Tiger Woods treated Steve Williams like a ‘slave,’ ex-caddie claims in new book

Tiger Woods may be down after his second back surgery in two months, and ex-caddie Steve Williams’ inflammatory new autobiography in which he says his former boss treated him like a “slave” won’t do anything to lift his spirits.

Williams, who employed a racially charged “joke” to lash out at Woods after the duo’s contentious breakup in 2011, once again chose offensive language to describe his relationship with the bed-ridden former world No. 1.

“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,” Williams, according to multiple accounts, wrote in Out of the Rough, due out on Monday. “I felt uneasy about bending down to pick up his discarded club — it was like I was his slave.”

Stevie, who reportedly banked something in the range of $9 million to $12 million in some 13 years as Tiger’s bagman, may want to look up the definition and historic connotations of the word, “slave.” Still, after he hurled a racist insult at Woods during a PGA Tour dinner four years ago, it was clear that Williams’ bitterness went far beyond the usual employer-fired employee animosity.

“My aim was to shove it right up that black arse,” Williams said by way of explaining his infamous self-aggrandizing celebration after he helped Adam Scott win the 2011 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

Williams earned a reputation as a boorish brute as he handled Woods’ luggage for 13 of his 14 major championships but he apparently saw himself as the arbiter of good taste, as he took Tiger to task for his on-course demeanor as well as his notorious sex scandal.

“The other thing that disgusted me was his habit of spitting at the hole if he missed a putt,” Williams wrote. “He was well known for his bad temper and, while that wasn’t pleasant to witness … he had other bad habits that upset me. I wanted him to prove to me he could change his behavior and show me — and the game of golf — more respect.”

Williams will likely garner the most attention for his self-serving observations about the turmoil inside Team Tiger as details of Woods’ extramarital activities were about to go public. The looper who guided Scott to his 2013 Masters win does not stray from his many public statements in which he has contended he knew nothing about Woods’ serial philandering.

“But the joy of winning dissipated in the strangest fashion,” Williams, in an excerpt published by New Zealand’s stuff.co.nz wrote about the aftermath of Woods’ 2009 Australian Masters victory. “No sooner had Tiger fulfilled his media obligations than he fled to the airport in a chopper, leaving me to head back to the hotel on my own. As I was driving, I got a text from Mark Steinberg which read, ‘There is a story coming out tomorrow. Absolutely no truth to it. Don’t speak to anybody.’

“In the back of my mind, one thought often replayed, over and over, without an answer: What did Tiger do with himself to get rid of the stress that built up in his life?” Williams, apparently for the first time and with 20/20 hindsight, wondered. “When you live so intensely in the public eye, you surely have to have something else [besides a maniacal workout regimen] away from the spotlight that gives you pleasure — and it turns out I was wrong about the gym.”

Claiming to have “zero tolerance for that kind of behavior,” Williams insisted he had no idea about Woods’ dalliances.

“Only a handful of his oldest buddies actually had any idea this was going on. I didn’t know because Tiger didn’t dare tell me,” wrote Williams. He asserted that, had he been trusted with Woods’ confidence, “I would have told him straight away that I condemned that kind of activity and, unless he stopped, there would be no conversation — that would be the end of us.”

Williams’ months of absolute misery involved with constantly defending himself from the relentless “media feeding frenzy” that swirled around him began “once Tiger slow-crashed his SUV into the fire hydrant just outside his house on Thanksgiving night.”

The object of ongoing criticism and harassment from fans and the media because of his association with Woods, Williams was unhappy that Tiger’s camp never cleared him of any involvement in the scandal. He did not hear from Woods for four months after the incident with the fire hydrant.

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