Matt Fitzpatrick’s US Open triumph gets ‘gorilla’ off caddie Billy Foster’s back

• Yorkshireman caddied for nearly 40 years with no major win
• Foster: I had gone so close, there was a lot of heartbreak'

It takes a lot for one as stoical as Billy Foster to admit that failure brought him to tears. But he says he was in that state - all the way from Sandwich home to Yorkshire, in fact - after Thomas Bjorn passed up the opportunity to win the 2003 Open Championship. I thought about that every day for six months," Foster said. It broke my heart."

Matt Fitzpatrick was rightly lauded for his US Open victory at Brookline, but it felt like even more goodwill was flying towards Foster. One of the most popular characters in golf had broken his duck.