Spirit Of Tiger One Lives On Journalist’s Persistence Brings Together Woods, Widow Of His Father’s Friend

Col. Tiger Phong, the Vietnamese soldier whom Tiger Woods was named after, died in a political re-ducation camp eight months after the golfer was born, Golf Digest reports.

Phong, a battlefield friend of Tiger Woods’ father, Earl, lived barely a year after the fall of Saigon, dying Sept. 9, 1976, in the squalor of a Communist camp, the magazine says. Woods was born Dec. 30, 1975.

The story, in the October issue of Golf Digest, is by Tom Callahan, who has written more than two dozen cover stories for Time magazine. Feigning an interest in the growth of golf in Vietnam to gain access, Callahan defied government censors in tracking Phong.

Callahan also found that Phong’s widow, Lythi Bich Van, has lived in Tacoma since 1994, that she barely spoke English and that she had never heard of Tiger Woods.

Earl Woods, his wife Kultida and Tiger Woods met with Lythi Bich Van, now 61, and two of her children in an emotional reunion Sept. 11 at the Woods’ home in Cypress, Calif.

“It was very sweet,” Callahan said. “They just sat on the couch and talked for hours. Tiger was very much into it.”

Earl Woods, a former Green Beret with two tours of duty in Vietnam, had long told people that his son Eldrick was named for Phong, who was called Tiger by Earl because of his bravery in battle.

Woods, who lost contact with Phong after the fall of South Vietnam, said he hoped that Phong would hear of Tiger Woods, figure out that it was Earl Woods’ son and get in touch with him.

“Earl said he cried for a couple of days after he learned that Phong had died,” said Callahan.

“Earl said it was like losing a relative and that Tiger was his shoulder to cry on,” Callahan said. “It kills him that Phong starved.”

Determined to track down the man for whom Tiger Woods was named, Callahan was thwarted by faulty memories, uncooperative government officials and incomplete official records.

After traveling from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, appearing on TV and taking out newspaper ads using an old photo of Earl and Tiger - all the while being discouraged and at times subtly threatened by officials - Callahan made contact with Phong’s oldest son, who told him his father was dead.

“I never knew him as Tiger Phong,” Tiger Woods explained at the reunion. “He was Tiger One - the first Tiger.”

Both father and son said that Tiger Woods was told stories about Tiger Phong from birth.

“He was very young, too young to understand,” Earl Woods said. “It grew up in him, evolved in him.”

Saigon fell on April, 30, 1975, and for 39 days Phong hid out in the village of his birth, Trang Bang, Callahan discovered. As the Communists closed in, Phong slipped back into Saigon to be with his family one last time. He surrendered on June 15.

Lythi Bich Van followed her husband from camp to camp but never caught up with him. His letters came home for a year, slowly over time becoming focusing on his favorite foods. The family read the letters and wept.

Official records said Phong died of a heart attack. He was 47 years old and it was 10 years later before his family was told of his death.

The family found a marker for his grave in the jungle and brought his bones home for burial.

“The effect of finding out about his death was stronger than I can explain,” Tiger Woods said. “From all I’ve heard, the three of us are alike. I’m more hot tempered than my father is now. But he used to be like me - and so was Tiger One.

“We are perfectionists who wear our emotions on our sleeves,” Woods said.

Vong Don Phuoc, Tiger Phong’s 28-year-old son, translated for his mother as she shared tears with Earl Woods.

“It’s hard to keep from crying when he talks about how much he loved our father,” Phuoc said.