(Parody) Interview TV: Elin Woods
Just who is Elin Nordegren Woods, anyway?
As Tiger Wreck Watch 2009 lurches into its fourth day with little new information, fans and media are combing over every element of this case like symbologists in a Dan Brown thriller. There's brick wall after brick wall in this story, but one of the largest and most well-fortified is this: just who is Elin Nordegren Woods, anyway?
If you were to design the perfect wife for a privacy-hungry superstar like Tiger Woods, she'd look a whole lot like Elin -- low-key, accustomed to celebrity, and, from all appearances on the golf course, totally devoted to her husband's career.
Which is what makes the current questions about her recent behavior -- why did she smash a window in Tiger's Escalade? Is she responsible for his injuries? Why did she change her story to police? -- so challenging. We'd like to think the best of her, but we simply don't know much about her.
As the Daily Beast notes today in a story entitled "The Mysterious Mrs. Woods," there's only been one major story written about Elin Nordegren Woods -- a 2004 Sports Illustrated profile -- and even that story centered on how little anyone outside of her inner circle knows about her.
The facts:
She grew up in Stockholm, and while she did some modeling in her teens, the idea that she was a "Swedish supermodel" is one of those urban legends that grows in the retelling. "She wasn't a high-profile model," as the Beast quotes a source from a New York modeling agency, and, to be fair, she didn't seem to be particularly interested in modeling as a career.
But she was around the world of golf long before she met Woods, serving as the Nanny to golfer Jesper Parnevik. She met Tiger at the 2001 British Open, and it wasn't exactly a romantic introduction for the ages.
According to SI, Tiger was so nervous about asking her out that he had a friend do it for him. Initially, she declined. But Woods persisted, she relented, and they married in a lavish $1.5 million ceremony in Barbados. That wedding was the stuff of tabloid heaven, with Hootie and the Blowfish as the house band and Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley in attendance.
Being married to the world's richest athlete apparently has done little to change Elin's public persona. We don't see her doing reality shows, we don't see her on the covers of magazines every month, and aside from releasing some photos, she doesn't parade around her children – two-year-old Sam and nine-month-old Charlie – seeking publicity. It's refreshing, really, to see someone in the limelight who's so apparently unconcerned with the fame-hungry world of modern celebrity.
And this brings up the question of obligation. Is Elin Woods obligated to share anything about herself with the world just because of the man she married? Of course not. Their private life is just that: private. Anything that goes on behind closed doors is their business, and theirs alone ... as long as no crimes have been committed. Without speculating on the Woods case, any time there is a reasonable suspicion of domestic violence, it does indeed become a public matter.
What's definitive is that some of the events of recent days haven't been behind closed doors, they've taken place on public streets. And because Tiger Woods is a worldwide celebrity, anything he does in public, from hitting a golf ball to hitting a fire hydrant, draws worldwide notice. Combine the events of Friday morning with the allegations published last Wednesday that Woods had been pursuing an affair with another woman, and you've got a case that police simply cannot ignore.
In the world of celebrity culture, curiosity fills in the gaps in a vacuum of information. Was it the wisest idea for Elin Woods to share absolutely nothing about herself for all these years? Perhaps, perhaps not; that's a decision everyone watching this case has to make for themselves.
What's certain is that the Woods camp would love a mulligan on many elements of this case, and the image that's been created -- or, more accurately, not created -- of Elin up until Nov. 27 may very well be at the top of that list.
The Mysterious Mrs. Tiger Woods
Even more perplexing than Tiger Woods’ strange behavior early Friday morning is that of his elegant and discreet wife, Elin Nordegren. Jacob Bernstein on the couple’s once seemingly perfect relationship.
If the news of Tiger Woods’ alleged marital spat early Friday morning was surprising, it wasn’t just because the man involved in the car crash is perhaps the best behaved athlete the Western world has ever seen.
Since she turned up on his arm in early 2002, Woods’ wife, Elin Nordegren, has been not just a cipher but a consummate match for her husband—classy and elusive, and from a smart, well-to-do Swedish family.
From the start of their relationship, she’s shown as little interest in publicizing her high-profile relationship as her husband, despite tabloid interest that’s followed her over the course of their eight-year relationship.
As Sports Illustrated noted when it profiled her in 2004, the year she married Woods: “Even in the insular world of the PGA Tour, [Nordegren] is a shadowy figure, talked about by everyone but close to very few.” One golf-world source told the magazine at the time, “She’s become like Greta Garbo. When she started dating Tiger, it was like there was an unwritten agreement she wouldn’t say anything to anyone. She’s still nice, but when you talk to her, you don’t get anything out of her.”
Amazingly, in this tabloid age, that article is practically the only substantial piece of journalism to appear about her for half a decade.
That might be why one golf-industry acquaintance describes her as such a good match for her husband, at least until last week. And it’s part of why this person and others are so confounded by reports that Nordegren may have “gone ghetto” on Woods after allegedly hearing that he was having an affair. Leaving the house in the middle of the night, Woods crashed his car into a tree, sustaining minor injuries. Over the course of the weekend, more details emerged, but little was clear, even after the golf star put out a statement Sunday taking the blame for what happened and insisting that his wife tried to help him.
