Tiger Woods Had Sex in Church Car Park

According to our investigation, when 'Team Tiger' discovered that the tabloid magazine not only had blurry pictures of him and Mindy in the car park but evidence of the consummation, they went into a panic. Then they went to work.

Neal Boulton, an editor in the tabloid magazine's company at the time, revealed: 'They said, "What do we have to do not to let this get out?"'

The answer was press the magazine's publisher to withhold the story in return for Tiger appearing on the August 2007 cover of its stablemate publication, Men's Fitness. And so Tiger, who regularly declines interviews on the grounds that he is a 'private' person, struck beefcake-style poses and gave tips on diet, exercise and weightlifting.

The tabloid's parent company insisted that the exclusive was not a quid pro quo. But it was enough for Boulton to resign in protest at the editorial interference which he perceived as an underhand 'trade-off'. Ironically, had Mindy voiced her own concerns some weeks earlier, Tiger and his team might have avoided everything which followed.

According to Lynn, her sister had told her of 'a strange car following her at night'. Around the same time, Lynn herself received a call from a reporter at the tabloid. But then nothing came of it – or so the Lawton family thought. And as far as Mindy knew, Tiger simply dropped out of her life.

Lynn said: 'You'd have thought with all his money, he would have paid her off and all the other girls but I guess he thought he had them in the palm of his hand. He treated my sister like a piece of meat.'

Tiger ended his affair with Mindy as soon as his management informed him of the tabloid sting. He just stopped calling. For her, there was no explanation, for him there was no story - and that was what mattered.

In the final analysis, it was perhaps too much for Tiger's management to hope that all his 'Mindys' would go away. And, crucially, cracks were beginning to appear in the one thing upon which everything - his reputation and his shield - depended: Tiger's game.

At the Open at Turnberry in the summer, Tiger missed the halfway cut for only the second time in a major championship in his glittering career.

At the time, the golfing circuit was awash with rumours that he had returned to his rented house and taken out his frustrations on its interior, trashing the place to the tune of £6,000 to £16,000, depending on who one believes, though nothing was ever confirmed.