DUBLIN - AN Irish magazine apologised to Tiger Woods's wife Elin Nordegren Woods on Friday and agreed to pay the former model 'substantial' damages after it published fake nude pictures during the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club.

'The false and deeply offensive article in The Dubliner magazine, with the accompanying photograph of another woman wrongly claimed to be me, caused great personal distress to me and my family,' Nordegren Woods said in a statement.

She did not disclose the scale of damages received in settlement of a libel action brought in November 2006 but a source who was in the court room said the magazine had agreed to pay 125,000 euros (S$263,000) over two years.

Nordegren Woods said the money would be donated to cancer support charities in memory of Heather Clarke, the late wife of British golfer Darren Clarke.

The statement from Nordegren said Trevor White, publisher of The Dubliner, had apologised unreservedly for the article.

'The story was cheap, tasteless and deliberately offensive,' it quoted White as saying in the magazine's apology.

White described the article, entitled 'Ryder Cup Filth For Dublin?', as utterly and comprehensively false, profoundly hurtful and shameful.

'The article was accompanied by a nude photograph of a woman falsely identified as being Elin Woods and the article falsely stated other such photographs were to be found on Internet porn sites,' he said.

'There are no such photographs of Ms Nordegren Woods on Internet sites or elsewhere. Ms Nordegren Woods has never posed, or been photographed, nude.'

The magazine also apologised for its initial defence that the article was intended as a satirical parody, saying instead that it was a 'cheap, vulgar lie which was unforgivably insulting to Ms Nordegren Woods'. -- REUTERS