Steve Williams on caddying for Tiger Woods: ‘It was like I was his slave’

Steve Williams has a way with words -- just not always a good way.

Four years after making a comment about Tiger Woods that many considered to be racist, Williams seems to have chosen the wrong words when describing how it made him feel when Woods would toss his clubs to the ground, expecting his caddie to pick them up.

Williams said it made him feel “like I was his slave.”

In one portion of his new autobiography, “Out of the Rough,” Williams discusses how the fallout from Woods’ extramarital affairs affected him personally, saying that he and his family were angry that Woods’ camp refused to release a statement clearing Williams from any wrongdoing during the scandal.

“They simply wouldn’t do it because there were others in his group who knew exactly what was going on, and management felt they couldn’t single out one person as innocent,” wrote Williams, who goes on to describe himself at the time as “angry, frustrated and hung out to dry.”

Williams also writes about some of Woods’ “bad habits that upset me.” One was how the golfer would spit at a hole if he missed a putt.

But the way Williams describes another of those so-called bad habits will probably get the most attention.

“One thing that really [teed] me off 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.”

Woods won 13 major championships with Williams as his caddie. Days after being fired by Woods in 2011, Williams caddied Adam Scott to a PGA Tour victory and said in a post-tournament interview that it was “the best win of my life.”

During a caddie awards roast in Shanghai later that year, Williams said of that interview, “It was my aim to shove it right up that black [expletive].”

Williams later posted an apology on his website, and Woods went on the record saying, “Stevie’s certainly not a racist.”