At sunset last week, a private Gulfstream jet touched down at an airstrip in Monterey, California, and as it taxied to a halt was met on the runway by a large people carrier with blacked out windows.
Strangely, however, as the steps of the aircraft were lowered, no passengers emerged.
Instead, members of the crew began patiently unloading a seemingly endless procession of new children's toys from the cabin into the waiting vehicle.
Risk taker: Tiger Woods signs autographs for fans after practicing for the AT&T National golf tournament yesterday
But then when the daughter of golf billionaire Tiger Woods celebrates her third birthday, it's only to be expected that her Daddy should want to push the boat out a bit.
And for Woods, dispatching your own plane from nearby Pebble Beach when he played in last week's American Open to stock up on gifts for his little girl's special day is strictly par for the course.
It seems the golfer (who was yesterday named as fifth in Forbes Magazine's 2010 Celebrity power list, having earned $105 million) is in generous mood when it comes to treating his daughter Sam.
After all, guilt does tend to have that effect on people.
Not least because since his seemingly idyllic family life imploded seven months ago amid ever more salacious accusations of multiple affairs with a series of women, Woods has become something of a peripheral figure in her life, and that of his 17-month-old son Charlie.
Double life: Tiger Woods with daughter Sam and wife Elin before rumours of his affairs came to light
Indeed, he spent Charlie's first birthday several hundred miles away from the family's Florida home, being treated for his addiction to sex in a Mississippi rehab facility.
And the children's mother, Tiger's cheated wife Elin Nordegren, appears to have gone out of her way to make sure the children are anywhere but in the company of their father.
Claims: Porn star and former prostitute Devon James claims Tiger is the father of her nine-year-old son
So it's no wonder, perhaps, given the events of the previous months, that a contrite Tiger has felt the urge to try to make up for his well-documented misdeeds with some well-chosen presents.
But if his fatherly indulgence is also meant to placate the betrayed Miss Nordegren, he may well be disappointed.
For it seems that at the same time as Woods has launched a final concerted attempt to win his wife back, he's been seen twice in recent days in the company of another blonde.
On the second occasion last week, Woods is said to have been with the unnamed woman on a golf course in Florida while his wife and children were visiting her brother in Shanghai.
Hardly surprising, therefore, that 30-year-old Elin is reported to be pushing ahead with a bid to negotiate a staggering £500 million settlement to end their five-year marriage.
'It seems that Tiger is still as addicted to taking risks as he always was,' Mike Paul, a renowned New York PR consultant and expert in crisis management, who knows Woods well, told me this week.
'The root of the problems Tiger has got is that he appears to be programmed to continually jeopardise his home life and his reputation.
'Given that negotiations over his divorce, the financial settlement and the custody of the children are finely balanced, why would he be seen with another woman?
'It's well known in media circles here that Tiger's lawyers have told him to keep a low profile until everything is sorted out, but Tiger just says: "to heck with that, I'll take the risk."
'Despite going into rehab and making those humble apologies on TV, he has not changed.'
To make matters so much worse, further claims have emerged that 34-year-old Woods has fathered not one but two children he kept secret from Elin.
Who's my dad? Austin Brinling is at the centre of the claims which could end Tiger's bid to save his marriage
The first is said to be a boy, Austin Brinling, born nine years ago to former prostitute and porn star Devon James, who has previously claimed she was the golfer's mistress for two-and-a-half years.
Miss James, 29, has filed a legal claim in a Florida court demanding Woods take a DNA test to determine whether the child is his.
And if that were not enough, just as the formerly invincible golfer attempts to resurrect his tattered career on the course, allegations have surfaced about his close links to a controversial sports doctor facing charges of smuggling illegal human growth hormone into the U.S.
FBI investigators are said to be about to quiz Woods over his relationship with Canadian Tony Galea, who was charged last month with importing the drug and supplying it to a series of American football players he was treating last summer.
Embarrassingly for Woods, at the same time as Galea was allegedly administering the banned substance, which is used to build muscle in athletes, he was also treating the golfer for a knee injury.
Woods, who has recently been forced to deny taking performance-enhancing drugs, claims Galea was merely treating him with an unorthodox - but wholly legal - 'bloodspinning' technique.
The procedure involves taking blood from a patient and spinning it in a centrifuge to increase the concentration of red platelets before re-injecting back into the injured limb to speed the rate of healing.
But quite why Woods chose to take on Galea has left many in the golfing world scratching their heads, after it emerged he has no licence to practise medicine in America.
