The year is 2002 and the place is the locker room toilets at the Belfry. We’ve been led back to the Ryder Cup and golf’s greatest orator is veering like a snaking putt between taste and indecency as he recalls one of his classics.
It’s about Tiger Woods and our speaker is Billy Foster. Of course it is, because there are long-held norms in this sport: if you want to hear a good yarn, you go to the caddies, and if you’re going to the caddies, you go to Foster.
‘It was 7.45am,’ he says, and he is already chuckling. It’s one of his go-to shots, this tale.
‘It’s the first morning, so Friday four-ball, and I’m on Darren Clarke’s bag. He’s with Thomas Bjorn and they’re up against Tiger and Paul Azinger at 8am.’
We’ll be coming back to Bjorn shortly, but the pressing matter is those toilets.
Billy Foster (left) and Tiger Woods (right) shared a memorable moment in the toilet together at the Belfry in 2002 and that is one of his classic stories
Foster (left) has carried the bags of the best golfers and had rows with plenty of those
‘I’ve said to Clarkie, “Right, there’s a flock of seagulls in my belly, I’m going for a Tom Kite”. I go into the locker room and see Cubby (John Burke) who works for Davis Love III. We say our “mornings” and I’m into trap one. But hold on, easy lad, no paper. So I’m off to trap two.
‘Next thing I hear metal spikes on the tiled floor and Cubby is speaking again: “Morning Tiger.” In he goes to trap one and it’s on. He doesn’t even know he has a problem yet and I’m crying at this point — I have this vision of him walking down the first like John Wayne has just got off his horse. Should I spare you some detail?’
He spares nothing, but Mail Sport will.
‘So I am walking out and I hear this little sigh. Oh, he knows now that he’s in trouble. And it’s six minutes until he’s on the tee. Oh Tiger. But I can’t do it to him, so I roll up some paper, get down on my knees, and present it to him under the door.
‘I was the hand of god to him in that moment. “You’ll probably need this”. He grabs at it and then as I’m halfway through the door, I just say, “Europe, one up”, and walk out.
‘He came out with the biggest smile. “Billy Foster, I owe you”. I caddied for him at the Presidents Cup in 2005 — I swear that’s why I got the job. Not because I’m a good caddie but because I was the s***house saviour.’
This son of Yorkshire knows his way around a field better than almost anyone and the same could be said for his navigation of a story.
He’s been in the looping game for more than 40 years, which is best appreciated by a few of his numbers: more than 1,200 tournaments and 60,000 miles walked, which would equate to more than two laps of the planet.
At the age of 57, the legendary Foster has caddied at more than 1,200 tournaments
Foster finally won his first major as a caddy with Matt Fitzpatrick (right) at the U.S. Open in 2022
At the age of 57, he’s carried bags and had rows with the best of them, from Woods, Seve Ballesteros, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Clarke and Bjorn to Matt Fitzpatrick in the current day.
‘Psychopaths on spikes,’ he says.
We’ve caught him at that time of year when only one tournament matters.
‘I first went to the Open in 1975 as a nine-year-old,’ he says. ‘That was my summer holiday as a kid and I’ve caddied every Open since 1984. The Open makes every other tournament in the world feel like you’re playing in a monthly medal. But it’s given me some bad memories. Bloody daggers in my heart.’
He’ll be there at Hoylake with Fitzpatrick, the marvellous Sheffield lad who finally lifted the ‘gorilla’ off Foster’s back when he won the US Open last year. Until then, Foster’s career had been a riotous compendium of stories and 45 wins worldwide, but never a major, and none of the big four had delivered so many of those ‘daggers’ as the Open.
‘Bloody hell, 20 years,’ he says, and it’s the Bjorn story. Sandwich, Kent, 2003. Two up with three to play and one of the most infamous capitulations the tournament has ever known.
‘I thought about what happened every day for six months,’ he says.
‘I’d been out on dawn patrol that Sunday morning, looking at the pin positions. I got to the 16th, a par three, and in my yardage book there is just a big cross in the middle of the green, because six foot right of the pin there’s a graveyard of no hope — it rolls straight into a bunker. You have half of Kent to the left. Play left.
‘We finish 15 and Thomas sees a scoreboard. “Three shots”, he says, and I’m like, ‘Don’t go there, Thomas, shut up you t***”. Of course he gets to the tee and sets one off straight for the flag and I’m already saying, “No, no, no” as it leaves his club. Bunker. Three shots to get out.
