George Kimball America At LargeThe 104th US Open came and went without Tiger Woods insinuating his name on the leaderboard, but that doesn't mean the world's number one - for now - golfer didn't make plenty of noise.

Woods somewhat bitterly engaged in a daily, long-range war of words with his estranged coach Butch Harmon, and ripped into the United States Golf Association (USGA) for having "lost control of the golf course" after his final-round 76.

(Although you'd have had to be there to hear it; Tiger's assessment of the Sunday set-up at Shinnecock Hills was conspicuously absent from the transcription of his remarks which USGA flacks distributed to the media afterward.)

But Woods also became an unnecessary focal point of attention through the activities of his caddie-cum-minder, the burly New Zealander Stevie Williams, who appears to have unilaterally declared his own vigilante war on cameras. Williams is a bully, a pugnacious goon with a golf bag on his back.

Since the PGA Tour has been unable, or unwilling, to rein in this Rambo in black shorts, the USGA, which only has to deal with him once a year, was more than willing to pass the buck along to the next guy. In two weeks it will be the Royal and Ancient's turn to worry about Williams kicking newspaper photographers at Troon.

Ireland will likely be spared a visit from this scourge. Although Tiger conceded after the US Open that he would "probably" make his customary pre-British Open visit to join Mark O'Meara for some fishing (and we can probably take that to mean golf as well), Williams will likely get the week off.

When Tiger shot his course-record 67 at the European Club two years ago, it was Harry McKinney, and not Williams, on his bag. To the best of our knowledge Harry didn't use his shoe on anybody that day, and Tiger somehow survived.

Williams has had Tiger's bag for five years. He replaced Mike "Fluff" Cowan, who was fired by Woods for, among other things, becoming a bit too chummy with the press. Williams has ensured that is one issue he will never have to deal with.

Before working for Woods, Williams spent eight years as Greg Norman's caddie. He has looped for, among others, Wayne Grady, Ian Baker-Finch, and Raymond Floyd, but it wasn't until his most recent employment that his role expanded to include that of bodyguard.

At the 2002 Skins game at the Landmark Golf Club, Williams became annoyed when a camera went off just as Tiger was in the process of attempting a delicate bunker shot at the 18th. After Woods butchered the shot, Williams stormed over, seized the $7,000 camera, and chucked it into a water hazard.

Last Friday, Williams walked across the 10th tee, where Woods was about to tee off in the second round of the US Open, and tried to kick a camera out of the hands of John Roca, a veteran shutterbug for the New York Daily News with 33 years on the job. Roca, who had covered both the 1986 and 1995 Opens at Shinnecock, had made the egregious error of snapping photos of Tiger while he was taking practice swings.

And then Sunday, with Tiger on the second tee of what would be a final round of 76, Williams stormed into the gallery to seize a contraband camera. This incident happened to occur in view of network television, and USGA executive director David Fay happened to be sitting in the NBC broadcast booth. Fay ordered rules officials accompanying Tiger's group to speak to Williams, instructing him to allow tournament security to deal with such transgressions in the future.

"It doesn't help Steve, it doesn't help Tiger, it doesn't help the championship, or the caddie," Fay said on television. "Just as the professional should be dealing with golf shots, professional security should be dealing with these incidents, because something could get ugly out there."

Members of the gallery, of course, weren't supposed to even have cameras, but a USGA official later said that the perpetrator in this latest incident had slipped through the elaborate security dragnet because he was an off-duty policeman who had worked as a volunteer earlier in the tournament.

This doesn't make it right, but it does illustrate Fay's point about something getting ugly. Do you suppose for a moment Williams would have been so brave had he known that the guy he was strong-arming was authorised to carry a gun?

And had a scuffle ensued - as surely one will one of these days - it won't be Williams or his victim who winds up in the hospital. It will be some innocent bystander.

None of the aforementioned incidents directly occurred on the US PGA Tour's watch. The Skins game was an "unofficial" event, and the US Open is run by the USGA folks, not the Tour itself.

But the Tour certainly has it in its purview to take steps to curb the caddie's loutish behaviour. It could, and should have, a long time ago, placed Williams on notice that further incidents would not be tolerated. By now, the caddie should have been warned, fined, and suspended - and if he were anybody else's caddie he would have been.

But, apart from a little clucking on David Fay's part, no one to our knowledge has even broached the subject with Williams. And they seem to be so intimidated by Woods that they wouldn't dare bring it up to him, at the risk of offending their biggest moneymaker.

Yes, there are rules governing cameras on the course, and guidelines exist for legitimate news outlets using them. Every pro golfer in the world has, at one time or another, been disturbed by the ill-timed clicking of a lens, but nobody else is given to using his caddie as hired muscle to settle the score. Most of his fellow caddies on the American Tour, truth be told, are as weary of Williams' antics as the rest of us.

Tiger isn't exactly blameless in all of this, either. Witnesses to Friday's incident said that Tiger nodded in Roca's direction as if to dispatch his caddie on his rogue search-and-destroy mission - even though he had yet to tee off and the "click" he heard was from another photographer's shutter, not Roca's.

Roca did not press charges ("I'm not going to do anything other than to say I was very disappointed and he was disrespectful," he said, displaying considerably more dignity than Steve Williams), but the word around the press tent was that several veteran photographers were so upset by the caddie's behaviour that they vowed to take matters into their own hands and jump Williams en masse if it happened again to one of their own.

We'd have paid to see that.