Tiger Woods and ex-wife Elin Nordegren have been through the ringer since the former couple first met at the Open Championship in 2001.
The duo’s love story started off promising, with the pair getting engaged two years after they first crossed paths. They said their “I dos” in October 2004 and soon welcomed two children: daughter Sam and son Charlie.
Six years into their marriage, however, things fell apart after Woods was involved in a bombshell cheating scandal. Woods admitted in fall 2009 that he’d been unfaithful and the couple finalized their divorce the following August.
Both parties have also since moved on with other partners. Woods started dating Erica Herman in 2017, though the pair split by late 2022. Nordegren revealed in June 2019 that she had found love again with former football pro Jordan Cameron, with whom she later welcomed kids Arthur, Zeta and Freya.
“Tiger and Elin are truly in a great place,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly in March 2023. “He’s been so great with the kids, and that really brought her around to having a friendship with Tiger.”
Scroll through to relive the highs and lows of Woods and Nordegren’s relationship in their own words:
Nordegren was on hand to cheer her then-husband on when he took home the 2005 Masters. “My spouse, we’re in it collectively. We’re a staff, and we do issues as a staff. And I care about her with all my coronary heart,” he told reporters at the time.
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Though the Swedish native has remained largely silent about her relationship with Woods following their divorce, she addressed his cheating scandal during a speech at her graduation from Rollins College in May 2014, referring to it as, “the wild storm of my personal life.” She clarified to the crowd: “I’m not longer married.”
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Woods told Time in December 2015 that Nordegren had become one of his “best friends.” “Having the relationship that I have now with her is fantastic,” he said. “We’re able to pick up the phone, and we talk to each other all the time. … It’s fun. She talks to me about her life, I talk to her about my life. We try and help each other out on all occasions. And we work through it with the kids, the parenting program. She is one of my best friends now, and it’s all because of my kids.”
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In the same 2015 interview, Woods addressed the breakdown in the pair’s communication, noting that if he could go back, he would want to have “a more open, honest relationship with my ex-wife.” “Our frustrations would have come out if we had talked about it and been open and honest with each other,” he lamented. “Which we are now, and it’s absolutely fantastic.”
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Woods shared with Stephen Colbert in December 2015 how he and his ex managed to move past the hurt to become not only cordial, but pals.
“We have Sam and we have Charlie. And we love them so much that we are going to do whatever it takes to make that work,” he reasoned. “That’s how it happened. … I’ve talked to her about so many different things and she does the same thing with me back and forth. We communicate so much better now, it’s incredible. I wish we would have done that earlier on, but it’s been incredible to have a best friend like that.”
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Woods opened up about how he explained his infidelities to his children during an interview with Charlie Rose in October 2016, telling them that, “Daddy made some mistakes. I’ve said, ‘Everybody makes mistakes, and the reason why mommy’s living in her house and daddy’s living in his house is because daddy made mistakes, and it’s OK.'”
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Woods spoke of the connection he shared with Nordegren prior to his affairs in his 2017 memoir, Unprecedented: The Masters and Me. “Their mother, Elin Nordegren, and I were so much in love when we married in 2004,” he wrote. “But I betrayed her. My dishonesty and selfishness caused her intense pain. Elin and I tried to repair the damage I had done, but we couldn’t.”
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Woods revealed in his 2017 book that he still regrets his actions from years prior. “My regret will last a lifetime,” he confessed. “Still, Elin and I are devoted to our kids, and we have become best friends as we care for them. It’s all about the kids for us.”
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