Working alongside Tiger Woods does not afford time to look up and smell the flowers. Woods won 13 of his 15 major titles with Steve Williams as caddie, a run the New Zealander quickly came to realise was about business rather than pleasure.

“Tiger’s only acceptance of a good week came with a win,” Williams says. “Every week with Tiger, unless he won there was just more pressure on the next one. I have never met someone for whom winning was so important, the be all and end all.

“I wish I could say I enjoyed it but when Tiger won a major championship, it was straight on to the next one. The epitome of that was when he won Pebble Beach by 15 strokes [the 2000 US Open]. One of the very next things he said to me after signing his card was: ‘Steve, you need to get your ass across the water and get all the detail from St Andrews so I can win there as well.’ That was the kind of pressure you were under. I remember sitting at the airport that night in San Francisco, thinking I should be enjoying myself but thinking all the things I needed to know about St Andrews.

“He wanted to break Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors. That was his goal. He would tick one off then move to the next one.”

Williams, 59, seeks no sympathy for the attritional nature of that environment. Far from it. He and Woods laughed and joked during a chance meeting in a Los Angeles hotel earlier this year. Earlier, Williams had been portrayed as the barking, brooding caddie by Woods’s side. “Was it unfair? Probably,” he says.

“A lot of the accusations were through jealousy but it was water off a duck’s back to me. It was a circus when Tiger was in his prime. You have to do some officiating. I was bodyguard, security, whatever you want to call it but it was all to allow Tiger to play as best he could. I was thinking about the other players as well, they should have a level playing field.”

Standing alongside Adam Scott for Masters victory in 2013 provided a sense of happiness Williams had earlier been denied. “I knew what it meant to Adam,” he says. “I knew what it meant to Australia as a sporting nation. It was awesome. There was a lot riding on that Sunday.

“When Adam won the Masters, we had a great celebration. With Tiger, that was never happening.”

Ten years on, Scott remains the only Australian to don a Green Jacket. He will have Williams on the bag again for this year’s Masters. Reflection is inevitable, including the playoff success over Ángel Cabrera which sealed Scott’s glory. Light was fading fast as Scott holed out on the second sudden death hole, the 10th, to deny his Argentinian opponent.

“If you asked Adam for the best shot he has ever hit in his life, it would be that second shot into the 10th,” says Williams. “When we were going down the fairway, it was evident this was going to be the last hole. Darkness influenced the club selection. He asked me what I thought and I said: ‘You know what, you have to take on this pin. It’s a three-quarter seven iron, try and get the ball back there.’ Adam challenged the pin position. He hit it absolutely pin high on the right.

“I was walking up to the green knowing Adam would never have had that putt before. He would never have hit it there on a Sunday. I remembered from caddying for Greg Norman that the putt broke a whole lot more than you would think. When you have caddied for as long as I have, some putts just stick in your mind.”

Scott’s inquisitive nature duly served him well. “I decided I was going to tell Adam this but he actually asked me to read the putt, which was good,” Williams says. “I didn’t have to say something he didn’t expect. I didn’t have to put doubt in his mind. He asked me if it broke a hole to the left. I said: ‘That’s not even f-ing close. It’s two and a half cups out with a bit of speed.’

“He hit it high enough and it dived into the hole. Had it missed the hole, there’s more than a good chance the Green Jacket would have been worn by someone else because it was going at quite a rate.”

Williams had sensed this was Scott’s opportunity, that his boss would have endured a “restless night’s sleep” if he had needed to return to Augusta National on Monday morning. “Ángel would have been with his mates, having a beer and a cigar,” Williams says. Scott had collapsed horribly over the closing stretch at the Open Championship the previous July. Negative thoughts were bound to linger.

“That appeared a catastrophic failure but it made a difference when he got to Augusta in 2013,” Williams insists. “He had played extremely well there for 68 holes. With a few holes to go, I didn’t see any way he wasn’t going to win it. It kind of unravelled but he knew from that situation how well he had played for 68 holes. He just had to do it for 72. It was the last piece of the puzzle.

“If there was a major championship he was destined to win, it was that Masters. He played unbelievably well in practice. Billy Foster, the caddie, was with us on one of those days and said: ‘Steve, if your man doesn’t win this week there is something wrong.’ I had to hold the reins back, he was just playing so well.

“Adam had the lowest aggregate score in majors for a three-year period around that time and won one. That just shows you how difficult these tournaments are.”

Regrets? Williams has a few. In 1990, Ray Floyd needed a four, four finish to win the Masters and found the centre of the 17th fairway. “I love Augusta. It’s one of my favourite places but it’s also where I had my biggest disappointment,” Williams says. “It’s very unusual for me but I didn’t say something I should have said.” Floyd’s choice of nine-iron approach shot made Williams instantly ponder what happened in the event of a pull. He stayed silent, Floyd did indeed tug the shot left, three-putted and lost in a playoff to Nick Faldo.

Williams had a close-up view, too, when Norman suffered a series of major heartbreaks. This forms part of the reason working for Scott in 2013 meant so much to the caddie. Unsurprisingly, Williams defends Norman over his high-profile role in the breakaway LIV Tour. “Greg’s reputation has changed, rightly or wrongly,” Williams says. “It has been tarnished, there is no two ways about it. He has got involved in something he believes in. Players aren’t made to go there, they have a choice. A lot of good players have gone there so they can’t all be wrong.”

Williams has not been on tour full time since 2019. He will work for Scott during three of this year’s four majors. Both are trying to summon the spirit of a decade ago.