*Tiger Woods may be playing cat-and-mouse with the media, but readers of Vanity Fair will see much more of him than ever before when the February issue hits stands next week.
The cover shot, part of a spread taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz before his sex scandal, shows a bare-chested Woods in a black cap lifting weights. The magazine says the layout depicts “a raw, unguarded Woods,” and captures him “in prophetic isolation.”
At VanityFair.com, Leibovitz said of the images: “Tiger is an intensely competitive athlete – and quite serious about his sport. I wanted to reveal that in these photos. And to show his incredible focus and dedication.”
In the cover story, author Buzz Bissinger (“Friday Night Lights”) refers to Woods as “a sex addict who could not get enough” and cites a 1997 GQ interview with the golfer, who was 21 at the time, as evidence of the real Woods.
Bissinger claims that the interview, conducted by writer Charles Pierce, was “largely a series of profane quips by Tiger, such as ‘What I can’t figure out is why so many good-looking women hang around baseball and basketball. Is it because, you know, people always say that, like, black guys have big d—–s?’” Bissinger then says Woods flirted with a few females on the GQ photo shoot set and told a dirty joke: “He rubbed the tips of his shoes together and then asked the women, ‘What’s this?’ They were stumped. ‘It’s a black guy taking off his condom.’”
The Vanity Fair issue hits newsstands in New York and L.A. on Wednesday and nationwide next Tuesday.
In other Tiger news:
• A media scrum found its way to the Trump International Hotel in New York over the weekend after hearing that Tiger was hiding out inside. TMZ reported that the golf star “locked down an entire floor” with his own security team on duty, then reserved the entire gym for themselves from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m.
