'My heart is Thai': a window to Tiger's soul through his mother

Golf Digest, April, 2003 by Tom Callahan

Your Majesty,

It is with deepest regret that I am unable to meet with you on the occasion of your birthday. As you know, I am a professional golfer and I have mandatory contractual appearances that preclude me from visiting you at that time. I trust you understand and hopefully I will be extended another invitation by the Thai government.

As a young boy I was enthralled listening to my father's stories and of his experiences while on military duty in Thailand. He told me of the ravaging flood that hit northern Thailand during his stay and how he coordinated American military aid. How he assisted with your country's preparation for the Asian Games by providing military competition for your teams in basketball and track and field.

My mother recounted stories of her youth in Thailand and at age 10 [sic] took me there to see first hand the other half of my cultural heritage. I stood in awe as your vehicle drove past us when we visited the Royal palace grounds. I will never forget the day. I said to my mother, "Some day I am going to meet the king," and I will.

Although I am an American citizen my heart is Thai. You and your beautiful wife will always be a part of my life. I respect and admire you both.

I wish you the best on your birthday and please have many more.

Fondly,

Tiger Woods

I was asked to do it," Tiger said. "Mom got a request." (Kultida Woods--"Tida" to everyone--changed just one word, substituting respectfully for fondly.)

"It was a hard letter to write," he said, "from the standpoint of whom you're writing to: a king. It's not like you're writing to a friend or a business acquaintance. It took me a few hours. I started writing it, and then I went back and did it again. I tried to be honest and truthful and talk from the heart, tell him my experiences in Thailand, some of the stories my parents told me. I wanted it to be just right."

Tiger was surprised when it was published in the newspapers there.

"I thought it was a personal letter. I keep forgetting the global part. I was 20 years old when I came out of college, fairly well-known, but only in golf. Then, one day in Milwaukee, I'm thrown into the arena, into the fire. That's a dramatic change. There's no school for this, you know. I had to learn everything on the go. I'm 20, and all of the eyes are looking at me. Everything I do is nit-picked. That's a tough way to go. I wasn't able to blend in anymore. People recognized me walking down a street or riding in a car. At that age, it's a hard change to grasp.... I tried to be a kid while I had a chance to do it. You're only a child one time. You can never have those days back. To me, for a little while, junk food represented holding on to childhood."

Tida said, "I raised him as an Asian child." When I asked her for details, she said, "He know and I know. I don't care if anyone else know."

Earl told a gathering after one of the clinics, "Let me introduce a young whippersnapper who's never been spanked."

"He's right," Tiger said. "He never had to spank me growing up as a kid. Because Mom beat the hell out of my ass. I've still got the handprints."

Mom isn't the sentimentalist Dad is; she doesn't cry. "Old man is soft," she says. "He cry. He forgive people. Not me. I don't forgive anybody."

Tida is consistent; she has a code. Even after heart problems and cancer, Earl won't let go of his cigarettes. Tida has no tolerance for that kind of weakness.

"Dad want to check out first? Fine with me. But I want to stay longer."

They live apart but are not even legally separated. Earl explains too simply that he doesn't like Thai food while she does like "a big-ass house."

Tiger loves them both completely, but may respect Tida even more.

"She's my little mommy," he said in the Masters pressroom after the first major victory. She was the one who suggested he wear red on Sundays for luck.

Tiger's mother offered other suggestions he has embraced: "Go after them, kill them," she said. "Go for their throat. Don't let them up. When you're finished, now it's sportsmanship."

Tida is diminutive but easy to spot in Tiger's gallery, in sharp oranges and reds and blacks and golds, topped by a Bangkok bonnet of white, black or red, as ruby red as the lipstick that sometimes gets on her teeth.

Once she was the only member of his gallery. She is the single foot soldier who has made the whole campaign. When Tiger seemed too good for his age, and the other parents took him for a ringer, Tida was his one rooter on the course. She got in the way sometimes, to the point where there were official discussions in junior circles about where she should walk. At a tournament in Hawaii that matched 1997's major winners, Ernie Els beat Tiger, Davis Love III and Justin Leonard in a two-day TV show, the highlight coming when someone around the green wouldn't stay still and Tiger looked up first in fury and then in dismay. When he saw who the culprit was, he moaned, "Mom!"

Ernie looked over at Tiger and said, "You're grounded."

Her Thai accent is thick but sweet, delightfully fractured, especially when she tosses in a few coarse or profane bits that had to have been adopted from Earl. Tida declares where she stands. To her, Phil Mickelson is "Plastic Phil." And she revels in her son's total mastery over Love. "Tiger steal his heart," she says gleefully. "He kill Davis' heart."