Steve Williams served as Tiger Woods’ caddy from 1999 to 2011, during which Woods dominated the PGA Tour, won 13 of his 14 Majors, and earned over $88 million. Williams recently wrote a book called “Out Of The Rough” about his time with Tiger, and he was very critical of Woods, of whom he once said he wanted to “shove something up that black arsehole.”


Stuff has a lengthy excerpt from the book, in which Williams compares working for Woods as a caddy to slavery (emphasis mine):

One thing that really pissed me off was how he would flippantly toss a club in the general direction of the bag, expecting me to go over and pick it up. I felt uneasy about bending down to pick up his discarded club – it was like I was his slave. The other thing that disgusted me was his habit of spitting at the hole if he missed a putt. Tiger listened to what I had to say, the air was cleared and we got on with it – his goal was to be the best player in history and my goal was to keep working as best I could to help make that happen.


For one, picking up clubs and putting them into a golf bag was Williams’ job. That’s what a caddy does. He was paid handsomely for his services, earning at least 10% (maybe even 15%) of Woods’ earnings. Williams even had a long-running endorsement deal with Valvoline. The outsized amount of money that Williams pulled in doesn’t excuse Woods for being a dick (which he is, says everyone) but it’s remarkably whiny and myopic to draw a comparison between making a shitload of money at a demanding job to being a slave.

Williams has been mad at Woods since the golfer fired him in 2011. He claimed that he took a lot of heat for Woods during his infidelity scandal, and talked about the firing like a betrayal of loyalty. “Out Of The Rough” also gets into the aftermath of that scandal and Williams’ role in it:

At one stage, one of the many women who claimed to be a mistress said she’d met me when I was with Tiger in Las Vegas – that got broadcast on radio in New Zealand and picked up in the papers. It was despicable reporting. I was giving my side of the story but no one seemed to care and comments like that from some bimbo on the other side of the world trying to get her 15 minutes of fame made me look like a fool. I begged Tiger’s team to say something in my defence, but they wouldn’t.

The book comes out tomorrow.

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