I guess that if you are not an astronaut that was in outer space in he last two months you know what Tiger Woods search might be about, and that this is probably one of the biggest stories of the last year.
No need for us to get to the dirty details, lets just look at this from the SEO and traffic perspective, and try to learn something from this, in Internet terms.
First, this story broke out on Thanksgiving evening (night actually), the best time to get attention (remember, we are not talking about the people here, but of the power of internet search and viral story spreading), most people are off work, got plenty of time and have some kind of social connections they could (physically) share opinions and stories about.
