I had my first conversation with Kultida Woods in the dip between tee and green at Augusta’s short sixth hole on the Sunday of the 2007 Masters. We were not talking about Tiger, who was expected to appear on the tee before too long, but her white tennis socks.
No one would have noticed them had she been wearing them on her feet. As it was, she was wearing them on her hands. Why? Because it was as cold and miserable a day as any in my hometown of Edinburgh.
Though most of the wives and mums who attend the Masters would sooner have frozen to death than be seen sporting those socks, Kultida was laughing at her getup – and at how Tiger’s Nike sponsors had come up with the perfect solution to her shivers.
She was a delightful companion and maybe all the more so when she realised I was not about to bombard her with Tiger questions.
Kultida, who died on 4th February at the age of 80, played no less a part in her son’s career than husband Earl. It is just that she, unlike him, resisted the temptation to boast about her offspring. To give just one example of Earl’s ways, he came up to me after Tiger had won his first Masters to say, “Tiger’s up there with God, you know!”
Yet if Earl had repeated that to Kultida, which he presumably had, you doubt she would have scoffed overmuch for she, too, had reason to believe that there was something a bit mystical about their son.
When Tiger was 9, she had taken him to Thailand by way of introducing him to his Thai heritage. John Strege’s biography “Tiger” contains a couple of fascinating paragraphs on how Kultida had done as other Thai mothers in keeping a chart on her son since his birth. And how, during that Thai trip, she had taken the opportunity to hand it over to a Buddhist monk for analysis.
The monk had studied it and asked Kultida if she had prayed for her child when she was pregnant. “He asked me did I ask God to give this boy to be born and I ask why,” said Kultida. “He say because this Tiger is special kid.
“The monk didn’t know about golf. Monks don’t watch TV. He said it’s like God send angel.” He went on to suggest Tiger was going to be a leader and if he were to go into the army, he would be “a four-star General.”
“When you’ve been wronged, when you’ve been angered, you need not say anything. Retaliate with your golf clubs. … Let your clubs speak for you.”
Kultida Woods, 1944-2025
On a more down-to-earth level, Boonchu Ruangkit, who was known as the father of Thai golf, talked to GGP of how Kultida’s ways had seeped from mother to son.
“You see it in Tiger’s serenity and in the respect he has for his elders,” he said. “He always affords people the courtesy of looking them in the eye.”
It was in February 2010 that a less-than-angelic Tiger – this was when he had veered off life’s rails – held that never-to-be-forgotten “mea culpa” press conference at TPC Sawgrass. Kultida, loyal as ever, was in the audience and, though I did not notice if she and Tiger exchanged glances at any point, the bond between mother and son came across so powerfully that it was as if they were the only ones in the room.
Billy Payne, the then chairman of Augusta National, threw in his two-ha’penny’s worth at the end of his Wednesday address to the media at the Masters that April.
“Our hero,” he concluded, “did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children … his future will never again be measured only by his performance against par, but measured by the sincerity of his efforts to change.”
That dressing-down had a mixed reception, with many feeling something less dramatic might have been the better option.
Yet in fairness to Payne, when the media sought out Tiger and asked if he was disappointed with the chairman's remarks, he said nothing beyond a humble, “I was disappointed in myself.”
Tiger’s mother had taught him how to behave in a white golfing world ever since that day when, in his early years at school, a couple of white boys had reported him to a referee for throwing a club. (It seems he had done nothing more than toss his putter gently in the air after missing a putt and failed in his bid to catch it.) His playing companions reported him to the referee and had him disqualified.
Tiger would have disputed the disqualification but for his mother’s advice on their journey home.
The extent to which Tiger loved his mother was never more out in the open than on that day at the 2005 Open Championship at St Andrews when there was a two-minute silence following on from the previous week’s terrorist attacks in London. (Four suicide bombers had struck the city’s transport network, killing 52 people and injuring 770 others.)
At the end of play, when he was asked for his thoughts during the silent spell, Tiger explained that his mother had been in London at the time and was staying in a hotel across the road from where one of the bombs had exploded. “I was very thankful that my mom is still here,” he said. “It could easily have been very tragic for me. I can only imagine what it must have been like for those who had just lost a loved one.”
Apparently, it was only thanks to his coach, Hank Haney, that he knew anything of the incident. That Kultida had said nothing was typical.
“It’s kind of how my family is,” continued Woods. “If you’re injured or you’re hurt or you’re sick or anything, you don’t tell anyone. When I had my knee surgery, I didn’t say anything and when my dad had cancer, he didn’t say anything.
“It’s just part and parcel of being a member of the Woods clan.”
The most obvious sign of where the American meets the Thai in Tiger has always surfaced on a tournament Sunday. On that afternoon, in accordance with his mother’s wishes, the former world No. 1 always plays in a red shirt because red, in Thai culture, symbolises power.
Yet he does not wear it purely to please his mother; there is more to it than that. Like so much else from his upbringing, this little ritual contributes to his seemingly bottomless well of belief.
As recently as the launch of his and Rory McIlroy’s TGL, Tiger was calling out to his mother to tell her his team was not about to lose to Rory’s in what was the marquee match of the evening. “Hey mom,” he cried. “Not going to suck tonight. OK?”
A week later on the day of her death, he said of her: “She was a force of nature all her own. Her spirit was simply undeniable. She was quick with the needle and a laugh.”
Heaven knows what it meant for Kultida to witness that happy scene at the recent PNC Championship parent-and-child tournament where her grandson, Charlie, had had his first hole-in-one. A proud and smiling Tiger was giving his ex-wife, Elin, a meaningful hug and his daughter, Sam, who was serving as caddie, was beaming from her buggy.
All was well in that Woods clan.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Kultida Woods was always present for her son, Tiger, from junior golf to hall of fame induction.
SAM GREENWOOD, GETTY IMAGES