Kultida Woods, the Thai-born mother of Tiger Woods who instilled his dominant spirit and encouraged him to wear a red shirt on Sunday as his power color, died Tuesday.
Woods announced the death of his 80-year-old mother in a social media post. He did not disclose a cause or other details. She was at his indoor TMRW Golf League match last week in South Florida, where she lived.
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FILE - Golf sensation Tiger Woods, left, poses with his mother Kultida while holding his trophy and key to a new car after winning the Asian Honda Classic in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Feb. 9, 1997. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE - Tiger Woods is embraced by his mother, Kultida, after winning his third U.S. Amateur golf championship Sunday, Aug. 25, l996, at the Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in North Plains, Ore. Woods defeated Steve Scott on the 38th hole.(AP Photo/Jack Smith, File)
FILE - Tiger Woods enjoys a laugh with his mother, Kultida, after winning the Western Open at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Ill., Sunday, July 6, 1997. (AP Photo/Frank Polich, File)
FILE - Kultida Woods, Tiger Woods' mother, watches as her son plays on the third hole during the third round of the Honda Classic golf tournament, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018 in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
He described her as a “force of nature” who was his biggest supporter from the time she drove him to junior golf tournaments in California to being there for his 15 major championships, often wearing her wide-brimmed visor and sunglasses.
“It is with heartfelt sadness that I want to share that my dear mother, Kultida Woods, passed away early this morning,” Woods wrote. “My Mom was a force of nature all her own, her spirit was simply undeniable. She was quick with the needle and a laugh. She was my biggest fan, greatest supporter, without her none of my personal achievements would have been possible. She was loved by so many, but especially by her two grandchildren, Sam and Charlie.”
President Donald Trump was among those who reached out with a post on his Truth Social platform, calling her “an amazing influence” on Woods.
Woods' father, Earl, died in 2006.
“Tida,” as she was called by many, was working as a civilian secretary in the U.S. Army office in Bangkok when she met Earl Woods, who was stationed there. She spoke minimal English when she married him and left Thailand for the first time in 1968, first going to Brooklyn and then to Cypress, California, where Woods was born in 1975.
His father taught him golf. His mother brought the discipline.
“Everyone thought it was my dad when I went on the road, which it was,” Woods said last year when he received the Bob Jones Award from the USGA. “But Mom was at home. If you don't know, Mom has been there my entire life. She's always been there through thick and thin.
“She has allowed me to get here. She allowed me to do these things, chase my dreams, and the support and love — I didn’t do this alone. I had the greatest rock that any child could possibly have: my mom.”
Passing along the Thai heritage of Woods was important to his mother. She took him to Thailand for the first time when Woods was 9, and he returned there to play three tournaments early in his career, winning each time.
What they shared was a fighting spirit.
"I am a loner, and so is Tiger,” she said in a 2009 interview in Thailand with Jaime Diaz of Golf Digest, a rare occasion when she spoke publicly.
“When I was a girl my mother would always be worried, ‘What will people say?’ And even then I would think, I don’t give a damn," Tida said. “I always tell Tiger: ‘You can’t do things just to please other people. It will waste your energy, and you won’t be happy in yourself. You have to do what is right for yourself.’ And on that, he does a good job.”
Inside the ropes, his mother wanted to see domination, and she got every bit of that. “And then, sportsmanship,” she once said.
She was the one responsible for him wearing a Sunday red shirt — Woods now has an apparel line named for that — because in Thai it was his power color.
“Mom thought being a Capricorn that my power color was red, so I wore red as a junior golfer and I won some tournaments," Woods said at the launch last year of the Sun Day Red brand. "I go to a university that is red — Stanford is red. We wore red on the final day of every single tournament, and then every single tournament I’ve played as a professional I’ve worn red. It’s just become synonymous with me.”
She also had a tradition of giving Woods a new tiger head cover for his driver each year.
Stitched among the orange-and-black was written in Thai, “Love from Mom.”
Tida moved out of the house where Woods grew up to something more modern in Orange County, and she followed him to South Florida after her husband died. She didn't get out to as many tournaments but rarely missed the Masters. She was there with her grandchildren when Woods captured his fifth green jacket and 15th major in 2019 at Augusta National.
She was there for a long time, and Woods never failed to cite her influence on his career. That started long ago, driving him to tournaments or dropping him off at the golf course with a dollar — 75 cents to buy a hot dog, 25 cents for the phone call to pick him up.
Woods said in a 2017 interview with USA Today that it was his mother's discipline he feared.
“My mom’s still here and I’m still deathly afraid of her,” he said. “She’s a very tough, tough old lady, very demanding. ... I love her so much, but she was tough.”
This story has been corrected. A previous version incorrectly reported Kultida Woods' age as 78.
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
FILE - Golf sensation Tiger Woods, left, poses with his mother Kultida while holding his trophy and key to a new car after winning the Asian Honda Classic in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Feb. 9, 1997. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE - Tiger Woods is embraced by his mother, Kultida, after winning his third U.S. Amateur golf championship Sunday, Aug. 25, l996, at the Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in North Plains, Ore. Woods defeated Steve Scott on the 38th hole.(AP Photo/Jack Smith, File)
FILE - Tiger Woods enjoys a laugh with his mother, Kultida, after winning the Western Open at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Ill., Sunday, July 6, 1997. (AP Photo/Frank Polich, File)
FILE - Kultida Woods, Tiger Woods' mother, watches as her son plays on the third hole during the third round of the Honda Classic golf tournament, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018 in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
Iran eased some restrictions on its people and, for the first time in days, allowed them to make phone calls abroad via their mobile phones on Tuesday. It did not ease restrictions on the internet or permit texting services to be restored as the death toll from days of bloody protests against the state rose to at least 2,000 people, according to activists.
