Kultida Woods, whose guidance and support helped propel her son, the professional golfer Tiger Woods, to become one of his sport’s most dominant athletes, died on Tuesday.
In announcing her death, Mr. Woods wrote on social media: “She was my biggest fan, greatest supporter, without her none of my personal achievements would have been possible.” He did not cite a cause or say where she died.
Ms. Woods was a frequent presence in her son’s public life, whether attending his tournaments or standing by his side during a period of scandal that took him away from the sport. Mr. Woods spoke often about his mother’s role in his career.
“I didn’t do this alone,” he said in a speech in 2024, accepting the Bob Jones Award from the United States Golf Association. “I had the greatest rock that any child could possibly have: my mom.”
Ms. Woods was born in Thailand and met Tiger’s father there when he was on a military assignment. (The elder Mr. Woods died in 2006.)
During his acceptance speech at the 2022 World Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Mr. Woods credited his parents with providing him an early start in the sport he came to dominate.
He said that when he was 6 years old, his mother took him to a golf course in Long Beach, Calif., and asked employees there: “Can my son play here and practice a little bit?”
He recalled that when he was 8 years old, she would drop him off at the entryway to the golf course and give him 75 cents to buy a hot dog and use the pay phone to call when he was ready for her to pick him up.
In the speech, Mr. Woods said that when he was about 14 years old, his family struggled to afford the costs of his golf tournaments. His voice broke as he recalled the sacrifices his mother made to make it work. Ms. Woods, in the audience, smiled up at him.
Mr. Woods credited his father, Earl Woods, for inspiring his work ethic. But while he spoke often of how supportive his mother was, Mr. Woods has also said she was tough on him.
In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2006, Ms. Woods was asked whether she had experienced prejudice in the United States, and she said yes, especially when she took Tiger from a tournament to a country club. “Some of them reject us,” she said. “I said, ‘Tiger, it’s their problem. It’s their ignorance.’”
“Be proud of who you are,” she said.
When Tiger was a child, Tida, as she was known, said that she told him, “You will never ruin my reputation, because I will beat you,” according to a San Diego Union-Tribune article in 2006. The article quoted him as saying she used to “beat the hell out of” him. “I’ve still got the handprints,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
In 2010, when Mr. Woods publicly apologized in front of national news media for having an affair while he was married to Elin Nordegren, he said his mother was among the people that he had hurt, and that he had strayed from the Buddhist teachings she had instilled in him at a young age.
Ms. Woods embraced her son after he spoke. “I’m so proud to be his mom, period,” she said at the time. “As a human being, everyone has faults, makes missteps and learns from it.”
A New York Times article during the troubled period for Mr. Woods described Ms. Woods as the “matriarch, iron hand and spiritual compass for her son.”
