Steve Williams’ self-indulgent chirping puts the cad in caddie

He had just shot a 5-under-par 65 to win $1.4 million and his first World Golf Championship. This should have made Adam Scott, the former UNLV golfer from Australia, a fairly major story on Sunday.

Instead, his caddie became the story -- at no less a venue than Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, where they are supposed to know their golf.

Welcome back to America. Where guys who build choppers, pawn jewelry, grow bizarre facial hair and carry golf bags become TV stars.

It used to be a caddie's job consisted of handing his boss a sand wedge or a sandwich, depending on his lie or whether he was hungry. From time to time, a good caddie also would offer bits of sage advice. Such as "Yup, looks like 6-iron." Or "I don't think the heavy stuff is coming down for quite awhile" when it began to rain and the guy who signed the scorecard was flirting with the course record.

If not for the talking part, a jackass could probably do it.

Which brings us to Steve Williams. From 1999 until last month, Williams carried Tiger Woods' golf bag. This was all it took for the New Zealander to become a star. Last month, Woods fired him, which has made Williams an even bigger star -- big enough to hold a news conference after Sunday's final round and hijack one of Scott's finest moments as a golf pro.

Ask the man on the street to name three golf caddies. He'll probably say Fluff Cowan, Steve Williams and Carl Spackler. The first two were on Woods' bag before they were canned. The other was on Bishop Fred Pickering's bag in "Caddyshack" before the heavy stuff started coming down.

Woods has become such a polarizing force that he has made Williams into a sympathetic figure by handing him a pink slip, though golfers fire caddies in the manner George Steinbrenner fired managers, and Liz Taylor fired husbands.

Steve Williams is the last guy one would expect to be cast in a favorable light. For more than a decade, he did for Woods what Rocky Balboa did for the loan shark Tony Gazzo before Balboa-Creed I. He broke legs. Or at least expensive cameras.

During the 2002 Skins Game, a fan had the audacity to click the shutter when Woods was hitting a shot, so Williams took the $7,000 camera and threw it into a lake. Good thing it was only an exhibition.

Steve Williams, by most accounts, is a boorish lout. That didn't stop the gallery from chanting his name as he and Scott trudged toward the 18th green on Sunday.

The circumstances -- this being America, Tiger being Tiger, Firestone Country Club being elitist when it comes to guys with bizarre facial hair roaming its back nine -- dictated the media would approach Williams at some point. He was approached as Scott's last putt was still rolling around inside the cup, making that sweet sound.

"I just carried the clubs," Williams could have said with a nod toward Scott. "He was the one who swung them."

Instead, Williams spouted more self-indulgent nonsense than Carl Spackler while in hapless pursuit of that gopher.

"I've caddied for 33 years -- 145 wins now -- and that's the best win I've ever had," Williams said on the 18th green as if he, himself, had just posted the lowest score to win at Firestone since Woods' 11-shot win in 2000, which Scott had done.

This was akin to Alfred, the butler, taking credit for Batman apprehending The Riddler; akin to Leo Durocher, the third-base coach, taking credit for waving home Pete Rose in the 1970 All-Star Game. It also was akin to sour grapes, the kind once used to make TJ Swann, when one considers Williams was Woods' caddie for 13 majors and 16 world titles.

Gunga galunga ... gunga, gunga-lagunga. Adam Scott, Cinderella story out of nowhere, had just won the Bridgestone Invitational -- and Stevie Williams was barking like a dog, to use Carl Spackler's vernacular. Pool and a pond. Pond be good for Williams, because he was acting like scum in trying to twist Scott's victory into revenge on Woods.

When the media finally got around to talking to Scott, who played for Dwaine Knight at UNLV in 1998 and 1999, the Aussie smiled and told fibs about how he couldn't have done it without his Kiwi caddie. Some guys get it, and Steve Williams doesn't.

According to his biography, Williams gave a million dollars to a cancer ward at a children's hospital in 2008. So he's not total pond scum, although those aren't quite the words he used in describing his powerful dislike for Phil Mickelson.

A caddie who has a million dollars to give to charity is a caddie who should be thanking lucky stars, and the majesty that was Tiger Woods. Receiving total consciousness from the Dalai Lama on one's deathbed apparently isn't what it used to be, regardless of how big a hitter The Lama might have been.

So I long for yesterday, for another era in golf, for 1980.

When the only way for a caddie to cause a commotion was to toss an unwrapped Baby Ruth into the country club swimming pool.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.