Although Iranians were able to call abroad, people outside the country could not call them, several people in the capital told The Associated Press.
The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said SMS text messaging still was down and internet users inside Iran could not access anything abroad, although there were local connections to government-approved websites.
It was unclear if restrictions would ease further after authorities cut off all communications inside the country and to the outside world late Thursday.
Here is the latest:
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years, gave the latest death toll on Tuesday.
It said 1,847 of the dead were protesters and 135 were government-affiliated.
This came a day after the European Parliament announced it would ban Iranian diplomats and representatives.
“Iran does not seek enmity with the EU, but will reciprocate any restriction,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X on Tuesday.
He also criticized the European Parliament for not taking any significant action against Israel for the more than two-year war in Gaza that has killed more than 71,400 Palestinians, while banning Iranian diplomats after just “a few days of violent riots.”
Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said he summoned Iran’s ambassador to the Netherlands “to formally protest the excessive violence against peaceful protesters, large-scale arbitrary arrests, and internet shutdowns, calling for immediate restoration of internet access inside the Islamic Republic.
In a post on X, Weel also said the Dutch government supports EU sanctions against “human rights violators in Iran.”
The United Nations human rights chief is calling on Iranian authorities to immediately halt violence and repression against peaceful protesters, citing reports of hundreds killed and thousands arrested in a wave of demonstrations in recent weeks.
“The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Tuesday.
Alluding to a wave of protests in Iran in 2022, Türk said demonstrators have sought “fundamental changes” to governance in the country, “and once again, the authorities’ reaction is to inflict brutal force to repress legitimate demands for change.”
“This cycle of horrific violence cannot continue,” he added.
It was also “extremely worrying” to hear some public statements from judicial officials mentioning the prospect of the use of the death penalty against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings, Türk said.
“Iranians have the right to demonstrate peacefully. Their grievances need to be heard and addressed, and not instrumentalized by anyone,” Türk said.
Finland’s foreign minister says she is summoning the Iranian ambassador after authorities in Tehran restricted internet access.
“Iran’s regime has shut down the internet to be able to kill and oppress in silence," Elina Valtonen wrote in a social media post Tuesday, adding, “this will not be tolerated. We stand with the people of Iran — women and men alike.”
Finland is “exploring measures to help restore freedom to the Iranian people” together with the European Union, Valtonen said.
Separately, Finnish police said they believe at least two people entered the courtyard of the Iranian embassy in Helsinki without permission Monday afternoon and tore down the Iranian flag. The embassy’s outer wall was also daubed with paint.
Iranian security forces arrested what a state television report described as terrorist groups linked to Israel in the southeastern city of Zahedan.
The report, without providing additional details, said the group entered through Iran’s eastern borders and carried U.S.-made guns and explosives that the group had planned to use in assassinations and acts of sabotage.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the allegations.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate hailed people who have “long warned about this repression, at great personal risk.”
“The protests in Iran cannot be separated from the long-standing, state-imposed restrictions on girls’ and women’s autonomy, in all aspects of public life including education. Iranian girls, like girls everywhere, demand a life with dignity,” Yousafzai wrote on X.
“(Iran’s) future must be driven by the Iranian people, and include the leadership of Iranian women and girls — not external forces or oppressive regimes,” she added.
Yousafzai was awarded the peace prize in 2014 at the age of 17 for her fight for girls’ education in her home country, Pakistan. She is the youngest Nobel laureate.
The French Foreign Ministry said it has “reconfigured” its embassy in Tehran after reports that the facility's nonessential staff left Iran earlier this week.
The embassy's nonessential staff left the country Sunday and Monday, French news agency Agence France-Presse reported.
The ambassador remained on site and the embassy continued to function, the ministry said late Monday night.
Associated Press writer Angela Charlton contributed from Paris.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he believes the Iranian government is in its “final days and weeks,” as he renewed a call for Iranian authorities to end violence against demonstrators immediately.
“If a regime can only keep itself in power by force, then it’s effectively at the end,” Merz said Tuesday during a visit to Bengaluru, India. “I believe we are now seeing the final days and weeks of this regime. In any case, it has no legitimacy through elections in the population. The population is now rising up against this regime.”
Merz said he hoped there is “a possibility to end this conflict peacefully," adding that Germany is in close contact with the U.S. and European governments.
The Israeli military said it continues to be “on alert for surprise scenarios” due to the ongoing protests in Iran, but has not made any changes to guidelines for civilians, as it does prior to a concrete threat.
“The protests in Iran are an internal matter,” Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin wrote on X.
Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear program over the summer, resulting in a 12-day war that killed nearly 1,200 Iranians and almost 30 Israelis. Over the past week, Iran has threatened to attack Israel if Israel or the U.S. attacks.
Mobile phones in Iran were able to call abroad Tuesday after a crackdown on nationwide protests in which the internet and international calls were cut. Several people in Tehran were able to call The Associated Press.
The AP bureau in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was unable to call those numbers back.
Witnesses said the internet remained cut off from the outside world. Iran cut off the internet and calls on Thursday as protests intensified.
This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdownon the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)
This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)
This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)
Protesters hold up placards and flags as they demonstrate outside the Iranian Embassy in London, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
Shiite Muslims hold placards and chant slogans during a protest against the U.S. and show solidarity with Iran in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
Activists carrying a photograph of Reza Pahlavi take part in a rally supporting protesters in Iran at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Protesters burn the Iranian national flag during a rally in support of the nationwide mass demonstrations in Iran against the government in Paris, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
People attend a rally in Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (Boris Roessler/dpa via AP)
A picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is set alight by protesters outside the Iranian Embassy in London, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
