Kiwi Oz loves to bag
Super golf caddie Steve Williams can be a polarising figure, not just for New Zealanders
The debate will rage for as long as the confounding game is played. Is a caddie a vital component of any professional golfer’s success or just an overpaid baggage handler? Given Steve Williams’ astonishing career carrying the clubs of some of the world’s greatest players, and the equally astonishing fortune he has accumulated performing this sometimes menial role, he might be presented as Exhibit A for both the prosecution and the defence.
But regardless of where you stand — and if you are standing near Williams, make sure you are silent, motionless and have your mobile phone switched off — Australians have always had a special place for the Kiwi Super Caddie. That place being about six steps behind us carrying our bags.
So there was a hint of nostalgia when we learned that Williams would caddie for Australian Aaron Baddeley on the PGA Tour in the next two weeks during his 40th and reportedly final season.
That Williams got his big break caddying for Australia’s five-time British Open champion Peter Thomson at the 1976 New Zealand Open presents something of an irony.
Not because the union between the Melbourne establishmentarian Thomson and the plainly spoken, saloon car loving Wellingtonian is only slightly less likely than that between the Windsors and the Markels.
Williams using Thomson as a springboard for his successful career was ironic because as the arch-traditionalist Thomson considered caddies to be no more useful than hotel porters reasoning any half-decent player could pick the right club himself.
For Thomson, a good caddie followed the old mantra: “Keep up and shut up.”
As would become apparent, Williams was okay with the first instruction but spent 40 years ignoring the second. During his next high profile pairing with another Australian, Greg Norman, the Kiwi’s precise feel for yardage was matched only by his ferociously protective manner.
How do I know? Because I was just one of many spectators to feel the wrath of Williams savage tongue while following Norman at the Australian Open in the late 1980s.
My mistake was to stumble backwards and almost topple into a greenside bunker as Norman lined up a putt, an ignominy avoided only with a comical forward lunge towards the putting surface.
The accompanying thump and subsequent laughter of the crowd caused Norman to look up and Williams to bark “Keep quiet or get off the course!”, a humiliating moment that might have caused a spiteful and vindictive victim to follow Williams’ progress with a
Australians have a special place for the Kiwi — six steps behind us carrying our bags.
somewhat jaundiced eye. Which I did. Thus over the next three decades, I’ve found it somewhat satisfying seeing Williams admonished for yelling profanities at spectators and even throwing a photographer’s camera in a dam. Presumably because his employers have such delicate power of concentration that, in the words of author PG Wodehouse, they “missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows”.
But by less petty and vengeful Australians, Williams was widely respected. Indeed, his time caddying for Norman might have made him part of Australian sporting folklore.
Alas not even Williams’ soon-tobe-renowned golf whispering could help fulfil one of sport’s great talents. Instead, the Kiwi would merely be a front row bystander to some of the Great White Shark’s disastrous major meltdowns.
Famously it would be with Tiger Woods that Williams found fame and became, in somewhat mocking tones, either New Zealand’s highest earning sports star or golf ’s Tenzing Norgay.
During his time with Woods, Williams became more aloof on his trips to Australia. Understandable given Woods’ previous caddie Mike “Fluff ” Cowan was sacked for betraying confidences to the media. Why risk a job that was enabling Williams to compile a
$20 million fortune just to blab to some ink-stained reporters?
Later, some would construe Williams’ silence as an indication he knew more about Woods’ infamous “night life” than he had let on. A distasteful and personally damaging assertion he denied in his book.
Although the most compelling evidence Williams’ was not at the scene of Woods’ late night misdemeanours came when Tiger’s enraged wife Elin attacked his car with a nine-iron as he beat a hasty retreat from the family home.
Had Williams been there, surely he would have insisted she needed only a wedge.
Williams’ eventual sacking by Woods paved the way for another Anzac alliance with Adam Scott whose victory at the 2013 Masters was as much an exorcism of the many haunting failures of Norman and other Australians at Augusta as a national triumph.
Now Williams is helping Baddeley and, perhaps, providing another reminder of the magic that can take place on a golf course when an Australian strikes the ball and a Kiwi fills his divots. Richard Hinds is a leading Australian sports commentator.