by Larry Dorman
Tiger Woods has always demanded loyalty from employees and associates as a prerequisite for continued employment or association. His caddie, Steve Williams, was always the embodiment of the loyal employee, going to whatever lengths he deemed necessary to protect Woods on the golf course and off it.
And after Woods publicly announced the firing of Williams, his longtime caddie, friend and confidant, on his Web site, using the usual corporate niceties to put some positive spin on it, he might be wondering what happened to the nondisparagement clause in Williams’s contract.
This is quickly taking on the makings of a very ugly divorce.
Unhappy with the breakup, Williams fired back at Woods. On his personal Web site, after weeks of denying firing rumors that had popped up on other Web sites and on Australian television, Williams confirmed that Woods had let him go after the AT&T National tournament three weeks ago at Aronimink.
Then he wrote: “After 13 years of loyal service needless to say this came as a shock. Given the circumstances of the past 18 months working through Tiger’s scandal, a new coach and with it a major swing change and Tiger battling through injuries I am very disappointed to end our very successful partnership at this time.”
When he took to the airwaves, Williams ratcheted up the rhetoric on 3 News in New Zealand. This one may have started Woods wondering if the lawyers left the nondisclosure part out of the standard player-caddie contract, if there was a contract.
“You know, when I write my book, it’ll be the time I decide what I write,” Williams said. “It’ll just be one of those interesting chapters in the book.”
He is not talking about a yardage book or a record book, either. Woods might have been able to obviate some of this had he learned one other thing about Jack Nicklaus, whose major-championship victory record of 18 is still four ahead of Woods. He could have asked him how to fire a famous caddie.
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