The image of the black Escalade crashed into the tree was everywhere. Then women began to come forward—first one, then another, then still more. Eventually, he admitted it. Tiger Woods confessed to extramarital infidelity . . . with more than 120 women.
It was news to almost everyone. But those who knew him were less surprised. And those who knew him well weren’t surprised at all. Tiger Woods’s biographers Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian note the “well-worn clichés”: “Like father like son . . . The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” For years, when Earl Woods took his son Tiger to golf tournaments around the country, he didn’t make “any effort to camouflage his vices.” Women came and went from hotel rooms. He’d stop at convenience stores and come out with paper bags holding forty-ounce bottles of liquor. He’d ask waitresses to join him for a cigarette.
The gambling, the waitresses, the infidelity—it wasn’t out of character for Tiger. It was his character, or rather, it was character traits taught by his father. Built from the blueprint drawn from his father’s example. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, because the tree made the apple.