Steve Williams on more than one occasion tried to talk his boss out of playing. He could see the pain, feared it might lead to worse issues, and questioned whether Tiger Woods should even be competing at all in the tournament.
It was at the 2008 U.S. Open, and Williams chuckles at the memory of Woods’s emphatic and profanity-filled retort that he wasn’t quitting and that he was going to win the tournament.
Williams has told the story many times and in the aftermath of that momentous victory that came in a playoff over Rocco Mediate at Torrey Pines, Woods was forced to shut it down for the rest of the year.
The pain was real as Woods had played the tournament with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee as well as a double stress fracture in his left tibia. The latter injury is what caused the obvious discomfort and would heal in time. But the ACL problem was something that Woods endured and needed to get fixed.
Although it wasn’t a surprise, Williams was still numb when he heard the news from Woods himself a few days later after the longtime caddie had returned to his home in New Zealand.
“I experienced a low point in my time with Tiger, with the uncertainty about when he would come back and whether his knee would ever be as healthy again,” Williams said in a recently published book in which he disclosed an interesting tidbit about the aftermath of that surgery.
Because Woods would be out of action for months, he told Williams to take his 155-foot yacht, Privacy, for a week anywhere in the world he wanted.
He tells the story in the book Together We Roared a recounting of Williams’s time with the legendary golfer and written with Golf Digest writer Evin Priest.
Williams had stayed on the yacht several times at tournaments but was nonetheless moved by the gesture. He traveled the Caribbean with his family, including wife, Kristy and son Jett, along with his wife’s parents and his own mom.
Woods had paid $20 million for the yacht in 2004 and it was luxury on the water. It had a main deck, a second level and an observation deck. And five bedrooms, which didn’t include the living area for the crew.
“Steve, you helped pay for it,” Woods told him as a reason for offering up the boat.
The trip was amazing, Williams said, and one of several stories that he and Priest unveil that had never before been told.
Williams, who caddied for Woods from 1999 to 2011 and was on the bag for 13 of his 15 major titles, said the idea came together after he and Priest did a popular podcast series during the COVID shutdown.
“We got a lot of great feedback from that and some interest in further the story,” Williams said from New Zealand during a recent phone interview. “Over the period of a couple of years, Evin and I decided to do it.”
Among the topics broached were how Williams hung up on Woods more than once when the golfer called him to discuss the job—he thought it was a prank. There was Woods’s quest to match Jack Nicklaus’s 18 major championships, his incredible 2000 season and the Tiger Slam, the fallout from Woods’s 2009 marital scandal and his own messy breakup with Woods in 2011.
Priest also brought in outside voices, such as Woods’s longtime friend, Mark O’Meara, and Chris DiMarco, who was the tough-luck contender in two of Woods’ major wins.
Williams disclosed that the two had always discussed the idea of getting to 21 major victories—surpassing Nicklaus and getting to Williams favorite number in the process.
But that quest waned in the aftermath of scandal in 2010. “I couldn’t see that picture anymore and I didn’t have that same drive and desire to caddie towards that 21st major,” he said in the book.
Their split came, in part, because Woods changed his mind about letting Williams caddie for Adam Scott while Woods was recovering from an injury in 2011 that caused him to miss the U.S. Open and the British Open that year.
It led to years of acrimony that over time Williams felt needed to be put to rest.
“I don’t know if time heals but when you step away from the Tour and sort of reflect on things, I felt it was time,” said Williams, who by chance ran into Woods two years ago when they were both in Los Angeles at the Genesis Invitational. “When a player and caddie fall out or one gets fired or one leaves it’s generally you split and that’s the end of the story. The caddie moves on to another player. That’s the end of the road, basically. When I did see Tiger at Riviera a couple of years ago, he had mellowed, too. He’s not in the thick of competition every week. He’s a lot more relaxed. We chatted, it was very cordial and way more relaxed.”
If there is any lingering resentment, that is not apparent in the book, in which Williams shows appreciation for having a front-row seat to some incredible golf. He gives numerous examples of how much Woods appreciated him, via notes or letters or signed memorabilia. He was also the best man at Williams’s wedding.
“It’s humbling to know that I was part of history and that we’ll always have that chapter together,” Williams said.
Williams, 61, who caddied for a slew of players over the years, including Greg Norman and Raymond Floyd, won’t be the Masters this year. He has essentially retired from caddying, although he did work for Daniel Hillier, a fellow New Zealander, at this year’s New Zealand Open.
It’s unclear if he will even watch next week’s Masters, a tournament for which he is so tied. Watching on TV was never a big thing for Williams. He has plenty of memories to share, as evidenced by those he tells in the book.
LIV Golf’s domestic debut
After four overseas events to begin the 2025 season, the LIV Golf League returns for its first U.S. event, LIV Golf Miami at Doral, where it has played each of the past three seasons.
The event serves as a solid tune-up for the 12 players who are in the Masters field next week.
