Cry freedom for Tiger's former caddie: Steve Williams' slave claims ridiculous

Tiger Woods with Steve Williams before their relationship went sour. Photo / Getty Images

Steve Williams has written an auto-biography called Out of the Rough, which strikes me as a humongous missed opportunity. Williams is perhaps best known as the caddie for Tiger Woods between 1999 and 2011 and, given the evident privation he suffered while working for the world's best golfer, a snappier and more appropriate title would surely have been "12 Years A Slave". There might have been the odd copyright issue to deal with, but the cover photo alone would surely have made it worthwhile.

In the book, released this week, Williams documents his years of torment under Woods, during which he was humiliatingly forced to attend the world's most prestigious golf tournaments while being paid a mere pounds 7.5million.

"One thing that really p----d me off," he writes, "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."

Those of you with a marginally broader perspective - say, anyone above the age of eight - may be tempted to pick holes in Williams's definition of captive servitude. Welcome to The History of Slavery with Steve Williams, in which white men are brutally invited to carry the golf bags of black men, savagely consulted over club selection and putt lines, sadistically given a share of the winnings, cruelly allowed to leave whenever they want.

Still, just because Williams presents a radically revisionist interpretation of slavery does not mean it should necessarily be dismissed out of hand. One of the most insidious effects of bondage is the dependency that develops between slave and slave master. When Woods terminated Williams's employment in 2011, Williams responded in a statement that "I am very disappointed to end our very successful partnership at this time", which frankly is no way for a man to celebrate his emancipation.

We must now assume that when Williams asked Woods to be the best man at his wedding in 2006 he was acting under a sense of misplaced loyalty.

"Together, Tiger and I won 84 tournaments around the world. including 13 major championships," it reads on his website. And yet, did Woods insist that the name of his caddie be carved on the Claret Jug? Did he let Williams wear his green jacket? Not a bit of it. Heartless.

Since which, of course, Williams has enjoyed another long run of success with the more benign Adam Scott. But who indeed could blame him for harbouring ill-will towards his former captor? At a ceremony in Shanghai in 2011, he made the now-infamous quip that he would "like to shove this award up that black a---hole". How were we to know that these were the purgative words of a traumatised ex-peon rather than, as believed at the time, the addled ramblings of a bitter, deluded, unreconstructed racist?

So even as he lopes into semi-retirement, Williams finds himself slighted at every turn. Such is the eternal struggle of the ex-slave who strives to be taken seriously. Yet the world responds only with ridicule. And what is ridicule, really, if not a particular sinister form of enslavement?

In a supposedly enlightened society, the plight of Williams and other beleaguered white middle-aged millionaires carries on unabated and unheeded. Where is the uprising, the popular rage, the picketing of Opens and Ryder Cups?

From this day forth, let the cry ring true: I am Steve Williams! No, I am Steve Williams! Caddies of the PGA Tour, throw off your shackles and cry freedom!

- The Daily Telegraph