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She comes from two sort of Swedish houses of nobility, so there is a sense that this is personal," McCormac said. "I'm not sure how much the Swedish public embraced Elin before this. But now, that sense of ownership and that sense of communion with her has gotten stronger."

That's been evident in the country's newspapers during the last few weeks, where the numerous front-page headlines and articles have focused as much on Nordegren as on Woods.

There has been constant speculation about whether she'll stay with her husband, advice about how to repair her marriage, and jokes about why she used a golf club to smash the back passenger windows of Woods' SUV the night of his infamous car crash outside their home in Florida. Local police said his wife told them she did it to help get her husband out.

In a country that prides itself on gender equality and independent women, the image of a golf club-wielding Nordegren is a source of widespread satisfaction.

"For us, it was almost a positive thing that she smashed the car window," Olovzon said. "We like strong women in a lot of ways."

Britta Svensson, a columnist in the newspaper Expressen, summed it up like this:

"A week ago, Tiger and Elin were the cutest couple on the globe," Svensson wrote shortly after the reports of numerous mistresses started seeping out. "Now our Swedish hearts are brimming with pride that our own Elin — not a regular nanny but the daughter of a Social Democratic minister and Swedish Radio journalist — didn't take any ... Elin is our heroine."

The same can no longer be said of Woods, of course, regardless of golf's immense popularity in the country.