How Tiger Woods’ ex Rachel Uchitel ‘turned down’ Donald Trump, and why she has failed to get rid of the ‘mistress’ label even after the new Tiger HBO docuseries aired

This wasn’t how Rachel Uchitel wanted it to go. After a decade, she’d decided at last to talk about her affair with Tiger Woods so the public might characterise her as something other than a mistress. Maybe they’d stop writing “homewrecker” in the comments of her Instagram photos. Or at least understand that she’s a human who’s made mistakes and “deserves a break”.

But days before she broke her silence in the HBO docuseries Tiger, the UK media published photos of her kissing a married lawyer. In a series of breathless headlines, the tabloid said the “infamous mistress” had met the man on the website Seeking Arrangement – where young, alluring “sugar babies” connect with older, wealthy “sugar daddies” – after which he proceeded to leave his wife and kids for her.

Uchitel denied the account, insisting the lawyer had been separated from his wife for months before they’d met. Still, she feared the writing was on the wall. He was the third married man she’d been romantically linked to in 10 years. She dated Bones star David Boreanaz in 2009, after he told her he’d been living in his family’s guest house for nine months; it was only when his wife went into labour that Uchitel says she learned they were not separated.

And then there was Woods. Uchitel met the golf star while working as a VIP concierge for a slew of popular nightclubs, where her job was to make sure wealthy clients were surrounded by top-shelf alcohol and attractive guests. But as she recounts in Tiger, Woods was more interested in her than the women she’d helped select to party with him. Their tryst was only one of several Woods would be exposed for having had while married to Swedish model Elin Nordegren. But it was also the first to hit the press, and after the National Enquirer broke the story, Woods and Nordegren got into such a big fight that he drove off in his SUV and crashed it.

“The reason I chose to do the documentary is because I wanted to tell my story in one place, at one time, and be, like: ‘Listen: This is what happened. I’m not an awful person,’” says Uchitel, now 45, video chatting from the New York City flat where she lives with her eight-year-old daughter, Wyatt Lily. “The media was really awful to me. They blamed me for something that happened between two people. One guy got to be a hero, while the whole world made a mockery of me.”

She was hopeful that the series “would attract a level of empathy,” but so far, she says that hasn’t been the case. Online, the comments she’s received are largely negative: “‘Oh, we don’t want to hear from Rachel again!’ or ‘You’re ugly. You’re so old. We don’t even know who you are. Disappear.’”