Foster went for a swim while caddying for Darren Clarke as Europe previously retained the Ryder Cup
When Foster met Fitzpatrick he claimed he aimed to become the World No 1 one day
‘He then bogeys 17 and loses by one. But I don’t just think about 16. I remember the 17th in the first round. He left a shot in the bunker, hits the sand in anger, and after finishing up, he says, “Can you believe I made double there?” I said, “You didn’t, you made eight — you hit the sand, two-shot penalty.
‘Walking from the course on Sunday, all I can hear is the announcement, “The winner of the gold medal is Ben Curtis”. I’m thinking, “Who the f*** is Ben Curtis?” One of those moments etched in your soul until you die.’
He can laugh about it now and so can Bjorn. Just about.
‘In 1997, I was with Clarkie. Troon. He was just off the lead in the final round and shanked on to the beach on the second. Didn’t happen for him. Same again in 2001 — he was third.
‘Then we were close with Westy. What a player — got to world No 1 putting like Edward Scissorhands. Could’ve won three or four majors. I thought 2009 was our year. He played well and was unfortunate with a bounce on 15. Finished third. I remember all those shots.’
He can and vividly so, right across the decades — clubs, yardages, the wind speed, the urges upon impact to laugh, cry or say something inappropriate.
There can be a reflex to separate the achievements of the golfer and the guy carrying his bag, but that wildly undersells the role of the other man between the ropes. ‘You’re a psychologist, a punchbag, all sorts,’ says Foster.
When the player suffers a gut punch, so does the man next to him. ‘It’s what made that win with Fitzy at the US Open so special,’ he says. ‘I just felt all those bad memories float into the sky. Pure relief.
‘He’s most professional man I’ve worked with, Fitzy. Our first meeting he was 45 or 46 in the world and he said he wanted to be world No 1. I nearly choked. I thought top 20 would be brilliant.
‘F****** hell. I take my hat off to him. He gets the best out of everything — always searching for 0.01 per cent.’
Foster kisses the flag on the 18th green after helping Fitzpatrick win the U.S. Open last year
He will be with Fitzpatrick again next week as the British Open gets underway at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club
While Foster speaks, the picture of a different kind of character is hanging on the wall over his shoulder. Ballesteros, one of a kind.
‘El gran senor,’ says Foster, and there are stories to tell.
‘I’d been a caddie eight years and was about to quit when we started. I was off to be an assistant club pro. No money in caddying, treated like rats.
‘Then I get asked to caddie for my boyhood hero in 1990. I kept the letter offering me the job — half of it was a b******ing before I even started, about what I wasn’t allowed to do. For a month I followed them and after that the Yorkshireman comes out.’
Across five years, they were a fine pair, until a colossal falling out at the Masters, with the mid-round rows featuring Ballesteros blaming Foster for an over-ripe banana. ‘I’m not a bloody greengrocer, Seve,’ came the response. Time was pretty much up by then.
Foster loved those days and still smirks at the occasion he deliberately gave Ballesteros the wrong yardage at the Benson & Hedges International Open in 1994 at St Mellion.
‘Only time I did it,’ he says. ‘He had a two-shot lead over Nick Faldo on the last hole and he had 200 yards over water, pin front left. Seve being Seve, he wasn’t going to play to the right, take three, win by one. He wants the flag. I just thought if he misses, bloody hell.
‘I gave him the wrong yardage on purpose, so he hit the four iron instead of five. After he’s won, I told him what I did with a nudge and a laugh. He didn’t find it funny.’
Everyone else did and they have done ever since in Foster’s after-dinner routines. Likewise his tale of Mark Calcavecchia once shooting eight on the 12th at Augusta.
‘Before his last putt he has to mark his ball but can’t find his marker,’ says Foster, who was caddying for Garcia.
‘He’s gone from contender to almost missing the cut, he’s getting madder and madder, and yanks at his pocket — rips the bloody thing clean out of his trouser. Tears them knee to hip, and this marker is rolling on the ground.
Foster is one of the icons of golf having established a brilliant reputation during his prolific career
Foster (left) later partnered the iconic Woods (right) at the Presidents Cup in 2005
‘Best tantrum I’ve seen. Bubba Watson and me are looking at each other and we’re both trying not to cry with laughter.’
After 40-plus years in the game, Foster has no immediate desire to call time on the collection of memories. If there is one minor regret, it was turning down the chance to work with a young lad in 2008, because he was on Garcia’s bag. The kid was Rory McIlroy.
‘I look back on that and call myself a bit of a t***,’ says Foster.
A near miss. But the rest has largely been a blast. A good walk spoiled? That depends who is on the bag.
