For successful sportspeople, it is often more about what they have not won rather than what they have.
Near misses and hard-luck stories are just as captivating for fans as a narrative shaped around glory.
When it comes to golf, the names of serial winners Harry Vardon and Tom Watson will forever be associated with the Open Championship. But so too will the names of Doug Sanders and Jean van de Velde.
Another man who has endured more than his fair share of Open anguish is Billy Foster, the star of our latest edition of Caddie Stories.
Speaking before he was on the bag for Matt Fitzpatrick's victory at the RBC Heritage earlier this month, Foster said: “I’ve been very fortunate to win 45 golf tournaments around the world with different players. I’ve said it on record that I’d give them all away to caddie for the winner of the Claret Jug.”
The affable Yorkshireman has caddied at 39 Opens, but he has yet to taste victory in the championship that means the most to him.
“I’d been out at 6 o’clock that morning looking at all the pin positions and I got to the 16th, and you literally had about 6 feet to the right of the hole and it was a graveyard of death. Or you had half of Kent to the left."
Billy Foster
It’s a remarkable anomaly given the calibre of golfer Foster has accompanied around the links, including three-time Open champion Seve Ballesteros, 2011 winner Darren Clarke, former world No. 1 Lee Westwood and 2022 US Open champion Fitzpatrick.
Foster – who first caddied at the Open in 1984, for Hugh Baiocchi – has been agonisingly close to glory on five occasions, most notably with Thomas Bjørn in 2003, when the Dane relinquished a two-shot lead to Ben Curtis with just three holes remaining.
Foster said: “I’d been out at 6 o’clock that morning looking at all the pin positions and I got to the 16th, and you literally had about 6 feet to the right of the hole and it was a graveyard of death. Or you had half of Kent to the left.
“When we got to the tee ... it was like, ‘Thomas, just hit it at the TV tower, middle of the green, 30-foot left of the hole, nowhere else.’
“It actually set off straight at the flag and it bounced right and went down in the bunker. It took him three to get out. [He] bogeyed the 17th and lost by a shot, and I thought about that every day for six months. It absolutely broke my heart because it was there. He had the Claret Jug in both his hands.”
To read more from Billy Foster on his experiences at the Open, click HERE.
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