A couple of weeks ago, The NY Post reported that the former editor of Men’s Fitness claimed that his magazine scored a coveted exclusive interview with Tiger Woods in 2007 in exchange for The National Enquirer killing a story about Tiger cheating. (It was with the Perkins manager, Mindy Lawton, who eventually sold her story to News of the World.) Men’s Fitness and The National Enquirer are owned by the same company, American Media. Tiger has a million-plus multi-year deal with another publisher, Conde Nast, but he obtained their permission to do the rare interview with Men’s Fitness, which became a bestseller for them. I vaguely remember reading this story when it came out although I kind of dismissed it among all of the dizzying Tiger news.

Now that the insane details of Tiger’s frenetic cheating have come out outlets are wondering why we didn’t hear about this much earlier. The guy was not discreet at all and he was carrying on with over a dozen women. The Wall St. Journal has a new story that confirms The Post’s news about Tiger’s deal with Men’s Fitness and offers some more incriminating background. Apparently the Enquirer captured Tiger in a car with manager Mindy in a parking lot, but the photos were too blurry and faraway to be incriminating. They bluffed and Tiger’s people came up with the interview as a way to quash the story. There was even a whole contract with American Media laying out the terms of the interview in exchange for The Enquirer’s silence. The resulting interview was such a coup for Men’s Fitness that the writer who interviewed Tiger ended up being named as new editor. There was also an opening since the old editor took such offense to the backdoor deal with Tiger that he quit in protest.

Here’s the relevant part of the Wall St. Journal’s story. There’s more and it’s very well written and interesting. It really offers perspective on how powerful Tiger and his team are, and helps show how he got away with being a serial cheater with a sex addiction for so long.

The National Enquirer episode began with an encounter in the late winter or early spring of 2007 in a church parking lot near Mr. Woods’s home in Windermere, Fla., according to the people with direct knowledge of the situation. A person working on behalf of the National Enquirer, based in Boca Raton, Fla., tailed Mr. Woods to the empty parking lot, these people said. Hidden from view, the photographer snapped photographs of the married Mr. Woods meeting a woman in his car. After the encounter, the photographer followed Mr. Woods to a small airport, where the golfer got on a private jet and took off, those people said.

The photos were so poorly lit that it was nearly impossible to tell what the couple was doing in the parking lot, says one person who saw the pictures. This person said it was unlikely the story could have been published without more evidence. At any rate, the Enquirer notified Mr. Woods’s representatives and the woman in the photograph that the publication had photographic evidence of the golfer having an affair and was ready to expose the encounter, according to people directly involved. It didn’t disclose to Mr. Woods’s representatives that the quality of the photographs was so poor, according to those people.

Within hours, representatives of Mr. Woods told the Enquirer that Mr. Woods wouldn’t comment on the alleged affair, say people close to the matter. But the representatives made an offer: If the Enquirer dropped the story, Mr. Woods would sit for an elaborate interview for sister publication Men’s Fitness, according to people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

After Mr. Woods’s camp offered the interview to American Media, people familiar with the matter say the company began negotiating with Lavely & Singer, a 15-lawyer firm in Los Angeles that is known for its aggressive tactics in disputes surrounding the publication of controversial articles about celebrities. Neither Jay Lavely Jr., who represents Mr. Woods, nor his partner, Martin Singer, responded to questions from the Journal.

After weeks of discussion, the two sides hammered out a contract detailing guidelines for the interview and the photo shoot, as well as the guarantee that the story of Mr. Woods’s rendezvous in the church parking lot wouldn’t be printed, according to a person who has seen the document.

The interview and photo shoot took place in 2007. “We had a great discussion,” said Roy S. Johnson, a former Sports Illustrated editor who was working as a freelance writer when he conducted the interview. “He worked out for us in the gym down there. He hit balls for us to be able to capture that wonderful swing. We talked about how he and Elin often worked out together.”

In the August 2007 issue, a beaming Mr. Woods appeared on the cover of Men’s Fitness. Inside, a 3,500-word story appeared, headlined “Tiger!” It was a coup for Men’s Fitness. The issue sold about 176,000 copies on the newsstand—more than 30% more than the average for the magazine’s 10 issues that year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. In May 2007, Mr. Johnson was named editor in chief of Men’s Fitness.

[From The WSJ]

TMZ had a brief story earlier this week about how Tiger’s team was covering his cheating ass for years. They paid off mistresses and “resolved messy situations with women that ‘could reflect negatively on his squeaky-clean image.'” This only confirms my belief that the National Enquirer does some excellent investigative research to dig up dirt on celebrities. It’s par for the course that they’d bend over backwards to accommodate the world’s number one golfer. Dozens of women did the same. Tiger got away with jetting women around the world and hiring hookers while projecting the image of a happy family man for years. It begs the question: what are other rich and powerful celebrities and sports stars up to?