But it is also an interesting inflection point if you buy into the TV ratings narrative that brings shouting from both sides.
While the PGA Tour has seen a nice uptick in its TV ratings this year over last—but still down from three and four years ago prior to the launch of LIV Golf—the upstart circuit has languished.
It was difficult to discern and compare to the PGA Tour when LIV Golf’s broadcasts were shown on the CW Network the last two years. There is also the notion that LIV is consumed via streaming channels, although that is less of a factor now domestically due to restrictions from its network rights deal.
LIV Golf is now on Fox and it was always going to be difficult to ascertain the numbers when the first four events were played in the late night or early morning hours in the U.S. and on FS1 and FS2, where the numbers were bound to be lower.
But this weekend, for the first time, LIV Golf will be on the regular Fox network on Saturday and Sunday while the PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open will air on its usual home on NBC. The events will go virtually head-to-head.
While TV ratings are not everything (golf has always cared more about reaching its advertiser demographics than drawing huge numbers), this is nonetheless an opportunity to see if LIV Golf can pull a decent audience when it has mostly been chided for not doing so.
It will be played at a familiar course that hosted the PGA Tour for more than 50 years with its usual lineup of players including former Masters champions Jon Rahm, Sergio Garcia, Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson and other major champions such as Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Cam Smith.
The Valero Texas Open will be without three of the Tour’s biggest stars in Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele but will still have a representative number of players either prepping for the Masters or attempting to earn a last-minute spot by winning.
The impact of one tournament’s ratings is likely to be more noise than impactful in the big picture as the negotiations labor on between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which backs LIV Golf.
But if LIV Golf is to ever be part of PGA Tour Enterprises, it needs to be an accepted product that can carry its weight financially. TV rights fees carry every major sports league in the world and so far are not doing that for LIV. It’s but one tournament but at least one that will give an indication as how to things stand.
Rory and Augusta
Although the course typically changes significantly in the time from when Rory McIlroy visited Augusta National last week to when he arrives next week for the Masters, it makes sense that he went there to get a look at the place, despite his intimate knowledge.
McIlroy spent a long day on site prior to the Houston Open as did others throughout the last few weeks and undoubtedly will do this week as well. No other major championship venue sees players prepare in advance like they do at Augusta National, with varying degrees of success.
“I use those trips just to refamiliarize myself with the place, clubs off tees, looking to see if they changed any greens,” McIlroy said in advance of the Houston Open. “There's four greens that are new this year that they've redone. You just sort of, you have a look at those and see if there's any new hole positions they give you, stuff like that.”
The new greens are at the 1st, 8th, 15th and 16th holes. The 16th was severely damaged during Hurricane Helene. Satellite images after the storm showed two large trees that had collapsed onto the green, requiring that it be completely rebuilt.
Augusta National, which was closed at the time, pushed back its normal fall opening into November, and for a time, members were required to play the 16th to a temporary green. Next week, it will undoubtedly look as if nothing changed at that hole.
“The loss of a few trees is definitely noticeable,” McIlroy said. “But in terms of like they’ve had to redo that green, but it’s exactly the same as what it was. The hole will play—apart from maybe a few less shadows on the green late in the day because of a couple of trees that were lost—but apart from that, it’s pretty much the same.”
Seeing the changes was important, but so, too, was simply getting in some time on the course ahead of the massive crush of people that will be on site in a week.
Even leading up to the Masters week is difficult with the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament seeing a practice round Friday followed by the final round on Saturday.
“Honestly, for me, it’s nice to play a practice round without people around and it sort of takes the pressure off the start of the week for me,” McIlroy said. “There’s a lot of obligations; there’s big commitments, whether it be from media or the par-3 tournament on Wednesday. I just like to get up there and feel like I’m not rushed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday the week of the tournament and that’s usually the reason I go there.”
Some take a similar approach, others such as defending champion Scottie Scheffler prefer to show up Sunday prior during the finals of the Drive, Chip & Putt competition when the golf course is open to member and competitor play.
Scheffler will be trying to become just the fourth player—following Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods—to defend at Augusta National.
McIlroy is attempting to complete the career Grand Slam by adding the Masters to his victories at the PGA, U.S. Open and the British Open. It has been a decade-long quest since he won the Open at Royal Liverpool in 2014 to earn a third different major.
Through three rounds of the Houston Open, McIlroy remained a bit dismayed by his driving. He hit just five fairways during the third round but hit eight of 13 during the final round after making a tweak to the loft of his driver.
“Still feel like I've got some stuff to work on,” McIlroy said. “Still don't think like my game is absolutely 100 percent under the control I would want, but it's nice to have a week to work on some things. I've got my coach, Michael Bannon, coming in (Monday) so we'll be working at home and making sure game feels good going into the Masters.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as In a New Book, Caddie Steve Williams Shares a Tiger Woods Tale Never Before Told.
