We’ve already gone over this, but I just wanted to point out some of the more hilarious quotes from the US Weekly cover story on Lindsey Vonn and Tiger Woods’ new romance: “In Love With A Sex Addict.” You know that their PR people cosigned all this at least, although let’s face it they probably planted this entire story. This is the official version of what happened, not the one that acknowledges that Tiger was trying to get back with his ex wife to improve his image and that he scrapped those plans and went with Plan B, Lindsey. The story was from Lindsey’s point of view, to explain what the hell she was thinking, and there were some laughable moments. I’ll just do the highlights since you know the story already. It’s also worth noting that Lindsey/this story admits that she was dating Kris Humphries at the same time as Tiger Woods, which Star Magazine also reported.

How they met
The athletes first met at his April 2012 Tiger Jam charity fundraiser in Las Vegas, and the attraction was immediate. Though Vonn was in the midst of a messy protracted divorce from her former coach Thomas Vonn – the couple of five years split in November 2011 – she gave Woods her digits. “They started texting right after that,” says a confidant of Vonn. The two athletic prodigies have traveled similar life paths: Both started their sports as toddlers, were pushed to excel by demanding fathers and have lived out their adult lives in bubbles created by their global success. “Tiger and Lindsey had a lot in common,” observes the source. “They immediately clicked.”

Still, at that point Woods wasn’t Vonn’s only suitor. Bachelor No. 2 was none other than Kim Kardashian ex Kris Humphries. “They’re both from Minnesota, so they had a lot to talk about,” says a confidant of Vonn, who says the skier never got physical with the 28 year-old Brooklyn Nets player.

Tiger is the only man who can understand her
By October, however, Vonn had given Humphries the brush-off for the only man who could understand her. “No one else gets what athletes at that level go through,” says a source close to Vonn, who was putting in seven-hour gym workouts six times a week in Austria. “They train all the time!…”

She is really private
Yet the couple felt a need to hide from the public, even after Vonn’s divorce was finalized in January and she began to talk more openly with friends about Woods. “Lindsey has been more private about Tiger than anything in her life,” says the Vonn confidant. Her best friend since childhood remains diplomatic: “I trust she’s going into this relationship with eyes open,” marketing strategist Hilary Lund tells Us. “If anything were to go wrong, we are there for her to fall back on….”

On if this ruins her image
“A happy athlete is going to perform well for sponsors,” says the source. “And she’ll make them a shit-ton of money…”

“The year sucked in terms of physical things [Lindsey was injured while racing], but for the first time, she feels like she can do anything she wants,” says the pal. “This is the first time she can be a woman.”

[From US Weekly, print edition, April 8, 2013]

Well I guess now we understand this relationship a bit better. It’s more than just PR, it’s Tiger finding another top athlete who is delusional and damaged enough to get involved in a relationship with him, announce and try to justify it to the press (including releasing staged photos) and then say she’s been more private about him than “anything in her life.” This is not what privacy looks like by any stretch, but it sure is fun to watch. As I’ve asked before, is she going to be “private” when this relationship inevitably implodes? I’m hoping her definition of privacy won’t change, and she’ll pull a Kat Von D. “He’s a cheater, how could I have known?!”