Tiger ‘pays out millions for transgressions’

One way or another, this appears to have been an expensive week for Tiger Woods. Whether or not he "paid off" Rachel Uchitel with $1m to keep quiet about their relationship - the subject of much speculation overnight - it is reported that he has had to stump up an extra $60m to pacify his angry wife, Elin Nordegren.

First, the Rachel Uchitel affair. Why did she and her LA lawyer Gloria Allred call off yesterday's press conference at which the New York party hostess was due to make a statement about her relationship with Woods?

According to reports in the US media, it was because the billionaire golfer had offered her $1 million not to say anything.

Uchitel had vehemently denied that she had a sexual relationship with the world's number one golfer when the National Enquirer made the claim in the week leading up to his car crash last Friday. Uchitel even said she would take a lie detector test to prove it.

But after another woman, San Diego cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubbs, claimed she had enjoyed a two-and-a-half-year affair with the golfer, and Woods subsequently apologised to his family for his "transgressions", everything changed.

Friends of Uchitel told the media she had had an affair with Woods - including meeting up with him in Melbourne last month - and was only denying it to protect him. Now that he had all but admitted cheating on his wife, it seemed Uchitel was preparing to talk about it.

That was what the media were expecting to happen at yesterday's press conference before Allred suddenly cancelled it "due to unforeseen circumstances".

Both the celebrity website Radar and the New York Post reported yesterday that the reason for the cancellation was an offer of $1m from Woods.

However, the gossip site TMZ, which has got many aspects of the unfolding saga right so far, claims "a well-connected source" had told them Uchitel was not given any payment. It wasn't about money: she knew so much about Tiger's private life that she had decided "to disappear for a while".

TMZ, however, is adamant that Uchitel and Woods did have an affair. The site has dug up correspondence from Tiger's old friend Bryon Bell, president of Tiger Woods Design, which appears to show that Bell organised a trip to Melbourne for Uchitel so that she could be in town while Tiger played in the Australian Masters. Bell also paid for her room at the Crown Towers Hotel - where Tiger was also staying.

But if Woods didn't have to pay to Uchitel $1m, he has had expenses at home, if other reports are to be believed.

According to the Daily Beast, Woods and Nordegren have had the lawyers in to rewrite the pre-nuptual agreement they signed before their marriage in 2004. Under the original pre-nup, Elin was entitled to $20m if the couple broke up after 10 years of marriage.

The Beast claims that has now been revised so that she will receive as much as $55m more - $75m in total - if the marriage breaks down.

And that's not all. The website's source also claims that Woods transferred $5m in cash to his wife's personal account at the same time as revising the pre-nup. That's $60m it's cost him in total this week, or $61m if there's any truth in the Uchitel pay-off. Still, he can afford it. His fortune is estimated at $1bn. ·