How refreshing it was to see Danny Willett, a normal bloke from Sheffield, gate-crash the heart of the sporting elite

Spieth, the 22-year-old golden boy of American golf, is a perfect, squeaky clean role model for that nation’s youngsters, but he also displayed signs of brattishness. It was perfect that he had to give Willett the prestigious green jacket

The Butler Cabin, where Masters golf champions are awarded the green jacket, is how I imagine the reception of a Freemason’s country club, or perhaps the office of an Ivy League president.

The room is dominated by an oak mantelpiece with the wingspan of a bald eagle, over a stone fireplace whose hearth is bricked up - any pretence of cosiness and warmth are, literally, pent up. Even the flowers, an attempt to echo the vibrant, gorgeous pink azaleas bordering the Augusta fairways outside, seem gaudy and ersatz in this setting. Propriety and rules run through golf and this is its apex in its stultifying, elitist glory.

How wonderful it was, then, in the early hours of Monday morning, to see Danny Willett, a man who would look more at home in a Sam Smith’s pub, sit in the Butler Cabin in readiness for his green jacket moment. Even more wonderful that it was Jordan Spieth, as last year’s champion, who had to give him the prestigious garment.

Spieth, the 22-year-old golden boy of American golf, is a perfect, squeaky clean role model for that nation’s youngsters, but he also displayed signs of brattishness during the tournament, and not only after his quadruple bogey collapse on the 12th hole that led to him losing a five-shot lead and eventually the title. Over the weekend, Spieth had been criticised for slow play, and on his back nine on Sunday he was also painstaking, to the point of commentator Peter Alliss’ exasperation. Spieth made heavy weather on another hole on Sunday evening, complaining to the course referee about the lie of his ball.

These signs of pressure are understandable in a sportsman at the top level, but the contrast with Willett could not be starker. As he made his way around the course, the 28-year-old from Sheffield had the casual bearing of a young dad out shopping at B&Q ahead of some weekend DIY, not someone about to clinch golf’s most coveted title.

In the clubhouse, while he waited to see whether Spieth could eat into his two-shot lead, Willett bore a laddish abandon as he checked his phone - he was not rude, but neither did he stand on ceremony. In the final scene of this memorable triumph, as Spieth stood to award the jacket to the winner, the American temporarily lost his footing, swaying a little on one leg - a Texan longhorn suddenly toppled by a Yorkshire whirlwind.

If Willett were from a privileged background, educated at a posh school in Surrey, he would still be a sporting hero. But his Yorkshire insouciance, the plucky, cool manner in which he gate-crashed the heart of America’s sporting elite, at a club that did not admit black members until 26 years ago, brings an added layer to his heroism.

Sporting success that looks effortless is, for spectators at least, the most watchable. Watching from home on Sunday night, Willett’s brother PJ added to the sense that Augusta’s perfection had a hole punched through it with his unvarnished live tweeting.

As it did with the London 2012 Olympics, when seven athletes from that county won gold medals, Yorkshire can boast that it has some of the finest sportsmen and women in this country. Lee Westwood, from Worksop, who has come close to winning a golfing major so many times, finished second. Another breakthrough talent in Augusta was Matt Fitzpatrick, who is also from Sheffield.

But - and I hope my fellow northern Englanders will forgive me for generalising about our richly diverse population, just as I can forgive southerners for their inevitable envy - this effortless approach to sport stretches across the Pennines to Lancashire. Willett’s victory reminded me of Andrew Flintoff during the 2005 Ashes: a sporting genius who is unpolished, gritty, natural, daring - everything that sport should be about.

And just as Flintoff posed for a picture in the England dressing room with a cigar, a bottle of beer and the Ashes urn, Willett’s first tweet after his victory was a photo of him celebrating with a drink. The stuffed shirts of Augusta will have hated it, but it was right and proper nonetheless.