Tiger Woods's NDA battle with Erica Herman is dragging his obsession with privacy into the spotlight

• Tiger Woods's ex-girlfriend Erica Herman claims he evicted and abused her, but she has an NDA.
• Woods's desire for privacy has come up in tabloids, court filings, even the name of his yacht.
• A new law invalidating NDAs that prevent speaking about sexual abuse could pierce Woods's privacy.

When security guard John Davis slipped on some stairs at a Florida mansion in 2010 and hurt his knee, he filed a lawsuit. The defendant, Christopher Hubman, wasn't a name most people would recognize.

But to people who knew Hubman's role as the trusted lieutenant of golf superstar Tiger Woods, the real target of the lawsuit was obvious: Woods himself, whose net worth at the time had just surpassed half a billion dollars. Even though Davis was injured at Woods's mansion, Hubman handled the suit as an officer of the trust controlling the estate, and everyone in the case took pains to play down the connection. At one point in a deposition, Davis referred to a witness as "Tiger's personal assistant," before catching himself — "Oh," he said. "She's the client's personal assistant."

Davis wasn't the first person asked to keep Tiger Woods's name out of his mouth, and according to a $30 million lawsuit filed earlier this month by Woods's ex-girlfriend Erica Herman, he wasn't the last.

Herman is suing to nullify a nondisclosure agreement she signed in 2017 while dating Woods, with her legal filings citing laws that allow people with allegations of sexual abuse to invalidate such contracts. Her lawyers are arguing that the agreement needs to be scrapped to proceed with another suit against Woods, related to her claim that Woods used a ruse to wrongfully evict her from his house. As it stands, the agreement is so broad, her lawyers said in a filing, that she is "unsure what other information about her own life she may discuss, or with whom."

The battle over Herman's NDA is a window into Woods's longtime obsession with privacy. In both public statements and personal dealings, he has repeatedly sought to limit and control what people know about the real life of the world's most famous golfer — leveraging legal barriers, financial trusts and his immense wealth to keep things quiet. Even his former personal chef has an NDA.

As public scrutiny and tabloid speculation intensify around Woods once again, the carefully constructed walls around his private life face arguably their biggest test since the infidelity scandal that imploded his public image and professional career over a decade ago.

Tiger Woods doubles down on privacy

Woods built his brand in the late 1990s and early 2000s on the carefully crafted image of a clean-living athlete, armed with a thousand-watt smile and the ability to turn golf tournaments into must-see TV. His winnings on tour and prolific sponsorship deals netted him hundreds of millions of dollars, with his spotless public persona making him ideal for marketers.

But Woods's reputation came crashing down in 2009, after The National Enquirer and Us Weekly reported that he'd had affairs with two women during his marriage to Elin Nordegren. The reports sparked a tabloid frenzy. Dozens more women came forward claiming to have had affairs with the golfer, and Woods ultimately sought treatment for sex addiction as his marriage to Nordegren crumbled.

The media fracas appeared to prompt him to clamp down on control of his private life, already well-guarded behind trusts and the threat of litigation. Woods reportedly made at least two of his former girlfriends sign NDAs.

Woods's desire for privacy has seemingly informed much of the way he conducts his life. He previously lived in a Florida enclave so exclusive that Time magazine reported even police officers had to ask permission to enter. At one Georgia golf club, Woods requested a locker near the back stairwell so he could escape attention, The Atlanta Constitution reported in 2000. He lambasted the owner of a South African game reserve for publicizing his marriage proposal to Nordegren.

His attempts at a private life have also repeatedly run up against the realities of fame, and at times prompted litigation. Woods named his $20 million superyacht "Privacy," but even before the boat's completion in 2004 he sued the builder for using his name and photos in promotional material without authorization.

Woods has also excoriated the press for digging into his private life.

"Personal sins should not require press releases," he said during his divorce from Nordegren. "Problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions."

Woods has a history of NDAs

Woods has managed to stage an improbable comeback in recent years both on and off the golf course. Although he lost some sponsorship deals after the infidelity scandal, his personal wealth ultimately swelled to an estimated net worth of over $1 billion last year, according to Forbes.

Herman's steady presence at Woods's side in recent years has also helped rehabilitate his image, as Woods overcame injuries to rise once again to the top of the golf world and regain a measure of control over his public relations.

But a new law that invalidates certain nondisclosure agreements where a signer claims sexual harassment or assault may help penetrate Woods's thick legal armor. Herman is asking that her nondisclosure agreement be invalidated on these grounds.

Woods's lawyers filed a response on Monday to the suit that disputed the allegations and stated Herman "is a not a victim of sexual assault or abuse sought to be protected by Congress when enacting the statute."

Attorneys for Woods and Herman did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Herman's three-page NDA, filed by Woods's lawyers, is mostly blacked out. The only section that's not redacted says that any disputes about it have to be resolved privately.

Other women who have been in relationships with Woods also signed NDAs. Rachel Uchitel, who was dating Woods while he was married to Nordegren, struck an $8 million deal to keep quiet.

