the dailymash

The 14-time major winner and one-time car crasher paid tribute to his mother, his caddy and his wife Elin, who he said had made the record possible with her 'love, encouragement and constant threats of hideous violence'.

Woods said: "You can't achieve what I have achieved unless you have a strong, devoted partner telling you to ram your car into a fire hydrant before she knocks the holy loving fudge out of you with a six iron."

He added: "I had been feeling good all week so when I stepped up to the car at 2.15 in the morning I knew I had a great chance of hitting that really big tree just across the road."

Woods brought the same level of discipline to his car crashing as he does to his golf, employing Roy Hobbs, the much sought-after coach who last year helped Cristiano Ronaldo and Lindsay Lohan to car crash glory.

Hobbs said: "My technique is very simple - keep your head down. As soon as you look up you increase the risk of seeing where you are going, at which point it becomes more difficult to have a car crash."

Meanwhile Woods' latest assault on the record books will open up a new range of endorsements which experts say could make him the first billionaire sportsman to avoid talking to the police after a serious road accident.

Nike is already working on the Tiger Woods AirBag, Gillette is to unveil the Tiger Woods Facial Laceration Repair Kit, while General Motors is to rebrand its Cadillac Escalade model the Tiger Woods Tree-Mangler GLX.

In a professional career spanning 43 years Jack Nicklaus had a total of zero bizarre car crashes though he did once swerve to avoid a pygmy hippo when his wife was chasing him down the street with a flamethrower.