As much as he admired and loved his father, it appears that it was always Kultida who had his unyielding respect.

It was Kultida Woods who maintained order to the house, who set the priorities. Yes, there could be golf, but first came school. What she also insisted upon was effort in everything her son did and it was something Kultida Woods could monitor for she was totally involved in her son’s pursuits.

Born and raised in Thailand, Kultida Woods always wanted her son to embrace the Thai heritage. He did.

She introduced him to the ways of Buddhism and asked that he accompany her on an annual pilgrimage to a temple near Los Angeles. He did.

Knowing how tough life could be, Kultida Woods wanted her son to be tough. Like she was, not like her husband. “Old man is soft,” she once told a Golf Digest columnist. “He cry. He forgive people. Not me. I don’t forgive anybody.”

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Her son has inherited that trait, because he is legendary for what he remembers and, oh, how so many of his actions are based on memory.

It wasn’t long after his son turned pro that Earl Woods began to back away from the picture. He rarely went to tournaments, choosing instead to get more involved in the Tiger Woods Foundation. “Golf,” he once said, “is important to him, but other things are important to me.”

Kultida? She continued to attend tournaments and to follow her son’s every shot. Still does.

“Where Tiger ball?” she will say to no one in particular as she makes her way to the vicinity of his shot. She knows who the competition is on Tour, which players Tiger Woods can intimidate, which ones he can’t, and for as long as she can remember, Kultida Woods has reminded her son to never extinguish the competitive fires.

She told the Golf Digest columnist that she would tell Tiger to “go after them, kill them, go for their throat.” It is a philosophy around which he has built his golf career, which explains that 15-shot win in the 1997 Masters, that 12-shot win in the 2000 U.S. Open, even the 9-and-8 win over Stephen Ames in the WGC Match Play Championship earlier this season. When Woods plays, he plays to win, and the more he can win by, the better.

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Of course, Tiger Woods will give thought to his father when he resumes the building of his legend this week in Mamaroneck, N.Y. But what he’ll rely upon are the competitive fires instilled in him by his mother.

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