The Florida Highway Patrol said it will investigate the crash in the early hours of Friday (local time) that left Woods' mouth bloodied as a traffic accident.
As to the circumstances of the crash, Highway Patrol spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes said investigators are "trying not to get on the rumour mill." Police said the world's No. 1 golfer smashed his Cadillac into a fire hydrant and a neighbour's tree near his $US2.4 ($NZ3.41) million mansion at 2:25am on Friday.
Plenty of vivid details from the car crash that sent Woods to the hospital have emerged. His lips were cut, and Windermere police chief Daniel Saylor said Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren, used a golf club to smash out a back window and help Woods from the car.
There are also plenty of questions. The highway patrol planned to speak to Woods about the wreck, and Montes said the investigation should be finished within the next couple of days.
More than two dozen media and a cluster of television trucks camped outside the gates of the exclusive Isleworth development where Woods lives, waiting for authorities to visit Woods. As the media waited, two tourists stopped by to take pictures.
Inside the gates, one of Woods' neighbours, who didn't want her name to be used, said it was quiet in front of his house. She said there are usually two or three cars parked outside his home and that was the scene now as well.
The neighbour said everyone in the gated community was discussing Woods' crash.
According to the patrol, Woods had just left his Florida mansion when he lost control of his 2009 Cadillac and hit a fire hydrant, then a tree on his neighbor's property. The report said alcohol was not a factor.
The patrol reported the accident occurred at 2:25am on Friday morning and classified the injuries as serious. The first word from Woods' camp - some 13 hours after the crash - was that it was a "minor accident," and he was in good condition after being treated and released.
Saylor said his two officers found the 33-year-old Woods lying in the street with his wife, Elin, hovering over him.
Saylor said Woods' wife told officers she was in the house when she heard the accident and "broke the back window with a golf club."
He said the front-door windows were not broken and that "the door was probably locked."
"She supposedly got him out and laid him on the ground," he said. "He was in and out of consciousness when my guys got there."
In a telephone interview, Woods' father-in-law, radio journalist Thomas Nordegren, told The Associated Press in Stockholm that he would not discuss the accident.
"I haven't spoken to her in the last few ... " Nordegren said about his daughter, Elin, before cutting himself off. "I don't want to go into that." Woods' mother-in-law Barbro Holmberg also refused to address the matter.
"She doesn't want to comment on private issues like these," Holmberg's spokeswoman Eva Malmborg said.
Asked at a Friday evening news conference if the couple could have been arguing, Saylor said he had no knowledge of that. The couple, married forfive years, have two children.
The accident came two days after the National Enquirer published a story alleging that Woods had been seeing a New York night club hostess, and that they recently were together in Melbourne, where Woods competed in the Australian Masters.
The woman, Rachel Uchitel, denied having an affair with Woods when contacted by the AP.
"I resent my reputation is getting completely blasted in the media," she said during a telephone interview late Friday. "Everyone is assuming I came out and said this. This is not a story I have anything to do with."
Uchitel said she was in Melbourne two weeks ago with clients and never saw Woods the entire time she was there.
"The story stands for itself," National Enquirer executive editor Barry Levine told the AP on Saturday.
Woods, coming off a two-week trip to China and Australia earlier this month, is host of the Chevron World Challenge in Thousand Oaks, California, which starts Thursday. He is scheduled to have his press conference on Tuesday at Sherwood Country Club. Steinberg said he did not know if Woods planned to play next week.
Woods rarely faces such private scrutiny, even as perhaps the most famous active athlete in the world.
He usually makes news only because of what he can do with a golf club. Few other athletes have managed to keep their private lives so guarded, or have a circle of friends so airtight when it comes to life off the course.
