Elin Nordegren said she never had an inkling.
She said she never hit her famous husband with a golf club.
She said she’s never felt so sad and devastated, and hopes she never will again.
All this and more from the woman the world has waited to hear from since that Thanksgiving night that shattered her marriage and the carefully crafted image of Tiger Woods.
“I’ve been through hell,” Nordegren said in an interview with People magazine released Wednesday, two days after she and Woods were officially divorced. “It’s hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden — was it a lie? You’re struggling because it wasn’t real. But I survived.”
She and the couple’s children, 3-year-old daughter Sam and 18-month-old son Charlie, have settled a mile from her ex-husband in a rented, five-bedroom house in a gated community in Windermere, Fla. — where Woods needs her permission to get past the guard. The two are sharing custody of the children.
Nordegren credits therapy and long runs with helping her deal with the last nine months, and she also kept a journal of her thoughts and emotions.
“I haven’t gone back to read what I wrote in December and January; I’m afraid to,” she said.
She has not watched “one minute of golf.” But she can laugh at things now, calling those “Saturday Night Live” and “South Park” parodies of her “pretty hysterical” (though totally untrue).
The car crash outside the couple’s Florida home shattered any hopes she had of a normal life for her and her children.
The world learned the tawdry details of Woods’ philandering, and many wondered if Nordegren had a hand in the accident, perhaps going after him in a fit of rage when she caught him.
“This was one of the things I had the hardest time with people thinking,” Nordegren said. “There was never any violence inside or outside our home. The speculation that I would have used a golf club to hit him is just truly ridiculous.”
The interview with People, conducted at her home over four visits lasting a total of 19 hours, will be her only one, she said.
Nordegren would not disclose the amount of the divorce settlement but did say “money can’t buy happiness or put my family back together.”
Nordegren said she had never suspected Woods of cheating.
“I felt stupid as more things were revealed — how could I not have known anything?” Nordegren said. “The word betrayal isn’t strong enough.”
In the end, Nordegren said she decided that a marriage “without trust and love” wasn’t good for anyone.
“I am now going to do my very best to show them that alone and happy is better than being in a relationship where there is no trust,” she said.
