Tiger Woods was missing a tooth when he surprised his girlfriend, skier Lindsey Vonn, at her record-breaking World Cup race earlier this month.

Tiger Woods’ Missing Tooth

According to Woods, a photographer accidentally knocked his camera into his mouth. “The photographer changed positions and I got hit. It was an accident. … And yes there was blood everywhere,” Woods told USA Today.

“Dude with a video camera on his shoulder, right in front of me, kneeling, stood up and turned and caught me square on the mouth,” Woods explained in further detail. “He chipped that one, cracked the other one. And so then, you know, I’m trying to keep this thing so the blood is not all over the place, and luckily he hit the one I had the root canal on. That’s the one that chipped. But the other one had to be fixed, as well, because it had cracks all through it.”

After watching Vonn make history with her 63rd win, Woods had to board a plane to get back to the U.S. The flight, with his teeth still in disarray, was a less than pleasant one for the professional golfer.

“The flight was a joke,” Woods said at a news conference Tuesday. “I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink until he fixed them, put the temporaries on. I couldn’t have anything touch it. Even breathing hurt.”

The story about Woods’ missing tooth nearly eclipsed that of Vonn becoming the winningest female skier in history – which Woods thinks is an unfortunate manifestation of the current media climate.

“It’s a new world. We need to talk about something. Have to fill up space,” he said. “The story is about Lindsey breaking the record. That’s the story.”