If this was true, why had a neighbor, and not his wife, called the police? What was she doing with that golf club that smashed the back window of the car? Was she trying to free him from the vehicle? How on earth did this happen?
“You could point to a thousand candidates for a professional athlete to choose from for a wife and she was maybe No. 1,” one golf-industry acquaintance tells The Daily Beast.
The person goes on to describe Nordegren as “lovely and intelligent,” an “omnipresent” attendee at her husband’s matches—at least until the birth of the couple’s first child, in 2007—who was always there but “never stepped into the spotlight or did anything wacky.”
Nordegren didn’t even complain publicly when she suffered complications during that pregnancy. She wound up giving birth in the hospital on her own via Caesarean section, while Woods remained on the golf course competing in the U.S. Open.
Says the source: “I can only speak from their public appearances and very few private ones, but they seemed not to have any kind of conflict. What we think happened probably did, but there was no evidence of it. This wasn’t like Dennis Rodman, who lived out his hostile relationships in the press.”
So who is Nordegren, 29, and what is her story?
She spent her first years in a small town 50 miles north of Stockholm, where she was the older, by 10 minutes, of identical twins. Her father, Thomas, is a successful journalist who has served as the Washington bureau chief for Swedish Broadcasting media. Her mother, Barbro Holmberg, is a prominent figure in Swedish Democratic circles who became the country’s migration and asylum minister. Thomas and Barbro split when Elin and her sister Josefine were 6 years old, though it didn’t have any apparent effect on their daughters, both of whom seemed, until this week at least, to be those rare people around celebrities without any discernible serotonin deficiencies.
Although Nordegren modeled briefly in her teens, and has been referred to repeatedly in press clippings as a “former model,” she didn’t exactly make a career of it. “She wasn’t a high-profile model,” says one New York-based modeling source from a well-known agency.
Partly, this is because she didn’t seem to care about it. Bingo Rimer, the photographer who discovered Nordegren, told SI: “Elin doesn’t care about modeling. She never has. Even the few things I got her to do, I had to drag her into the studio. Being famous, the whole celebrity thing, she really and truly does not care about that.”
Nordegren did some commercial work, posing in swimsuits and whatnot, but she went to college anyway, at the prestigious Lund University, and took a job in a Stockholm clothing store called Champagne, where she met Mia Parnevik, wife of Swedish golf sensation Jesper Parnevik, who hired Nordegren as the nanny to their children.
The Parneviks were sort of like the Posh and Becks of Swedish golf; he was known as much for his disco-inspired trousers and strange hats as for his playing acumen. His wife is something of a shopaholic. (Hence the fortuitous meeting with Nordegren.) In 2001, at the British Open, Nordegren met Woods, whose penchant for blondes was well-documented.
At first, Nordegren was reportedly uninterested in Woods. As Mia Parnevik later noted, her thoroughly competent nanny displayed no interest whatsoever in the sport. She also had hopes of becoming a child psychiatrist and was concerned about appearing to be a “gold-digger.”
Further, the famously awkward Woods did not make a smooth approach. According to a close friend of the Parneviks who spoke to SI, Woods was so nervous about asking her out, he had a friend do it for him. “Her reaction was, ‘What the hell was that?’” the magazine quotes a close source as saying. “She thought it was so weird and pathetic. Of course she said no.”
But Woods persisted, flooding the Parneviks with calls, and she relented.
It turned out they had much in common. Like Woods, the golf-industry source notes, Nordegren was sporty. She’d played soccer and knew a lot about golf from her time with the Parneviks. “She was also conservative by nature, like him,” the person says.
Months after the romance blossomed, she returned to Sweden for Christmas, told Rimer of the relationship, and—displaying a press savvy befitting a future high-profile wife—worked out a deal so that only photographs she approved would be released. (Later on, nude photos of a woman looking like Nordegren surfaced, but they were apparently fakes. She sued for libel and won.)
A year later, the happy couple went on safari in South Africa, where they disappeared for 20 minutes, worrying ranger Nhlanhla Khumalo, who thought they might have been eaten by tigers. When they reemerged, Khumalo later told People magazine, Nordegren was wearing a giant engagement ring. “The diamond was half as big as my finger,” he said.
The 2004 wedding that followed was fit for a king. Held in Barbados, it reportedly cost $1.5 million. Hootie and the Blowfish played (well, everyone says they shared a certain squareness) and fireworks lit up the sky. Guests included Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. The afterparty was held on—you guessed it—a golf course. The couple spent their wedding night aboard Woods’ $20 million yacht, which he christened “Privacy.”
It’s something the couple is no doubt missing as the tabloid feeding frenzy continues.
View Larger Map
Sources: NBC Sports, The Daily Beast, Yahoo, Devil Ball Golf Blog, Wikipedia, Huffington Post, Sports By Brooks, Yard Barker, TMZ, AP, Getty Images, Schoolboy 111, Youtube, Google Maps,
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment