For the last week, you’ve been barraged with expert analysis on Tiger Woods, his former caddy Steve Williams, the state of Tiger’s golf game, the break-up of golfer and caddy, etc. You’ve been overcome, I’m sure, with comments from a multitude of sources about each man.
Sunday after Adam Scott, who Williams caddied for this weekend, won the WGC Bridgestone Invitational, one of the golf analysts caught up with Steve Williams and asked him about the win.
Williams called this past week two separate things — “the greatest week of my life” and “the best win of my life.” Really? This coming from Williams, who rode Tiger Woods’ dominating streak for more than a decade and earned enough money as a caddy than most people in general in his native New Zealand.
But this weekend, when Adam Scott took home a purse of $1.4 million dollars, and Williams a lump sum of that, was the “greatest” of Steve Williams’ life?
In the excitement of the moment, it appears Williams got a little carried away. Unless he doesn’t remember the thousands of weeks he played with Tiger Woods and won all that money, and experience a yacht-load of golf’s greatest moments with Tiger.
Moments I can remember: how about Tiger’s first green jacket at The Masters? How about when he came back and won on a bad knee, limping through the course? You can probably name even more than me.
Maybe he really meant this was the best week of his life, the best win of his life, simply because this is the week he got passed all the Tiger drama and won a tournament with somebody other than the superstar who won him all of his money.
But it seems a little far fetched to me.
Now people in the media are calling Williams’ comments “classless.” I don’t know that they are worth that sort of scrutiny, because I think Williams wasn’t trying to “diss” Tiger in a blatant way. Although, I do think Tiger is going to hear those comments and say, “Wait a second…” I did the same.
However, those comments aren’t classless coming from Williams. They’re just a little, as I said before, far fetched.
In the eyes of the nation, I think there are probably between 10-20 Tiger Woods moments we’ll remember much more vividly than this weekend’s Adam Scott win. The thing I will remember most about this weekend is that on Thursday the story was about Tiger Woods, coming back from a lengthy rehab and playing a solid round two-under par. However, as we got later in the weekend, the real story became how Tiger struggled to excel and his former caddy Steve Williams rode the great play of Adam Scott to another career win.
I should use the word “rode” lightly. We cannot discount Williams’ role in all of this. He very easily could’ve been the difference. Known for his great green-reading abilities, he may have been the missing link that got Scott over the hump.
Still, the thing that will be talked about in the next week is Williams’ comments.
Adam Scott had a great week of golf. Steve Williams had tons of fun caddying for him. But this weekend could not have been the best win or greatest week of Williams’ life. There’s just no way.