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The
Maurice Flitcroft
story
This
is the story of an unassuming golfing great. Maurice Flitcroft,
a British crane driver who made qualifying for The Open a lifelong
pursuit. A true maverick of the fairways, who ripped up the
rule book and put the establishment in a spin.
Maurice was the golfer who went undetected by officials at the
1976 Open championship, competing in golf’s grandest tournament
despite never having played a round in his life.
Maurice
became headline news that day, carding a round of 121, the worst
in Open history. His story didn’t end there. For the next
14 years, he would engage in a farcical game of cat-and-mouse
with Keith Mackenzie, secretary of the R&A, golf’s
governing body, and a man whose constitution appears to have
been 10% flesh, 10% blood and 80% rulebook. The humourless Mackenzie
felt humiliated by Flitcroft’s antics in 1976 and banned
him – so Maurice simply entered again and again, employing
ludicrous pseudonyms such as Gerald Hoppy, James Beau Jolly,
Count Manfred von Hofmannstal and Gene Pacecki. Usually the
denouement would feature Flitcroft being chased from the course,
but by the time that happened the battle had already been won.
Flitcroft penned his unpublished memoir, which had three working
titles: The Golfer Who Tried, The Artful Golfer, and, most deliciously,
The Phantom of the Open. It’s a hilarious, tinder-dry document
of his efforts to become Open champion – He totally, absolutely
thought he could win the Open, he was deadly serious. He put
his heart and soul into it.
By trade Maurice was a crane driver from Barrow-in-Furness,
but this did not satisfy his artistic ambitions. He turned his
hand to painting, knocking out some half-decent Picasso and
Pollock pastiches. But golf would become his true calling. Flitcroft
had fallen in love with the sport after watching the 1974 World
Match Play Championship on television. Flitcroft in 1976, successfully
applied for Open qualifying at Formby. Having got lost on the
way to the course, he arrived with no time to practise.
“My drive off the first tee was a real high-flying disappointment,”
I swung the club mightily and let fly. It was not a total disaster.
It could have gone straight up, come down and hit an official
on the head, but it didn’t, I’m glad to say. It did
sail high into the air, in a forward direction, but only for
a short distance.” The pattern of the day set, he put his
next shot into a thicket. After another 119 shots plus an argument
with an official for slow play, his Open dream was all over:
having calculated that he would need to shoot 23 the next day
to qualify, he decided to bow out gracefully. Still, Flitcroft’s
49-over-par round made him front-page news, sending his nemesis
Mackenzie into a funk of such intensity that Flitcroft found
himself immediately banned for life from all R&A courses.
Refusing to acknowledge defeat, he managed to enter again in
1984 as “Swiss professional” Gerald Hoppy, taking
63 shots over nine holes before being hauled off the course,
and again in 1990 as Gene Pacecki from the US. Stopped by an
official when three over par after two, “he couldn’t
do the accent”. Flitcroft even challenged Mackenzie to
a game at St Andrews to prove his worth, but the offer was turned
down.
The legacy of Maurice Gerald Flitcroft, who died in 2007 aged
77, cannot be tainted. In 1988, the Blythefield Country Club
in Michigan named a tournament in honour of his efforts, and
invited him over to play. His recollection of the round sums
up all that is great about the man. On the par-three 11th, prizes
were being awarded for getting close to the flag, First prize
was $50, not an easy prize to win as the elevated green was
guarded in front by two huge bunkers separated by a narrow strip
of grass. ''It was on this narrow strip that I put my tee shot.
To my surprise I was given a $10 voucher. I thought at the time
that this gesture of generosity was accorded to me because I
was the guest of honour. But on reflection it may have been
for landing my ball on the aforementioned strip, no mean achievement
as this was a much smaller target than the green.”
Maurice Flitcroft just kept on trying and that is why he's our
golfing hero.
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