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In his first interview since a sex scandal shattered his image, golfer Tiger Woods says he "was living a lie" and "hurt a lot people" including his wife and family, ESPN reported Sunday.

"I was living a lie, I really was," said Woods, speaking in his first interview since a November car crash outside his Florida home. "And I was doing a lot of things, that hurt a lot of people.

"And stripping away denial, and rationalization, you start coming to the truth of who you really are, and that can be very ugly."

Woods announced his return at the Masters in April after four months of self-imposed exile. Shielded by the most secure environment in golf, it is still expected to be a circus-like atmosphere and unlike anything he has ever faced before.

He told ESPN.com he is starting to get his life back in order.

"When you face it and you start conquering it and you start living up to it, the strength that I feel now. I have never felt that type of strength," he said.

Woods has not played since winning the Australian Masters in mid-November after a sex scandal in which he admitted cheating on wife Elin, and apologized for igniting a tabloid frenzy where more than a dozen women have claimed affairs.

Woods conducted two separate brief-minute interviews with ESPN and The Golf Channel.

Wearing a green sweater, and while baseball cap, Woods chose his words carefully as he interviewed near his home in Windermere, Florida.

Woods said he reached a low point when he had to face his mother and wife with the truth.

"I had a lot of low points. Just when I didn't think it could get any lower it got lower, Woods said. "There were so many different low points. People I had to talk to and face like my wife, like my mom.

"I hurt them the most. Those are the two people in my life who I am the closest to and to say the things that I've done, truthfully to them, is ... honestly ... was ... very painful."

Responding to how his wife took the news, Woods said, "She was hurt, she was hurt. Very hurt.

"Shocked. Angry. She had every right to be and I am disappointed as everyone else in my own behavior because I can't believe I actually did that to the people I loved."

Woods' interview come just days after former porn star Veronica Siwik-Daniels, known in the sex industry as Joslyn James, released more than 100 text messages on her website that portray Woods as someone who fantasizes about having violent sex with submissive women.

Asked what he went into "treatment" for, Woods refused to go into specifics.

"That's a private matter. But I can tell you that it was tough. Really tough to look at yourself in a light that you never want to look at yourself. That's pretty brutal."

AFP