Kuldida Woods, Mother of Tiger Woods, dies at 80

Tiger Woods announced on Tuesday that his mother Kuldida Woods had died. She was 80.

Woods said in a post to social media that his mother died early Tuesday. He said that she was a nature power that all her own, her spirit was simply undeniable. She was quick with the needle and a laugh. She was my biggest fan, biggest supporter, without her none of my personal results would have been as possible. “

Born in the Province of Kanchanaburi in Thailand in 1944, Kuldida Worked Punsawad as a civilian receptionist at a US army outpost in Bangkok during the Vietnam War when she met Earl Woods, a member of the US Army Special Force. The couple married in 1969 and later moved to Brooklyn and then California. She gave birth to Eldrick “Tiger” Woods on December 30, 1975. In tribute to her mother, Woods has always characterized himself as half.

Woods frequently paid tribute to his mother’s victims and persistence. After his induction to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2022, he described what Kuldida did for his career in the earliest days. “We didn’t know we had to have enough money for me to go to college or a top college or be recruited,” he remembered. “So my family made a tough decision and at the age of 14 1/2 we took another mortgage loan so I could go out and play the AJGA tour. Mom stayed home. Dad traveled. And I went out and played it ajga -turn on our second priority loan.

While Earl Woods trained the young tiger to be both mentally tough and physically superior, Kuldida remained in the background, a strict, iron will presence that kept an eye on her son’s best interests with a sharp eye and a linging tongue.

“As we said in our family, my mother was the hand and my dad was the voice,” Woods wrote in the book Masters from 1997: My story. “I could negotiate with him, but not with my mother. There was no middle ground with mom.”

While Kuldida was a frequent presence in the galleries when Woods played, she remained almost completely out of the public otherwise, abolishing advertising and interviews. She remained steadfast in Woods’ Corner and supported him in public in his scandals in the early 2010s.

“My mother was enforced. My dad may have been in the special forces but I was never afraid of him,” Woods told USA Today in 2017. “My mom is still here and I’m still deadly scared of her. She’s a very hard, hard old lady, very demanding. She was the hand, she was the one I love her so much but she was tough.”

Her last performance came just last week on the fourth installment of TGL, the indoor Golf League Woods co-foundation. Cameras caught him cheerfully and called her during the event, still a son who is eager to please his mother.

Last time Kuldida saw her son playing, he won.