Tiger Woods has admitted that it "hurt" to breathe after his tooth was supposedly knocked out by a video camera while supporting his girlfriend in a World Cup ski event in Italy.

The former world number one golfer revealed that a videographer accidentally hit his mouth while trying to film Lindsey Vonn following her historic 63rd World Cup win earlier this month.

Woods, who was photographed wearing a skeleton ski mask, has had his teeth fixed ahead of this week's Phoenix Open.

"Oh Jesus, the flight home was a joke," Woods told reporters. "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, because any kind of air over the nerve, the tooth that was still alive, was cracked.

"I had my mask on so no-one knew who I was, trying to blend in, because there are not a lot of brown dudes at ski races, okay, so that was the whole idea of why I wore the mask."

Despite Woods's version of events, a security member at the competition rejected claims that a clash with a video camera was the cause of the golfer's missing tooth.