Tiger Woods’ ex-caddie revisits his biggest gaffe: ‘I’ve never been so nervous’

Ed’s Note: Of Tiger Woods’ endless accomplishments, his fabled Tiger Slam of 2000-01 — when he simultaneously held all four major titles — ranks close, if not at the top. After all, so many things have to go right for a player to win a major, let alone four in a row, while so many things can also go wrong on a potential path to greatness. Bad back. Cold shooter. Another caddy mistake. Ask Steve Williamswho was Woods’ caddy during that historic four-for-four run.

Williams is an inexhaustible legend. He didn’t make many mistakes on the job, but he did make at least one—and it was a big one. It came in the second round of the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach, which Woods withdrew from on Saturday due to bad weather. We get the action on Friday night, as told by Kevin Cook in his new book, The Tiger Slam, which captures the full extent of Woods’ streak in fascinating and colorful detail. You can get a copy here.

The following excerpt was excerpted with permission from “The Tiger Slam: The Inside Story of the Greatest Golf Ever Played,” Avid Reader Press © 2024 by Kevin Cook

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Woods spent part of Friday night practicing putting the carpet in his room at the Lodge at Pebble Beach. Overslept since midnight, he awoke early Saturday to meet his coach, Butch Harmon, and Williams at the range at 5:00 a.m., leaving a few balls in the room. It was sweater weather. At first, the light was worse than when the second round was called due to darkness, but it improved as the sun rose over the range.

NBC preempted its Saturday morning cartoons and Saturday’s edition of the Today show for unscheduled “bonus coverage” of golf starting at 6:30, Tiger Woods’ group time. NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol said there was no coincidence behind the schedule change. “In the age of television there have been two people who have drawn viewers beyond their sport, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan,” Ebersol said. “Tiger Woods is definitely third.” He wasn’t worried about losing viewers if the leader blew the field. Tiger’s 12-stroke victory in the 1997 Masters was (and still is) the highest golf broadcast of all time.

It would be more than a day of two peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Before setting off for what promised to be a marathon third round, he had to play Pebble’s final six holes without returning shots on the course. He and Williams met Jim Furyk, Jesper Parnevik and their caddies in the 13th set. As the players let loose with a few final practice swings, Williams reached into Tiger’s golf bag for a ball and didn’t like what he found there.

There were only three Nike Tour precisions in the bag he was carrying. Williams checked the other bags and found nothing but tees, sandwiches and a raincoat. Tiger had left three balls, half his supply, in his hotel room.

No worries, Williams told himself. Three balls would be enough to play the last six holes of the second round. It would probably leave them with two extras. Williams wasn’t too concerned when Tiger took his first drive of the morning and swung out, leaving a scuff mark on his new Nike ball and tossed the ball to a little boy in the gallery. Now they were down to two. Williams considered asking the boy to return the ball, but didn’t want to make a scene on international TV. “It wouldn’t be a good sight if Tiger Woods’ caddy took a ball away from a happy kid,” he recalled. “There would be tears.”

He kept his thoughts to himself as his player reached the tournament-leading 18th at nine under par. Then Hogan’s rattlesnake hit. After two and a half days of drilling roads, Tiger dropped a hook “halfway to Hawaii,” as he later put it. He cursed himself, “God damn you f-king prick!” An NBC microphone caught every syllable. Within minutes, viewers were calling the network to complain about his language.

The same microphone picked up Tiger’s next word. Turning to Williams, he held out his hand and said, “Ball.”

It was Williams’ worst moment. The broad-shouldered Kiwi was perhaps the strongest, strongest corpse on Earth, as well as the most famous, a distinction that went to whoever carried the Tiger’s bag. He raced dirt track cars back home in New Zealand and kept pace with the player he called “Tigah” on their frequent morning runs. Williams had laughed off the car crashes, blisters, sprained ankles and even the mayhem of chasing around the most visible player on the planet, but here was a more private concern. “I’ve never, ever been so nervous,” he recalls. “I’m standing there with my bum shaking. My backsides were absolutely buzzing. I don’t want to tell him it’s our last golf ball!”

The tiger was unable to stand there waiting. “Give me another f-king ball.”

Williams had found his way into a caddie’s nightmare. Part of his job was to check their supply of balls before each round. He had done so before the second round began, but had forgotten to check the bag before play resumed at nine that morning. Now he feared he might disqualify his player in the middle of the US Open. Tiger, who knew the Rules of Golf as well as anyone, could have told him that the situation was not necessarily so desperate. But it was complicated. The Rules of Golf allow a player who runs out of balls to borrow from another golfer, provided they are the same make and model. That clause might have saved Williams’ backside a month ago when Tiger was creating the same title so many other players used, but now it didn’t help. Only one player on the court also had a Bridgestone Nike ball. Under the rules, a player who borrows and uses a different model of ball is penalized with two strokes. Another option would have been for Williams to run to the club and buy more balls, but Tournament Accuracy was not for sale in pro shops. Or he could run to Tiger’s hotel room to grab the three balls he’d left behind, but never make it back in time to avoid a two-stroke penalty for slow play. So they were looking at two shots on one side.

The tiger knew none of this. Williams wasn’t about to tell him that if he nailed another one on the beach, he’d be four up on Pebble’s 18th hole after two bogeys and two penalty strokes. Add another penalty for using one of Furyk’s or Parnevik’s titles – now he’ll lie six. Nor would he be able to knock in a 543-yard drive from the tee to the cup for a double bogey. In that scenario, after laying six on the tee, he would have to “pick” the hole to make a 10-bogey five. Here goes most, if not all, of the biggest lead in US Open history, with Williams to blame for the biggest upset in caddy history.

He put Tiger’s driver back in the bag, quietly willing him to play more confidently with a 3-wood off the tee this time. But Tiger was determined to swing the big stick. He reached out to the driver.

“Get your f-king hand off her,” Woods said. “Give me the f-king driver!”

Williams delivered it. He watched and worried as Tiger belted the car back onto the right side of the fairway. He was lying three with a tree, the lone cypress standing in the middle of the fairway, blocking his path to the green. From there, a layup to the left was the sensible play. He can still save his 6 with a wedge and a putt that way. “But he wants to hit a big cut over the ocean,” recalled Williams, who still wouldn’t admit they were on a ball. Lips pursed, he watched his man open the face of his 3-wood and hit a long, spinning left-to-right approach that flirted with disaster to the green. As he leaned over the lifeline bunker between the beach and the last few hundred yards of the fairway, Williams felt his back relax. “My heart rate didn’t go back to normal until he got to the green and bogeyed.”

Even after dropping a shot on a birdie hole, Tiger led by six shots through two rounds. No one had ever held such a commanding lead at the midway point of a US Open. Later that morning, the field was trimmed to the top 60 regular players plus ties plus anyone else within 10 strokes of the lead. Tiger was so far ahead that the “within 10 strokes” provision didn’t help anyone. Only 17 of the 63 players who survived to play the final two rounds were within 10 shots of him.

In the third round, in what was a brutal day for scoring, Woods shot another 71 to stay at eight under and open his lead to 10. On Sunday, a closing 67 moved him to 12 under and set a cap in what was perhaps the most dominant week the game has ever seen. Woods became the first player in US Open history to finish in double figures, and his 15-stroke victory is still the largest margin of victory in major championship history.