Much happier times: Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren arrive at the 35th Ryder Cup Matches Gala Dinner in 2004
Galea's lawyer, Mark Mahoney, has tried to defend his client by claiming that if Galea did use a banned drug it was only in tiny amounts, to repair the sort of injuries for which he was treating Woods.
Meanwhile, an embarrassed Woods has been forced to admit that FBI agents have contacted his agent Mark Steinberg, and when I spoke to Federal prosecutors this week, they refused to rule out interviewing Woods about his involvement with Galea.
'Tiger's made a lot of choices that will come back to haunt him, because whatever happens to Galea in the future regarding this court case, it will automatically reflect on Tiger,' Steve Helling, the golfer's biographer, said.
'While we have to take Tiger's word that he's never taken anything illegal, before all these allegations about women there would never even have been a discussion that he could have got himself wrapped up with someone so shady.
'Now the public is more apt to believe things about Tiger they never would have believed in the past.'
Which includes, it would seem, Miss James's allegations that Woods fathered her son in 2001.
When she was 19 and he was already the biggest name in world golf.
She claims she gave her son Austin, who does bear a striking likeness to Woods, the middle initial T as a tribute to Tiger.
Statement: Tiger Woods confesses to his affairs in February but told media it was a private matter
It is not the first damaging allegation she has made about the star either.
Earlier this year, Miss James claimed she began an affair with Woods in 2006 after he hired her and another prostitute for £2,000 to have sex with him after they met at party.
But she has now gone further, claiming that it was not the first time she had slept with Woods.
She says she did tell him about his son and Woods sent the child presents, but has refused a meeting.
However, her story has been dismissed as lies by her own mother and brought further into question by claims that an earlier DNA test, carried out in 2002, proved the father of the boy was in fact one of the porn actress' former boyfriends.
Nonetheless, Miss James is not the only woman to have claimed she became pregnant by the golfer.
An American newspaper reported that Theresa Rogers, a 48-year-old former model, gave birth to a daughter by Woods in 2003 and was later paid £2 million in hush money by him to keep the child's existence a secret.
At the same time, another adult film actress, Joslyn James - one of 14 of his mistresses who have been identified so far - claimed in a Channel 4 documentary that she lost one of the star's babies to a miscarriage and later had an abortion when pregnant again by Woods.
Crucially, Woods, whose indiscretions have already cost him multi-million-dollar contracts with Gatorade and Accenture, has so far not denied any of the baby claims made by the three women.
Meanwhile, one-time children's nanny-turned-model Elin, who married Woods in October 2004, is said to be demanding the keys to the soon-to-be completed £35 million home the couple have been building on the exclusive Jupiter Island, Florida.
She is also said to be insisting on full custody of their two children and, according to sources in the U.S., has said she intends to spend much of her time with the children at a six-bedroom home in her native Sweden.
While the couple are known to have signed a prenup agreement limiting her pay-off to £13 million, Woods is said to be prepared to give Elin more than half of his £663 million fortune in return for Elin agreeing to a lifetime confidentiality clause.
Sources close to Elin say the final straw in their already damaged marriage came in April when, in a bid to repair his shattered image, Woods appeared in a television advert for his sponsors Nike.
Difficult times: Tiger Woods competes in Dublin, Ohio, earlier this month. His form has fluctuated since the revelations
The much-derided ad featured the beyond-the-grave voice of Tiger's beloved father Earl, who was the guiding force behind his son's career before his death in 2006.
Elin, who was close to Earl, was said to be 'violently angry' over him allowing his dead father to be exploited for commercial gain.
But leading U.S. 'reputation management' consultant Mike Paul, says it was the philandering Earl whose example Tiger was to follow with such disastrous results.
'Every time I would be invited to one of Tiger's charity events, Earl would always have a couple of young women on his arm while Tiger's mother Kultida stayed at home,' said Mr Paul, who has acted for a series of high-profile American sportsmen.
'But nobody would dare breathe a word of what Earl was up to for fear of upsetting him and Tiger.
'I saw Tiger doing the same thing when married to Elin. He'd surround himself with five or so women, but bring along some male friends as cover so he could deny the women were there just for him.
'It didn't fool any one, and I truly think Tiger started to believe he was superhuman, and that whatever he did, no matter how dubious, nothing and no one could touch him.'
As he faces still more lurid allegations, the cornered Tiger, one suspects, is no longer feeling quite so invincible.
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