Tiger Woods' longtime caddie, Steve Williams, is claiming he knew nothing about the golfer's extramarital affairs.
In an interview in his native New Zealand, Williams insists he didn't know about the affairs and is upset about the reaction he has received from the news media and general public.
"It's been the most difficult time of my life, no two ways about it, because every single person believed I should know, or did know, or had something to do with it," Williams told New Zealand TV3's 60 Minutes. "I knew nothing, that's my answer. I don't have to clarify or extend that answer, I knew nothing."
Williams has been Woods' caddie for 11 years and has said the two are close friends.
"If the shoe was on someone else, I would say the same thing. It would be very difficult as a caddie not to know but I'm 100 percent telling you, I did not know and that's that," Williams said. "I'm a straight-up sort of person. If I had known something was going on, the whistle would have been blown."
Williams said in the interview that although he was angry with Woods when the affairs first became public knowledge, he has continued to be a friend to the golfer.
"Of course I'm mad at him, why would you not be?" Williams said. "I'm close with his wife and he's got two lovely children and he's let them down.
"[But] when a guy's having a tough time, it's not up to me to beat him with a stick right now," he said. "He's getting enough grilling from everybody else. When you're a true friend of somebody, that's when somebody needs your support and need you the most. That's when you don't walk away. Tiger's one of my closest friends and he needs my support right now and I'd never think of walking away.
"When I talk to him, I don't talk to him about what's happened. I talk to him about the future and about what we're going to try to accomplish and how we're going to get over it," he said.
Even Williams' wife, Kirsty, defended the caddie against public scrutiny.
"It is tough. It's hard seeing someone you love have that to deal with," Kirsty Williams said in the interview. "He's just seen as a bad guy. He was always seen as a bad guy and now they think he's even worse. People are calling for him to be fired, it's just not fair.
"Tiger and Elin are our good friends and it's hard to see them going through this and then to have the public and media [scrutiny]," she said. "You certainly learn a lot about people in these situations."