Tiger Woods Goes Shirtless for Vanity Fair *Photos*

Embattled golf-pro Tiger Woods appeared shirtless above back in his “Gillette” days, but it doesn’t compare to his recent cover shot, where he appears in his best “do me” pose in the February issue of Vanity Fair.

The never before seen shot, taken by famed photographer Annie Liebowitz in January 2006, was captured way before the world learned the married father of two cheated on his wife with as many as a dozen women and it reveals a very different “Tiger”.

In the upcoming article, reporter Buzz Bissinger reveals how Tiger “learned very well to talk forever and say nothing,” which explains how he kept so many secrets for so long.

The magazine is sure to fly off shelves with promises of an in depth feature on Tiger’s rise to fame and the fall of his marriage due to his now infamous string of mistresses. Check out the photo plus a sneak peek of the revealing article below:

According to the NY Daily News, Bissinger revisits the embarrassing interview that a then-21-year-old Woods gave to Charles Pierce of GQ magazine in 1997, where Woods joked about lesbian sex and the endowments of black athletes, and also interviews some of the reporters who covered Woods for years to find out how the golf great kept his catting around under wraps for so long.

Tiger?s story has been driven by sex, tons of it, in allegedly all different varieties: threesomes in which he greatly enjoyed girl-on-girl, and mild S&M (featuring hair-pulling and spanking); $60,000 pay-for-sex escort dates; a quickie against the side of a car in a church parking lot; a preference for porn stars and nightclub waitresses, virtually all of them with lips almost as thick as their very full breasts; drug-bolstered encounters designed to make him even more of a conquistador (Ambien, of all things); immature sex-text messages (?Send me something naughty … Go to the bathroom and take [a picture],? ?I will wear you out … When was the last time you got [laid]??); soulful confessions that he got married only for image and was bored with his wife; regular payments of between $5,000 and $10,000 each month to keep his harem quiet. (Source)
Wood’s wife, Elin Nordegren has kept pretty quiet but she’s been spotted hitting the slopes at France’s Chamonix ski resort, a wintry wonderland where the rooms cost $8,000-a-night. She was there celebrating her 30th birthday far from her husband in the French Alps.Nordegren has reportedly told pals that her philandering husband has dropped her a cool $300 million to keep her mouth shut and she has also begun wearing her wedding band again.

It’s also being reported that Woods has not seen his two children – Sam, 2, and 10-month-old Charlie – for over a month and that he had to mail them their Christmas presents.