Rachel Uchitel is known for her 2009 scandal with Tiger Woods, which she’ll open up about in the golf legend’s upcoming documentary ‘Tiger.’ Learn more about Rachel, who’s ready to move past the affair.
Rachel Uchitel, 45, will be talking directly to the camera about her affair scandal with Tiger Woods, 44, in the golf champion’s upcoming HBO Max documentary Tiger, premiering on Jan. 10, 2021. “Here he was, in my bed, and he was my Tiger,” the former nightclub manager said in a sneak peek of the documentary, as she looked back at the scandal that rocked the sports world after the National Enquirer first reported their affair in 2009, while Tiger was still married to Elin Nordegren, 40.
The report of Rachel and Tiger’s affair — which Rachel denied at first — was just one of the many controversies that happened amid Tiger’s 2009 downfall in golf, along with his SUV crash and more allegations from women who claimed to have engaged in affairs with the world-famous athlete. Like Tiger, Rachel has worked on moving past the scandal that has haunted their names in the 11 years that have since passed. Learn more about Rachel before and after her infamous scandal with the world’s former No. 1-ranked golfer, who has won 82 PGA Tours in his lifetime:
1. Long before Tiger came into the picture, Rachel was engaged — and lost her fiance to 9/11. Rachel had her first brush with the media when her fiancé, an investment banker named James Andrew O’Grady, died amid the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City in 2001. After the devastating attacks, a photo of Rachel crying and clutching a photo of her missing fiancé was published on the front cover of the New York Post.
2. Rachel worked in news, and later nightclubs. After graduating from the University of New Hampshire in 1996, she went on to work as a producer in the television division at Bloomberg News. She did a career change in 2005, and started working as a VIP hostess at the Tao nightclub in Las Vegas between 2005-2006. This led to a successful career in nightclub management in NYC.
3. Rachel claimed that she first met Tiger through a famous ex who played baseball. “I first met Tiger Woods – I was dating Derek Jeter – and Tiger was sleeping over at Derek’s house,” Rachel revealed on an episode of the Juicy Scoop podcast in Sept. 2020. “He was just a buddy… and we just became friendly. So that’s how I originally met him in Manhattan. I met him a couple of times in the nightclubs through other people and he would come in or whatever.”
4. Rachel joined Tiger’s documentary because it had been “a really hard 10 years” amid all the backlash she has faced from their affair. “I felt like people have gone so low on me sort of about me over the last 10 years after all this stuff that had come out about the scandal that I felt at some point I needed to you know like remove the shackles of what that is like to not have a voice,” Rachel also said on the Juicy Scoop podcast in Sept. 2020.
Rachel then remarked how Tiger has managed to rebrand himself (he even won the 2019 Masters tournament). “Tiger gets to win awards or win his different tournaments. He gets to come out of things and have mishaps, and get up again, and people want to cheer for him. But the women don’t get that so much, not just with him but with any scandal, and that’s not really fair. And I just felt like I needed to be able to have a voice finally,” Rachel explained on the podcast.
“Because it’s been a really hard 10 years of having to just sit there and let people, in the absence of truth, let people say things about me and also just let people talk about me like they know me because they don’t,” she added. “And that’s a really hurtful way to live. It hasn’t been easy, ya know. So I decided to speak.”
5. Rachel now owns a children’s boutique, and is the mom of a seven-year-old daughter. She left behind the nightclub world to open a children’s boutique named after her daughter, Wyatt Lily, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 2013. Rachel shares her daughter with her ex-husband, Matt Hahn, whom she split from in 2013 as well.