Golf: The best caddie in the world

6.00pm - By MICHELE HEWITSON

Steve Williams, caddy to Tiger, says he won't have a coffee, thanks, but he will have a glass of water.

He has never drunk coffee. He can't see the point. "If you're thirsty, you have a cold drink."

That there might be other reasons for drinking coffee doesn't appear to have occurred to him and, anyway, his logic is unassailable.

He's made up his mind about the coffee, and that is that.

He is the most successful caddy in the world; the most high-profile caddy in the world. He would be happy enough with the first description.

It is not in his job description to have a profile, yet it is inevitable when your job is carrying the golf bag of Tiger Woods, whom Williams describes as being like "a rock star". When Williams is overseas he doesn't sign autographs, although when he's caddying for Tiger he could sign them "all day, every day". But "Tiger's the star".

In New Zealand, which Williams loves so much that he lives in Sun River, Oregon, because it reminds of him of Alexandra in Central Otago, he is happy to sign your golf balls.

"In New Zealand I'm very happy to autograph anything for anybody because a lot of people are very proud of what I've done as a Kiwi, and a lot of people say nice things, so I appreciate that."

Yes, well, he would. A lot of people say not very nice things about Williams. He has a reputation for being a bit of a bully boy on the course although - despite the incidents where he kicked a camera into the face of a photographer, where he threw another photographer's camera into a lake - he says he never loses his temper.

When he confiscates cameras he does so very calmly. "Oh, no problem. You can't lose your temper because if the person you're caddying for sees you lose your temper he knows you're uneasy."

In his book Hitting the Zone (by Williams and Hugh de Lacy) you read: "Steve has never been wildly popular with golf fans."

I wonder if this might be an understatement and he says, "Well, you know I'm not as popular as I probably could be with the fans because I know what it takes for Tiger to play in his best environment, and I can definitely piss a lot of people off. But that's making his job easier for him and ... that's what counts."

It is not, he hastens to add, that "I don't care, but they don't have a true understanding of what's going on and I have to do what I feel is best for Tiger and myself ... and if I have to piss some people off, I do".

Hitting the Zone is written in the third person and he occasionally refers to himself as "Steve". This is slightly disconcerting: like talking to somebody about Steve when Steve is at the table.

He has a reputation for being remote. He says he doesn't hang out with the other caddies because when he's working he doesn't drink, so he's hardly going to be interested in going to the bar after a day on the course.

Besides, he's busy, busy, busy. He runs or goes to the gym or swims after work, and then he has his foundation for young golfers to keep an eye on.

"I'm not one of those people who can sit still. If you can do it now, you do it now. You don't leave it until tomorrow. I like having full days."

He says that if he has a weakness (and you can tell he doesn't think he really does) it's that he's "very bad" at relaxing.

He doesn't watch TV or read. "Well, there's no time for that. When you run out of gas you go to sleep, then you get up again."

When you think about caddying, which is about being a butler with a golf bag, you think: what a strange job. He says it is "very difficult to explain to somebody what a caddy does and it's a very detailed kind of job. It's a very intense, involved job".

It is also a job that involves a degree of subservience: the golfer is the boss and you don't talk back.

Williams was sacked by Greg Norman for talking back and, he says, for getting too close. He didn't mean to get close to Tiger, but he has.

He thinks the difference might be that he was like a son to Norman, but, because at 40 he is so much older than Tiger, Tiger is like a son to him.

Except that it is Tiger who pays Williams' fines (he appears to be quite pleased with the fact that he has been fined more than the players), if he approves of the misdeed. He usually does.

Williams is not given much to self-reflection - no time for that - but he is pretty au fait with his personality type. "I'm a very aggressive-type person by nature."

Aggressive is good. "I'm a very confident person in what I do, and aggressive and confident go hand in hand. That's why I'm successful, because I'm confident in what I do."

He has always been confident. He pretty much left school at 13. To his parents' despair he'd pretend to go off to school when he was really going to work at a butcher's shop.

He's not proud of this now but it seemed pretty clear at the time: if he was earning money he could save to go overseas so he could go on to become the world's best caddy.

He has always been good at working out what he wants to do and doing it.

The notion of self-doubt is as alien to him as the idea of drinking coffee. "You don't allow it to happen. You paint a picture and you get that picture painted and you work hard, however long it takes. In my way of looking at life you can achieve whatever you like."

His book is not about swinging a golf club, but about things like "visualisation, imagination and creativity" and affirmation, which is "schooling the subconscious". He believes in positive thinking. There is a chapter on relaxation which includes tips on transcendental meditation.

It's hard to imagine Williams meditating, and he says he doesn't do it a lot. His idea of relaxing is to garden or to mow his lawns. And to talk. He and Tiger talk all the time on the green.

"Talking is a way of relaxing. If you don't talk you can get tense."

Left on his own for a minute in the cafe, he starts talking to the people at the next table.

He says about the talking on the course that it's part of having fun and "we always have fun. It's just a game and I remind Tiger of that on a regular basis. It has no direct consequence or bearing on life. Some guys look like they're on a death march out there but, nah, we don't do that. We just have some fun".

Anyone expecting scuttlebutt on Tiger is obviously going to be out of luck. Part of Williams' job is to keep his trap firmly shut on Tiger's private life.

But there is the penultimate chapter which reveals that Williams and Woods had a pact that if Williams asked his girlfriend to marry him, Woods would follow his lead by asking his.

Williams says in his book that "the girls were a bit annoyed about that, but Tiger wouldn't do it unless I did it." Really? "Oh yeah. It was so funny, he knew he wanted to get engaged but he wanted me to do it first. That's how close we are. I did mine one Sunday and he did his the following Sunday."

I think this is a bit peculiar, and say so, which he obviously thinks makes me a bit peculiar.

He popped the question by unfurling a banner from his race car "and Tiger said it confirmed with him that I am a red-neck".

Cars and racing them are what he spends his money on.

He can't think of two sports more opposite in their appeal, which is what appeals to him. He loves the noise and the adrenalin and the people.

And there is one other difference: he's the one in charge.