TIGER Woods, the black American golfing champion, has long enjoyed a reputation as “Mr Clean”. But in the last week his reputation has come crashing around him. At the last count at least three (alleged) mistresses have come out of the woodwork. And there may be more.

It all started with news stories about Tiger crashing his car into a tree and fire hydrant outside his house at 2:30 in the morning. We were told that his beautiful blonde Scandinavian wife, Elin Nordegren, had saved him by smashing the windows of the car with a golf club and dragging him out. The story sounded odd. Why would a man, who can direct a golf ball with pinpoint accuracy over a hundred feet, crash into a tree he has driven past thousands of times? And what was he doing leaving his house in a hurry at 2:30 in the morning? But Tiger was not in the mood to answer any questions. The Florida traffic police came to his house three times to question him further about the incident and on all three occasions he refused to see them. Rumours swirled around the Internet and spilled over into the mainstream press — a picture began to emerge.

Tiger had featured that week in the notorious scandal-sheet National Inquirer. The Inquirer had named a New York party girl, Rachel Uchitel, as Tiger’s long-standing mistress. But the Internet rumour-mill went further. It was alleged on sites like TMZ that after Tiger’s wife caught him reading texts from the alleged girlfriend, a furious fight erupted. Tiger’s wife had battered him, scratching his face and destroying the entrance hall of their house. (This was allegedly the reason the couple refused to allow the police in.) Tiger had tried to escape in his car, but his wife chased him, waving a golf club and smashing the windows of his car, not in an attempt to free him, but in a murderous rage. No one knows how true these rumours are. What is known, though, is that it was neighbours, not Tiger’s wife, who called the emergency services to tend to Tiger. And when they arrived he was semi-conscious and had to be taken to hospital for treatment.

Tiger released a statement calling for privacy, which was designed to end the speculation. Instead two other girlfriends emerged. One of them is Jaimee Grubbs, a Los Angeles cocktail waitress and reality show contestant. She claimed to have had 20 sexual encounters with Tiger over a 31-month period, and she says that she has the text messages to prove it. The celebrity magazine US Weekly has online what is, apparently, a recording of Tiger telling Miss Grubbs that his wife might call her.

The third person is a Kalika Moquin, a “marketing manager” at a Las Vegas nightclub. A “friend” told Life and Style magazine that Tiger had been seeing Kalika for months. Allegedly their last tryst was over the weekend of October 23, when Tiger flew to Las Vegas to attend a friend’s bachelor party. Kalika apparently told her friend that Tiger was “amazing in bed”.

Meanwhile, Miss Uchitel has denied having an affair with Tiger, but she has got herself a celebrity lawyer, just in case.

And sports writers are now hinting that it was well known in golfing circles that Tiger was a “party animal”. In a way this is not surprising. Tiger is young, handsome, a billionaire, one of the most famous sportsmen in the world and he travels all the time for his work. The possibility of him retiring to bed every night with his Bible was always low.

The US news blog The Daily Beast has a story claiming that Tiger is negotiating an immediate £5-million payout to his wife to induce her to stay with him and keep her mouth shut. They are also (allegedly) renegotiating their prenuptial agreement to give her a bigger payout and to shorten the period she has to stay married to him in order to pocket the money. Allegedly the current prenuptial agreement gives his wife £20 million after 10 years of marriage. The revised agreement could give her up to £75 million after seven years. They have been married for five years. If reports are true, she could walk away with £55 million if she agrees to stick with him for another two years.

The last time the media were so mesmerised by a black sportsman and his white wife was when OJ Simpson was accused of murdering his wife. Let us hope, for Tiger’s sake, that this ends on a better note.