Former caddie Steve Williams is at home in New Zealand splitting logs and telling tales.
Transcript
The first thought of retirement
certainly came to me when I was driving back
from the Masters in , when I was driving back
to my rental home in the car by myself.
It was raining, and I just remember thinking you know,
that this is my time to retire.
Something came into my head, I had that thought
that I wanted to retire, and I subsequently came home
to New Zealand following that thought,
and talked to a few of my friends.
And then they said, well you can’t really retire right now,
you’re still working with Adam.
You can’t just quit in the middle of the year, and so forth,
but that’s when retirement sort of entered my head.
Like I said, driving home from the Masters.
I don’t miss caddying one bit, to be honest.
You know I’ve been out in the tour for years,
and it’s a lot of travel.
It’s a lot of time away from home,
and a lot of time spent in hotels flying around,
and not leading a normal life, as such.
So retirement is great,
and I haven’t missed the tour one bit.
Certainly enjoying being away from it.
When you’re faced with retirement
and you decide to retire, one of the things that’s great
about it is that having spent so many years
traveling to and from home,
you never actually get a lot of things done.
You sort of just keep maintaining things.
When you live on sort of a big property like we do,
there’s always lots of things that need to be done,
but you sort of only get to maintain,
and you don’t get a lot of projects done.
For me, having had the opportunity to retire,
I’m getting a lot of those things done.
A lot of those projects have started,
a lot of them are finished, and some of them
haven’t been started, but it’s been great.
There hasn’t been any downtime, if you like,
and it’s given me a bit more of a chance
to spend time with my family,
do a bit more racing than I normally do,
and then spend some time raising money for my foundation.
So, so far it’s been all positive.
I like property maintenance.
I like cutting trees, trimming trees,
trimming hedges, mowing lawns,
cutting up firewood, all that sort of things.
I love outdoor work.
I love property maintenance.
It’s something that I’ve always liked.
I like at the end of the day
when you go around mowing the lawns and everything,
and everything looks great.
I like tinkering with my race cars.
That’s something I like to do.
You know, I like a bit of fitness sort of stuff.
I like swimming and I like biking.
There’s lots to do around here where we live.
Yeah, retirement is fun, but I guess one of the things
with retirement is that some people say
you can’t retire forever.
You know maybe, yeah maybe there might be a special
young player that you think you could help
win a major championship.
At the end of the day, whether you’re a player
or whether you’re a caddie,
we all dream about winning major championships.
That’s what it all boils down to.
If there was a young guy that really sparked my interest,
and perhaps that might be something
that would drag me out of retirement.
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Tiger Woods’ Former Caddie Steve Williams on Retirement | Interview | Golf Digest
