Caddie’s Tiger tell-all just a rancid tale of revenge
Almost four years to the day since stunning the sporting world with a plainly racist slur about his former employer tiger Woods, steve Williams is trying to shock us all once more.
Out of the Rough is the name of a supposedly tell-all book carrying his name, in which he demonstrates that spurned wives have nothing on jilted caddies when it comes to pentup fury. Williams ‘lifts the lid’ on his time with tiger, making headlines in the first published extract by claiming he was ‘treated like a slave’.
Goodness, what on earth did Woods do that was so heinous? turns out he expected Williams to pick up the odd club that had been angrily discarded. oh, please. If tiger had hit him with the said implement then maybe the wretched analogy would have carried an ounce of weight but, honestly, has there ever been a caddie who hasn’t picked up the odd club tossed aside in such fashion? the offence here is caused by the ridiculous comparison, not the treatment of Williams.
And that was the trouble with the absurd first extract. It said everything about the New Zealander’s inflated sense of his own worth but offered no fresh insight into a relationship that lasted 11 years, delivered 13 majors and for which he was paid the not so slave-like estimated sum of £10million.
Williams insists, for the umpteenth time, he didn’t know anything about his boss’s infidelities (yawn).
He slaughters the ‘despicable’ media — or tries to anyway — for having the temerity to ask him about it (it would have been despicable if they hadn’t).
He says he was not very happy with some aspects of tiger’s behaviour on the course, such as when he would spit into the hole. Well, join the club, stevie — a little late, though, in adding your name to the chorus of condemnation, wouldn’t you say?
Williams, of course, behaved every bit as badly as his boss inside the ropes when Woods was in his prime. He’d scream abuse at spectators and stop photographers from doing their jobs. A colleague once witnessed him indulge in a bullying tirade at a slightly- built girl manning the media centre at one event for the somewhat pardonable sin of not recognising him.
‘I’d like to shove this award up that black a*******,’ was his idea of a joke, when receiving recognition for his undoubted talents as a caddie at the HsBC Champions tournament in shanghai in 2011. that told you everything you need to know about this bitter man.
But still the grievances remained, waiting for this moment at the end of his career when he could have his revenge. Yet this is not a dish served cold so much as rancid.
the self-pitying tone is so nauseating it won’t add up to a moment’s inconvenience for Woods. there’s nothing here that will do more damage to tiger than he did to himself. Indeed, if anything, it will only garner sympathy, as he seeks to recover from yet another back operation.
What we’ve seen leaves only a yearning for the old days, when caddies lived by the creed: ‘show up, put up, and shut up.’