AP

In the weeks and months that have followed Tiger Woods’ releasing of Steve Williams from his caddie duties, the New Zelander has managed to make himself look even worse than the camera-smashing, people-shushing thug that he played while toting Woods’ bag.

Williams added “blowhard” to his resume following Adam Scott’s win at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational in which Williams took an interview with CBS’ David Feherty and called the victory the best of his career. In the same period, Williams went on to say that the last two years he spent on Tiger’s loop was a waste of his time.

While Williams fell prey to some justly deserved criticism, the whole Tiger/Stevie split seemed to be over and done with after Williams was able to speak his piece in Akron.

That was until Williams shot off at the mouth again in Shanghai last week at the WGC-HSBC Champions where the annual caddies’ awards dinner.

A presumably inebriated Williams was given a tongue-in-cheek award for “Celebration of the Year,” a poke at his comments following the Bridgestone. A night that is by all accounts supposed to be a pretty laid-back affair, Williams shocked those in attendance as well as the golfing world when he said in reference to his former boss, “it was my aim to shove it right up that black arsehole.”

Another caddie in the room reported to the Daily Mail’s Derek Lawrenson, “Never have you been in a room and seen so many jaws drop at the same time. We knew he was an idiot but we didn’t know he was a racist idiot. I was standing next to a European Tour official who said, “Thank God he is not on our tour”.’

A couple of things right away. Obviously his aim was to rub the win in the face of his struggling former boss, otherwise why else would he have said it? Secondly, the comment would have made world news if he had only said, “it was my aim to shove it right up that arsehole,” but when he used a racially-related adjective, the comment reached an all-new level.

Woods has since come out and said that he and Williams have talked about the incident and Williams had apologized. Indeed, the caddie released a statement on his website that read, in part, “Players and caddies look forward to this evening all year and the spirit is always joking and fun. I now realize how my comments could be construed as racist. However I assure you that was not my intent.”

Woods acknowledged that Williams is “certainly not a racist,” but that the comment hurt him and shouldn’t have been made.

Many called for Williams’ head straight away, saying that the kind of words that Williams used had no place in the game of golf or the world in general. Freddie Couples came out and said that he would have fired Williams on the spot if he was his caddie, a sentiment shared by many others.

For Williams’ side, former employer Greg Norman said that he doesn’t believe that what Williams said was even the worst thing to be said at the dinner that night, but because of who he is and who he was talking about, it became global news.

I think we can all agree that what Williams said was dumb and in bad taste, but to say that Williams is a racist is the easy way out in this situation.

For him to be racist, it would mean that he was suppressing these feelings for the last 15 years while he was hired and paid by Woods.

The saddest thing about this whole ordeal is that it proves how poorly Williams is handling his split up from Woods.

He’s like a scorned lover in this whole thing. By winning with Scott and saying it was the best win of his career, what was his end-game? To make Tiger feel as if he didn’t do anything better?

Clearly, that wouldn’t be the case. Woods has always been that confident, borderline cocky, golfer who not only thought he could win any tournament he entered, he expected to win any tournament he entered. So, to think that winning the Bridgestone with Scott, an event Woods has won seven times, was going to do anything to force Woods lose sleep at night was misguided and childish.

Williams and Woods both know they had at least 14 better moments together.

If we look deeper into their history, it points even more to Williams feeling slighted. Woods and Williams were as close as it gets, pre-scandal. Woods’ win at the 2006 British Open was the perfect display of how much the two men really cared about one another. The comments Williams made last week were just the latest example of how he still isn’t over the split and it’s as simple as that.

For all that’s going on in Woods’ life in the post-scandal, post-winning era, he still has stuck to his script for better or worse. He expects to win every tournament he’s in (sure he does) and he doesn’t bite on provocative statements. He’s handling the split far better than Williams has, but hopefully this will be his last bout with public verbal vomit.