In the days following Tiger Woods’s devastating car crash in Rancho Palos Verdes, just outside of Los Angeles, California, two women helped him make it through the dark time: his girlfriend Erica Herman and Tiger Woods’s ex-wife, Elin Nordegren. Though Woods and Nordegren had called it quits more than a decade before his April 2021 accident, the couple remained on good terms while co-parenting their two children. In fact, Elin took care of their kids, Sam and Charlie, as Tiger recovered in the hospital.
Tiger and Elin’s relationship hasn’t always been stable, though. He famously cheated on his ex-wife with scores of women, which ultimately caused the death of their marriage. But his and Nordegren’s relationship made a comeback, to the point where they considered each other “best friends.” Elin has also moved on since calling it quits for Tiger, so here’s a look back on where her journey began, some of the bumps in the road and how she’s doing today.
Elin Nordegren is the ex-wife of golfer Tiger Woods. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and has spent a good portion of her life in the United States. She and the golf legend were married in October 2004, one year after he proposed to her during a trip to South Africa. The couple tied the knot in a lavish, star-studded, multi-million-dollar wedding in Barbados.
During their time as husband and wife, Tiger and Elin started their family. They welcomed daughter Sam Alexis Woods (b. 2007) and son Charlie Axel Woods (b. 2009). Unfortunately for the couple, there was no happy ending to this love story. Their marriage fell apart in late 2009 after Tiger’s multiple extramarital affairs came to light. Despite Tiger saying that he would take an “indefinite break” from golf to salvage his marriage, the efforts were in vain. The divorce was finalized in August 2010, with Elin reportedly getting more than $100 million in the divorce settlement, per TMZ.
“I have moved on, and I am in a good place,” Elin told People in 2014, speaking for the first time since the divorce. “My relationship with Tiger is centered around our children, and we are doing really good – we really are – and I am so happy that is the case. He is a great father.” While her relationship with her ex was “really good,” Elin said that it took a while to get to that point. She told People that she went through “intensive therapy” during the split and, at the time, still checked in with a therapist to keep “working on myself.”
“In the beginning, you tamp down the animosity for the kids’ sake,” she told the publication. “I’m not going to deny that I went through the wringer. But I don’t think I doubted we’d end up here. That was always my dream, that the kids can have two loving parents that show respect for each other. And I feel that’s what they have.”
Following the divorce, Elin used some of her divorce settlement to purchase a $12 million mansion in North Palm Beach, Florida, according to the Daily Mail. After making the purchase, she tore down the structure due to “rot” and donated the original fixture to Habitat for Humanity. In 2018, she flipped the property, listing it for $50 million (but ultimately selling it for $29 million in September 2020).
