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In Sweden, anger at Woods but pride over wife
During the good times, Tiger Woods could find a perfect getaway in Sweden - a quiet and secluded place to avoid the media spotlight.
During the good times, Tiger Woods could find a perfect getaway in Sweden - a quiet and secluded place to avoid the media spotlight.
There have been Christmas celebrations in a remote area of northern Sweden in a house owned by relatives of his Swedish wife, Elin Nordegren. There have been summer days spent undisturbed in the couple's luxury apartment in central Stockholm. And his wife recently purchased a secluded house on an island in the archipelago, a short boat ride outside the capital.
But if Woods is looking for somewhere to ride out the media storm surrounding his infidelity, Sweden may no longer be the place to go.
"I think his reception would be rather chilly," said Billy McCormac, an American who has lived in Sweden for 14 years and heads the prominent think tank Timbro. "I think things are just too raw right now."
The Woods sex scandal has indeed struck a particularly raw nerve in Sweden, where Nordegren's transition from being a nanny for golfer Jesper Parnevik to the wife of one of the world's most famous athletes was long seen as a fairy-tale romance.
Over the last five years, sightings of the couple on the streets of Stockholm or in nearby Vaxholm in the archipelago -where Nordegren grew up - helped create a sense of connection to a man renowned for his reclusive persona.
