'The Bag Man': Off-Course With Tiger's Caddy

April 8, 2008 -- KUMEU, New Zealand — Sitting on his deck in his trademark sandals, shorts, tank top and baseball cap, Steve Williams is eating strawberry ice cream. Not from a bowl, a cone or a sundae dish, but straight out of the carton. He doesn't care how this looks. Doesn't care what people think. Every man has a weakness, Williams explains, and ice cream is his.

As Williams indulges in his creamy dessert, his 2-year-old son, Jett, climbs out of his high chair and walks to the narrow patch of grass in front of their home where a miniature golf club lies. The boy picks up the club and starts hacking away, smiling from ear to ear as he sprays plastic balls all over the yard. A few pelt an orange Ford Falcon in the driveway. Jett laughs. So does his dad.

"I've never shown him a thing," Williams says. "Never said a word to him about golf."

"He's picked it up from watching Tiger on television," Jett's mother, Kirsty, adds. "They'll show Tiger, and he'll see Steve's leg or something and then start yelling, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.' Then he looks at me and goes, 'Golf, golf.'"

The kid's swing is nearly flawless, eerily reminiscent of the swing Woods himself introduced to the world when he appeared on "The Mike Douglas Show" as, yes, a 2-year-old.

But perhaps more jaw-dropping than the kid's preternatural mechanics are the actions of his father. For one thing, Steve Williams is sitting still. The man who can't sit through a movie is patiently absorbing one of the finer moments of fatherhood. He isn't yelling. He isn't competing. He isn't chasing down cameramen or wearing his emotions on his logo-covered sleeve.

No, Williams is merely observing. It's a rarity in the life of the world's most famous caddie, a moment of escape from a lifelong quest to always be the best. At everything. It started when Williams was 13. Too young to drink. Too young to drive. Too young to vote. But old enough to have life figured out.

Back then, he didn't want to be a doctor, a firefighter or a rugby star. No, the confident teenager who despised school wanted to spend the rest of his life carrying someone else's golf clubs. He loved washing cars and mowing lawns, tasks that, upon completion, gave him immediate gratification. Caddying provided the same satisfaction, plus it paid a lot better and required a complex variety of subtle talents.

"I could see that the guys I caddied for did well," Williams says. "I enjoyed it more than playing. Once I decided that's what I wanted to do, I was willing to do whatever it took to be the best."

Steve Williams knew at a young age that he wanted to be the world's best caddie. He ended up with the right golfer. It took quitting school, working in a butcher shop and selling fresh mushrooms on the side of a road. It took leaving home before his 16th birthday, moving in with a taxi driver in Australia and creating many a sleepless night for his mother back in Wellington, New Zealand.

"I worried about him all the time," Kay Williams says. "I told him, 'No. Absolutely not.' But it wasn't like I could block the door. He was so focused, so driven. Once Steve's mind is made up, that's it."

And it took lying to Greg Norman about his age to get his first big break.

Meanwhile, 6,000 miles and a continent away, another hardheaded, ultrafocused young man had begun chasing his own dream. Tiger Woods was only 2 at the time, too young to know if New Zealand was a country or a town.

Fast-forward three decades and here's the now gray-haired 44-year-old Williams, standing on a perfectly manicured tee box, handing a driver to arguably the greatest golfer ever. Here he is, after swearing he'd never get close to another golfer after he and Norman split in 1989, carrying the bag of the best man at his wedding. And here's Woods, after meeting a writer who is working on a profile of his caddie, taking a playful jab at the Kiwi.

"A profile?" Tiger quips. "Good luck trying to make him sound intelligent."

While Woods is the reason Williams has become famous, his story is about more than the Tiger pictures, flags and golf bags that dominate his trophy room. It's about a hard-working, blue-collar millionaire who is just as comfortable on the back stretch of a dirt track in a late-model Mustang as he is reading putts on the 18th at Augusta National. It's about a fiercely competitive, win-at-all-costs perfectionist who takes nine hours to mow his four-acre yard because he chooses to use a push mower. And it's about a man who has become a hero in his homeland, not for carrying a famous man's golf clubs or winning a racing championship, but for an astonishing display of generosity.

The atlas says we're at the bottom of the world, in an exquisite and breathtaking country filled with snow-covered peaks and pristine, crystal-clear waters. But here at Auckland's Waikaraka Speedway, a small track just outside the city, Guns N' Roses is blasting over the PA system, spectators are running around in Levi's, and late model Corvettes and Mustangs are waiting to tame the quarter-mile dirt track. Whereas in golf the grass is manicured and the trousers and polo shirts are perfectly pressed, here the shirts are wrinkled, the jeans have holes and everything — from the cars to the ground to the people — is caked in mud. Whereas in golf excessive noise is frowned upon, here the air is polluted with the roar of some 50 352-cubic-inch engines, which not only makes conversation impossible, but sends a never-ending reverberation down your spine.

Here, Steve Williams is the star. Though his team is called "Caddyshack Racing" and a sticker on each of his two cars reads "HOOK A KID ON GOLF," Tiger is far from his mind.

"I hate when I go to a race and I'm looked at as Tiger's caddie, because here, I'm not Tiger's caddie. I'm Steve Williams, driver of the No. 21 Mustang," he says. "And a pretty damn good driver at that."

Sitting on a trailer in the back of his stall, Williams is lacing his racing boots and preparing for the inaugural New Zealand Saloon Car Championship. It's the only time he sits down. Otherwise, the man is in constant motion, walking in one direction, pacing in another. Whether or not he's carrying a bag of golf clubs over his right shoulder, the walk is the same — his left hand swings back and forth, his right hand hangs motionless. Williams is focused. He says barely a word. "He's always like this on race days," Kirsty says. "He gets nervous."