But the sweeping nondisclosure agreement she signed went far beyond the details of her affair, The New York Times reported in 2021. The NDA barred Uchitel from discussing "directly or indirectly, verbally or otherwise" Woods's "lifestyle, proclivities, customs, private conduct, fitness, habits, sexual matters, familial matters" and other topics with more or less anyone: "family members, relatives, acquaintances, friends, associates, co-workers, journalists." The agreement even prohibited her from acknowledging she had signed an NDA.

"This is someone who everyone wants to be a hero," Uchitel told The New York Times of Woods, "and anyone who crosses that narrative will be shamed."

Woods's team, though, ultimately only paid Uchitel $5 million of the $8 million they'd initially agreed upon, alleging that she had violated the terms of the NDA. In 2020, Uchitel filed for bankruptcy.

In 2018, celebrity news website TMZ reported that Kristin Smith, who was reportedly in a relationship with Woods around the same time he began dating Herman, was also threatened with legal action related to an NDA.

Woods's bubble has been pierced on occasion. In 2012, his former coach Hank Haney wrote a tell-all book. A 2016 ESPN profile described how Woods, a longtime military obsessive, spent days doing training exercises with Navy SEALs. During one firearms course, Woods ended up shooting a target of a person with a camera intended to simulate a civilian bystander, then cracked a joke about how much he hated photographers.

Often, though, Team Tiger locks things down. In October 2021, exhibits and transcripts were sealed in an unsuccessful case brought by the family of an employee at Tiger Woods's restaurant who died in a drunk driving incident. One of the depositions was of Herman, who was then a manager at the restaurant. A judge ultimately ruled that Woods and the restaurant could not be held responsible for the employee's death.

Earlier this week, when Insider called Matthew Byrne, Woods's former personal chef, he said he couldn't talk. "I'm on an NDA," he said. "I have nothing to say."

Celebrities turn to NDAs in private life

Woods isn't the only celebrity to make heavy use of NDAs. Buzzfeed reported in 2021 that actors, athletes and other celebrities - women and men - required sexual partners to agree to say nothing about their encounters. One unnamed actor reportedly tried to make a woman sign an NDA after they had drunk alcohol and done cocaine together.

Charlie Sheen reportedly made sexual partners sign NDAs that provided for $100,000 in damages if they were violated. (Sheen's representatives told Buzzfeed that "Charlie doesn't require NDAs.") Donald Trump famously paid Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an affair that he has denied took place. Revelations of the use of NDAs by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, actor Bill Cosby, and Fox News host Roger Ailes to force women they abused to keep quiet formed the context for lawmaker's passage last year of the Speak Out Act, a law cited by Herman's lawyers.

Woods has cast his intense desire for privacy as an outgrowth of his natural shyness. At the height of "Tigermania" in the early 2000s, Woods could barely step outside without causing chaos. By then, Woods had been an object of public fascination nearly his entire life: His father, Earl Woods, began taking Woods on television to show off his golf prowess when he was just two years old.

Appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2001, after winning his second Masters tournament at age 26, Woods explained that off the golf course, he loathed public attention.

Of his then-ascendant fame, "I honestly don't feel comfortable with it," he said.

But Woods also has a financial stake in protecting his image. When Woods's cheating on his wife came to light, his reputation took a hit. He lost lucrative sponsorships from Gatorade and AT&T, among others. Among sportscasters there was widespread speculation that the scandal damaged his mental game and knocked him off leaderboards for years.

But Woods recovered financially as he returned to golf. Despite a succession of injuries that impaired his performance, his wealth only grew as he signed new sponsorship deals with companies including Rolex, Monster Energy, and Bridgestone Golf. Even a 2017 DUI, which Woods said was related to treatment for back pain, seemed to not tarnish his return to the public eye.

Herman has been an essential part of Woods's rehabilitated image. She's appeared at his side on the golf course and at the White House when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019. Tabloids wrote glowing profiles of the couple's relationship; as recently as last year, OK speculated that Woods and Herman would soon marry.

The two met when Herman was in college in the mid-2000s and working at the Blue Martini Lounge in Palm Beach Gardens, where Woods was a regular, Page Six reported.

Before she became a manager at Woods's upscale Florida steakhouse, The Woods Jupiter, Herman owned an Orlando restaurant, Aura Bar, with two business partners. The restaurant was short-lived, and its online presence is sparse. But it appears to have attempted to woo the golf crowd: Far and away the most photos on Aura's Facebook page come from a party held at the 16th hole of the 2011 Arnold Palmer Invitational - where staff were watching Tiger Woods.

When Woods's image imploded in 2009, he used nondisclosure agreements to stanch the gush of details about his personal life into the media. But since then, public tolerance for stars' sweeping use of NDAs to prevent reports of their misdeeds from emerging has waned. Now, Woods is finding that the tool he once relied on to protect himself from scrutiny is having the opposite effect of sparking questions about what he may have to hide.