The phone number of the woman who started the public fall of Tiger Woods has been in my phone for over eight years. She was unwittingly a woman of significance in my life, long before she became a woman of significance for the best golfer in the world and Playboy magazine. But more of that later...

Where were you when two planes flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001? Most people probably remember the night (Australian time) – I was out having a mid week drink with mates at Brisbane’s “Paddo Tavern” (a world away from Manhattan). Most people probably also remember the ensuing days of uncertainty, expectation, hysteria, Nostradamus references, followed by the fake emails from the roof top viewing platform of planes (and then buses flying into buildings). I remained a world away in Brisbane – nevertheless looking furtively out my office window from the Supreme Court wondering whether the Queensland Courts Complex was high on the list of Al-Qaeda targets – evidently not. I remained ‘alert yet not alarmed’ but within a few days my remoteness and lack of connection with the destruction of the World Trade Centre saw it slide into the meaninglessness of human tragedy that sadly but inevitably surrounds death and catastrophe that occurs “somewhere else” to “someone else.”

Then I saw a picture of Rachel Uchitel and it profoundly affected me (so too Tiger Woods some years later, it would seem, but more of that later). On Saturday 15 September 2001, I was in Sydney, again having a drink with friends (I was aged 24 in September 2001 – the carton of beer age after all). That same day the Sydney Morning Herald published the now reasonably well known picture of a grief stricken Rachel Uchitel, holding a picture of her lost fiancé, who had been working in the World Trade Centre.

In an instant I was mesmerised by a beautiful woman – utterly overcome – a gorgeous face wracked with pain. It had taken an attractive woman to do it (again – I was 24 at the time), but the infamous terrorist attack on New York had been personalised for me. That ashen face recalled that while I had felt no pain, others had lost loved ones, people were gone, others were left behind ... shocked, grieving, lost (and it just so happened that some were beautiful blonde women, who were the same age as me). So ran my slightly inebriated and enthusiastic discussion with friends on Saturday 15 September 2001.

At some point during the day, one of my long suffering listeners decided to end the stream of consciousness, took my phone, rang directory assistance New York, asked for Rachel Uchitel’s number and saved it in my phone. And there it has remained ever since. At various times when my primitive phones have run out of memory for new numbers prompting me to delete others, Rachel Uchitel’s has remained – ahead of people that I actually know and have spoken to. Cajoled into calling the number on that day, and periodically since when re-telling how an unconnected stranger made a human tragedy less strange, more connected – her number has remained un-dialled. The black and white picture, drunkenly torn out of the weekend paper has also remained in a bundle of personal papers that I’ve kept, and she has remained the one who allowed me to understand loss in New York eight years ago.

I’ve never cared greatly for golf and while appreciating that Eldrick ‘Tiger’ Woods can hit a golf ball well, that doesn’t necessarily elevate anyone in my estimations. Frankly whether he has had an affair, multiple affairs, no affairs, crashed his car, has cheated on his wife, has quit the PGA, never plays again – all means precious little to me. The media circus is another distasteful example of celebrity gone mad where society is all consumed by the lives of others. How Tiger Woods chooses to spend his time is Tiger Woods’ and Tiger Woods’ family’s business, and is not a matter for self-righteous American moralising. (If he’d had an affair in France or Italy, he’d be elected Prime Minister with an even greater majority...)

Similarly, what Rachel Uchitel chooses to do is her business – whether it be have an affair with a married bloke who can hit a golf ball, or recent suggestions of playboy centrefolds – it’s her choice, not without consequences of course.

BUT... my selfish, introspective sadness in all of this, is not for Mr Woods, Mrs Woods, Ms Uchitel, or any of the other supposed lovers – but for the loss of that pure, untouched, personalised history. We often like to leave people and events as static meaningful and untouched episodes. The cloudless view from the summit of a mountain climbed, the memory of a first furtive kiss, a holiday, a sunrise, a chance encounter – the woman in a black and white picture who was so beautiful and so sad. And now eight years later, a human instinct that we would rather our history to remain in the past is now challenged. 

I never wanted to talk to Rachel Uchitel, and since she has now been revealed – I realise that I never really wanted to know anything more about her since 2001. She symbolised something to me that she was unaware of and that I never wanted to be changed... diminished. We were both 24 in September 2001 (so too Tiger Woods coincidentally), and we are now both different people – her life revealed through tabloid pages and on-line gossip columns, mine through “The Cud.” She has now changed, as have I, no doubt.

It doesn’t really matter – I have nothing to do with the whole tale that is unfolding on the other side of the world... but that’s what I said in September 2001 and look what happened ...