Steve Williams says Tiger Woods treated him like a slave in new book

Steve Williams, the boisterous and outspoken former caddie of Tiger Woods, has some eye-opening things to say about his former employer in Williams' upcoming new tell-all book, due out Monday. In an update to a January 2015 article appearing on stuff.co.nz, a New Zealand-based website, an excerpt of Williams' book, Extract: Out of the Rough, describes how Woods treated Williams during their 13 years together on the course.

I was adamant that some of his behaviour on the course had to change. He was well known for his bad temper and, while that wasn’t pleasant to witness, you could live with it because it ended as quickly as it started. But he had other bad habits that upset me. I wanted him to prove to me he could change his behaviour and show me – and the game of golf – more respect.

One thing that really pissed 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. The other thing that disgusted me was his habit of spitting at the hole if he missed a putt. Tiger listened to what I had to say, the air was cleared and we got on with it – his goal was to be the best player in history and my goal was to keep working as best I could to help make that happen.

If the excerpt is any indication of how the rest of the book will read, Tiger is going to come out of this looking worse than he did following former swing instructor Hank Haney's The Big Miss. However, Williams doesn't come across very noble here, either.

The obvious connection drawn from Williams' use of the word "slave" in the book is made to his comments referring to Tiger back in August 2011. While caddying for eventual-winner Adam Scott at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, Williams seemed a little too excited about the victory, acting like he personally won the event. When asked about that reaction at an award ceremony in November 2011, Williams replied, "I wanted to shove it up that black arsehole."

Call me crazy, but if you don't want to be deemed a racist, you have to chose your words a little more wisely.