It was the 2002 Skins Game in California. A photographer, after multiple ignored warnings, snaps a picture of Tiger Woods mid-swing. But before he could celebrate his shot, Steve Williams grabbed his camera and threw it in the pond. There went his $7,000. For 12 years, Williams was the shield between Woods and the chaos that followed him. Not by choice but because he had to.

“I mean, I think a lot of people don’t know…I caught a lot of bad publicity from time to time. And what I would always say to that, ‘Okay, well, you come and spend a week with me and walk from Monday to Sunday beside me. Walk, working alongside Tiger Woods, and see what’s going on here,'” said Williams on Tee It Up Golf podcast.

“Tiger made it very clear to me what he wanted and how he wanted to operate… The golf course was his office. I knew how he operated…He knew I was hard-headed, and I wasn’t afraid. We had a bit of a system when someone would come along…and if he wanted to talk to that person, we had a communication signal between the two of us that would tell me, and if I didn’t get that signal, I’d move that person on very quickly.”

The world knows how intensely Woods locks himself, the moment he steps on the course. So if someone approached him during that time, he would give Williams the cue. But if there were no such signal, Williams would step in and move them along. It was simple and sharp, but often drew scrutiny.

“I mean, it was very difficult for anybody that played with Tiger because everything was about him…there’s all these extra people inside the ropes,” he said. “He’s extra TV and this and the other. So yeah, it was a it was part of the job. And like I said, I, from time to time, caught some bad press. But unless that person knew exactly what was going on, it might have been unwarranted sometimes.”

After the camera incident, Vijay Singh criticized Williams, saying, “Just because he’s Tiger Woods’ caddie doesn’t give him the right to do that…If my caddie did that, I’d make him fish it out of the lake.” Meanwhile, Davis Love III defended him: “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time…I think it’s fair.”

At the 2004 US Open, Williams kicked a camera from a New York Daily News photographer’s hands. Later that week, he snatched another from an off-duty cop. At times, he didn’t even spare people in authority. In the 2006 Open Championship, he cursed rules official John Paramor with massive F-bombs for putting Woods on the clock. Funnily enough, Woods won that tournament by two shots. However, Williams’ reputation was done. He was now a “bully,” as journalist Mike Clayton once put it.

Although now, when he looks back, he understands where he went wrong. He admits he was an “aggressive person,” who took things into his own hands out of frustration. In his autobiography ‘Together We Roared’, he regrets the perceptions his actions created.

And at the end of the day, Woods trusted him. He thanked him after every round, whether they won or lost. That must have been the only thing that should have mattered. But you know, as they say, habits are hard to break.

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When Steve Williams’ anger didn’t even spare Tiger Woods

After 12 years of a strong bond, Steve Williams and Tiger Woods ended their partnership in 2011. Woods was sidelined with an injury when Williams agreed to caddy for Adam Scott, his next big partner. Reportedly, this did not sit right with the Big Cat, as he dismissed Williams. For him, this was a breach of loyalty. Needless to say, the move left Williams bitter.

For months, that bitterness boiled over until it reached a breaking point. In Shanghai, during a caddie awards dinner, Williams won a satirical award for “celebrating” his victory with Scott. While giving his winning speech, the New Zealander forgot all moral ethics and made a racially charged comment on Woods.

The remark drew immediate global condemnation and remains one of the darkest moments in Williams’ career. The next day, he quickly issued a public apology, admitting it was “over the top” and born from a lingering anger over Woods. But that was enough to damage his already fragile reputation. It became a footnote that overshadowed years of his service, loyalty, and success to inarguably golf’s biggest star.