Tiger Woods and Steve Williams formed a dominant player-caddie tandem on the PGA Tour, winning 13 majors in 12 years together – and the New Zealander had tricks to get Woods to play better
Tiger Woods and Steve Williams won 13 major titles together(Image: Getty Images)
Tiger Woods’ former caddie Steve Williams used to lie about how far the American was hitting the ball based on adrenaline.
Woods will not play in the 2025 season after the 15-time major champion ruptured his left Achilles while training in March. In the meantime, he has been assisting son Charlie on the course while also advancing his relationship with Vanessa Trump.
Williams has served as a caddie for several top golfers, such as Jason Day. However, he is best known for his time with Woods between 1999 and 2011, and the star was the top-ranked player in the world for much of that period with 13 major wins.
Many consider Williams’ partnership with Woods the perfect player-caddie partnership. Being a great caddie for a top player requires effective yardage judgment, but there’s also a human element; premier caddies perfectly judge a player’s mood and stress during a round.
The Kiwi ultimately had a bold strategy that he used on Woods. He often avoided telling Woods the correct yardages, assessing that the 82-time PGA Tour winner was running too hot when the adrenaline was pumping.
As a result, Williams decided to tell Woods the wrong yardage. This would balance out and ensure that Woods would strike the ball the perfect distance when adrenaline meshed with the shorter yardages he was told about.
“One thing I always noticed about Tiger when he was running a bit warm was the adrenaline he would get going,” Williams told the ‘Subpar’ podcast. “When the adrenaline was going, he would walk quicker, he would talk quicker, everything became a little bit quicker.
Tiger Woods won six of his eight Arnold Palmer Invitational titles at Bay Hill alongside caddie Steve Williams(Image: Getty Images)
“The biggest thing I did was adjust the yardages all the time. I was constantly doing that. If it was 160 and it’s a 9-iron, I’d be telling him it’s 170 or something.
“I’d be adjusting the yardages so often because he just got the adrenaline going, and the ball would just be going further and further.”
Williams remarkably revealed that during one edition of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, which Woods won eight times, he never gave the PGA Tour hero a single correct distance. Woods still went on to win.
“So I had to be extremely aware of that, and I got a very good handle on that, to the point where I can recall one round at Bay Hill, the final round of one of his victories there, I didn’t give him the correct yardage on any shot the entire round,” Williams outlined.
“Now, you’ve got the be careful on a par-3 and one guy is saying it’s 195 which I’d know is a 6-iron and I’m telling Tiger it’s only 183 so he hits the 7-iron but doesn’t hit it as hard as he should’ve! I did that so often when he got running hot and got the adrenaline going.”
Woods eventually figured out what his caddie was doing, but the 15-time major champion was not annoyed or angered by the antics: “I can’t pinpoint exactly when he asked me something about it or whatever, but he just said, ‘You know what you’re doing, just keep doing what you’re doing.’”