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Tiger's High School Sweetheart: "His Life Wasn't Perfect"

Explaining why she has come forward, Dina Parr says, "I want to humanize him a little bit"

By Natalie Finn, Ken Baker Dec 17, 2009 2:00 AMTags

Tiger Woods may have been blessed as a child with a preternatural ability for golf, but that doesn't mean he always led a charmed life.

Tiger was "a victim" of his dad's infidelity, says the golfer's high school sweetheart, Dina Parr, who sat down exclusively with E! News to discuss her three-year relationship with the eventual superstar.

"He would just call crying and say, 'My dad is with another woman,' and that would be all he could say," Parr said. "He would be so upset, so I just tried to be there for him and listen to him."

Once, she said, Woods talked about one of his dad's girlfriends.

"I remember he was crying and very upset in this one conversation, and he was like, 'I can't even believe the type of women he's going out with! She's disgusting.' He didn't exactly have the nicest words to say."

In explaining why she came forward to dish about her first love, Parr said, "I think that people need to understand his life wasn't perfect and he did have a hard childhood."

Woods was extremely close to his father, Earl, who, in bringing a 3-year-old Tiger on The Mike Douglas Show to hit golf balls, was instrumental in nurturing his son's game and competitive spirit.

Earl Woods died of cancer in 2006, after which Tiger missed the cut at the U.S. Open for the first time in years.

"His dad was his hero, he was everything to him, and his dad had given up a lot of things for Tiger and done so much for him," Parr said. "You could feel the love they had between them, the connection they had was very strong."

"His dad was a good role model in many other ways, but in that particular area [marital fidelity]...he wasn't."

"And," she added, "I know that was the one thing about his dad that he could never get over. So yeah, it's interesting that it's turned out that he's doing the same thing."

Following Woods' single-car crash outside his own home on Nov. 27, more than a dozen alleged extramarital gal-pals have come (or been pried) out of the woodwork.

Woods married Elin Nordgren in 2004, and they have two young children together.

Parr said she wasn't surprised when news broke that her one-time beau was having an affair. But...

"I was surprised with the amount of women, and I was surprised he was able to get away with it as long as he did," Parr said. "But this personality trait that I started to notice in college, this untouchable arrogance, it certainly seems that it's escalated, because when you're with this many women, you have this untouchable attitude, and I think, unfortunately, it's caught up to him."

(Originally published Dec. 16, 2009, at 4:35 p.m. PT)

Catch the full interview with Dina Parr tonight on E! News at 7 and 11:30 p.m. and Daily 10 at 7:30 p.m.

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From the looks of our Tiger: The Early Years gallery, Tiger and Dina shared a lot of good times.