This week, Tiger Woods — hot off his win at the Masters in April — will hit the links again for the PGA championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island.

And while all eyes will be on him, they’ll also be watching his girlfriend, Erica Herman, the woman who might have finally set the golf great on the right course.

Woods, 43, has been dating Herman, 35, since 2017. But their relationship took a stratospheric leap at the Masters.

That’s when some 10.8 million captivated TV viewers watched as the once-disgraced sports legend passionately embraced

and kissed Herman following his first major tournament win in more than a decade.

“She’s been 100 percent supportive, when he was down with his health and all that stuff,” said professional golfer and Woods friend Arjun Atwal.

According to Atwal, Herman was Woods’ “main support system” after Tiger’s fourth back surgery — a spinal fusion to alleviate pain in his back and leg — in April 2017.

“It’s not like he has a bunch of people around,” Atwal said. “She was right there for him.”

Herman and Woods met when she was an undergrad at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where she studied political science and hoped to become a lawyer.

“She worked at Blue Martini in Orlando as a bartender to get through college,” said Gianni Nailor, who was employed as a server assistant at Woods’ trendy South Florida restaurant, The Woods Jupiter, in 2016. “And he came to the bar [as a customer].”

Herman eventually moved on to VIP manager at the bar and, according to Nailor, stayed in touch with Woods. But the two apparently but didn’t develop a closer rapport until after she graduated.

According to a source who spoke to The Sun last month, Herman has “been chasing Tiger around like a puppy for close to 10 years.”

When Woods opened his own restaurant in 2015, he tapped Herman as the director of operations.

And while staffers liked Herman, they were careful around her, too.

It was known that “she had a close relationship with Tiger,” said Nailor. “People were scared to get too close to her [because of her access to the owner]. They kept it professional.”

Luke Copeland, who worked as a server assistant at The Woods in 2015 and 2016, said that Herman was “very direct” but accessible. “She decorated during the Christmas season — and she’s Jewish. So she had the silver and gold ornaments and was wrapping presents, which everyone thought was very funny.”

Herman and Woods met frequently to discuss business in the golfer’s private dining suite at the restaurant, according to Copeland.

“It was separate from the main dining room, with its own frontal access to the building,” he said. “She did definitely mention that [she and Woods] had some history.”

According to people close to Woods, Herman is a saving grace for the troubled champion.

“When an athlete or man in any walk of life has support from his partner, or vice versa, you end up doing well. Or as well as you can,” said Atwal. “And when Tiger does as well as he can, he usually beats everyone.”

A decade ago, Woods was doing very well — until he wasn’t.

Forbes crowned him the first sports player to earn $1 billion. He had racked up 14 majors between 1997 and 2008, and was raking in $20 million a year thanks to his Nike partnership.

But in November of 2009, the National Enquirer published a story about Woods’ affair with NYC club hostess Rachel Uchitel. Two days later, in the wee hours after Thanksgiving, the athlete crashed his Escalade into a fire hydrant and tree while fleeing Elin Nordegren, then his wife of five years.

Apparently, after discovering texts between Uchitel and Woods while her husband was passed out on Ambien, Nordegren chased him out of their $2.4 million mansion in Windermere, Fla., before smashing his car’s back window with a golf club.

But Uchitel wasn’t the only secret woman in Woods’ life. More than a dozen others — ­including multiple porn stars — came forward and claimed to have had sex with Woods. In December 2009, he released a statement admitting to infidelity and announced that he would be taking “an indefinite break from professional golf.”

Woods completed a 45-day therapy program, but he and Nordegren went on to divorce in August 2010. He lost endorsements from everyone from AT&T to Gatorade.

With his personal life in shambles, the athlete’s golf game steadily declined, too — exacerbated, it seems, by a bevy of injuries culminating in four back surgeries.

By March 2015, Woods fell outside the world’s top 100 for the first time since 1996.

In May 2017, one month after his most recent surgery, Woods was arrested in Jupiter, Fla., at 2 a.m. after being found asleep in his car — in traffic — with the engine running. The police report said marijuana, Vicodin, Xanax and Ambien were found in Woods’ system.

He admitted to having taken prescription drugs for the back pain and, in June, tweeted that he was receiving “professional help to manage my medications and the ways that I deal with back pain and sleep disorder.”

He ultimately pleaded guilty to reckless driving and was fined $250 and given a one-year probation.

Meanwhile, Herman has remained a rock for Woods as he tried to rehabilitate his game — and image.

“She doesn’t get too high or too low about anything,” said Atwal of Herman’s even-keeled personality. “If a person is down, she brings him up.”

Despite all the praises being sung about Herman, her financial record isn’t exactly squeaky clean.

The New Jersey-born Herman is in debt to the tune of a whopping $240,233.08, the Daily Mail reported.

According to court papers, in 2010 Herman and her then-boyfriend, party planner Jesse Newton, along with business partner Ricky McIntosh, were given $200,000 by Florida investor Tom Morris to set up a chain of Orlando nightclubs. After the endeavor failed, Morris won a judgment against Herman to recoup his investment, plus interest and fines. She’s now reportedly stuck paying him $295.60 a week.

Radar Online reported that Herman and Newton were also sued for breach of contract by Alena Hospitality in 2016, after failing to make monthly principal and interest payments on $450,000 worth of loans for their venture, Aura Florida Lounges, where Herman was a managing member. (AFL dissolved the company in 2015 and the case was dismissed the following year.)

Herman was sued again in 2012 for allegedly failing to make car payments on her 2006 BMW, valued at $13,000, according to Radar Online. (The case was dismissed two years later for lack of prosecution.)

Finally, in 2012 and 2013 Herman and Newtown were sued by their landlord multiple times for failing to pay the $1,300 monthly rent on their Orlando apartment. The cases were dismissed, and the couple was reportedly evicted in April 2014.

But money problems might be a thing of the past for Herman, whose boyfriend Woods just added $2.07 million to his $800 million net worth with his April Masters win.

Herman lives with Woods in his $50 million mansion on Jupiter Island and regularly accompanies the golf legend on luxe vacations with his daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10.

“They love [Erica],” said Atwal of the two children Woods shares with his ex-wife. “She’s awesome with them. She’s more like a friend to them than anything else.”

Atwal says Herman also gets along great with Nordegren, who made off with a cool $100 million in the divorce. The former model dated billionaire and coal tycoon Chris Cline for a period after leaving Woods, but the two split in 2016.

But while Herman is basking in the post-victory glow with Woods — beaming in a turquoise dress last week as her beau received the Medal of Freedom from President Trump — sexual-addiction experts warn that a return to bad behavior is always a possibility for someone like Woods.

“Yes, they can be tamed, but once you have some type of addiction, there is a chance of relapse because you’ve been wired like that for so many years,” said Dr. Michael Brustein, an NYC-based psychologist who specializes in anxiety treatment and relationships.

“Craving might decrease if you’re getting satisfaction in other areas, such as the winning, such as more meaning in life and feeling more secure with yourself,” said Brustein.

Golf historian and author Martin Davis says all one has to do is watch Woods play to know this relationship is the real deal.

“Throughout golf history, the better half or the wives have been ­really important to the success of some of the major pros,” said Davis.

“Lately, Tiger has been very, very calm and measured and it allows him to focus,” he added. “It’s like he has a very clear mind now. There [doesn’t seem to be] a lot of demons running around in his mind.”

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Source: Chicago Tribune