a penchant for porn stars and bimbos", says the New York Post.

The US golf star said he is "dating" world champion American skier Lindsey Vonn and put several photographs of the couple on his Facebook page yesterday to prove it. The 37-year-old golfer looks "as happy as a horndog at an adult-video convention", says the Post.

Woods wrote: "Something nice that's happened off the course was meeting Lindsey Vonn. Lindsey and I have been friends for some time, but over the last few months we have become very close and are now dating." Vonn tweeted that the relationship with Woods has "made me very happy".

The couple have known each other for some time, but became closer when Woods sent his private jet to Austria last month to collect Vonn after she suffered a knee injury.

The BBC's Los Angeles correspondent, David Willis, says Woods rarely discusses his private life. The announcement and pictures "may be a way of preventing the paparazzi from pursuing the couple in pursuit of a lucrative first photograph," he says.

Vonn, 28, married fellow Olympic skier Thomas Vonn in 2007, but they divorced four years later. She has said her training regime in Austria, Chile and New Zealand leaves her little time for a private life.

Along with just about everyone else in America, Vonn was happy to poke fun at Woods when the massive scale of his infidelity was made public.

In an interview with the skier on 19 February 2010 - the same day Woods made a grovelling public apology on US television - Vonn made several jokes about the golfer and came across as "ingratiatingly anti-Woods", says Time. "I mean, I guess if you have secrets, you have an issue. I've kind of been open about everything," she told the magazine at the time. ·