“My mom doesn’t get enough credit. Everyone thought that it was my dad when I went on the road, which it was, but Mom was at home. If you don’t know, Mom has been there my entire life,” said an emotional Tiger Woods in June 2024. ‘Mom’, Kultida Woods, was sitting in the gallery, surrounded by grandson and granddaughter, Charlie and Sam respectively, as Woods received the Bob Jones Award. The highest honor USGA bestows on anybody.

If Woods’s life seems like a dream, Kultida’s isn’t any short. She was born and brought up in Thailand. With no plans for settling Stateside. Then she met Earl Woods, a green beret in the US Army, posted in Thailand. 

It was the 1960s. Kultida, or as the golf world fondly knows her as ‘Tida’,  was working at the same base where Earl Woods was posted. The two quickly fell in love and Kultida followed Earl to Brooklyn, New York. The couple tied the knot and welcomed their firstborn, Tiger Woods, in 1975.

Speaking to ESPN in 2009, Kultida Woods said, “I live in U.S. 40 years now, in Thailand for only 25. In that way, I’m more American than Thai.” She is actually of Thai, Dutch, and Chinese descent. Kultida Punsawad was born in 1944 in Kanchanaburi, some 75 miles from Bangkok. Her father was an architect, and her mother was a schoolteacher. She was the youngest of four children, and her parents divorced when she was only five.

The young Kultida had to spend her time divided between her father and mother. She knows what a lonely childhood means, as she recalled in a candid chat with ESPN. Perhaps, that’s also why Kultida Woods ‘has been there’ in her son’s entire life. True. She was there at her son’s TGL debut as well.

She was seen clapping to Woods’s birdie putt as the cameras panned to the gallery. Obviously, it wasn’t the grandest of the debut, and Woods quipped his mom was booing him. That’s Tida for you. The ‘hand’ in the family, of whom even Woods is ‘deathly afraid.’

How Tiger Woods’s mother influenced the 15-time major champion

Tiger Woods’s mother has been very influential in how his career panned out. “Without the sacrifices of mom, who took me to all the tournaments. And dad, who’s not here, but who instilled in me this work ethic to fight for what I believe in, chase after my dreams,” the 15-time major winner said during his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. 

Kultida was the ‘hand’ and Earl was the ‘voice’, as Woods explained in ‘The 1997 Masters: My Story.’ Tida instilled discipline in Woods more than his father did. “My mom’s still here and I’m still deathly afraid of her. She’s a very tough, tough old lady, very demanding. She was the hand, she was the one, I love her so much, but she was tough,” Woods recalled in an interview with USA Today. 

There is a reason the Hall of Famer always wore red on final rounds. Woods’s mother believed red was his power color because Woods was Capricorn. So, she wanted her son to wear red at tournaments. Well, the young Woods didn’t like that. He tried different colors. And lost. “Mom is always right,” the 49-year-old quipped in a chat with Jimmy Fallon. Now his apparel brand is named Sun Day Red. Mom has always been there in Woods’s life.