Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Golf hoax that took a lot of balls
Maurice Flitcroft never lost hope on becoming one of the sport’s greats
James, though, his was never in it for ghs and took his quest for ing glory “extremely seriously”. e says: “He walked, ate and slept golf. absolutely believed he was good ugh and would win the Open one He wasn’t particularly happy about nickname they gave him. He’d say to I’m not the world’s worst golfer’. He was determined and would pracevery morning and every afternoon or shine, with his dog Beau by his . He’d often arrive back soaked after ng out golfing in a storm.”
Maurice worked at Vickers Shipyard well as a shoe polish salesman, an ice am van man and even a comedy nt diver. But it was watching the 1974 adilly World Match Play Champions on TV that changed his life. mes says: “When we could afford it,
we got a colour telly and he loved it. I think golf was one of the first things he saw on there, and that was it.”
He ordered a set of Wilson Avengers clubs, because he liked the name, and Ben Sayers golf balls, because he’d heard of him. Unable to afford membership fees of his local golf courses, Maurice would practise every day on Sandy Gap beach, a long albeit blustery expanse of sand.
He recalled: “I remember my first shot travelling a long way, but that might have had something to do with the gale-force wind that was blowing up a sandstorm around me.” Friend Trevor Kirkwood says:
“He cut a strange figure, did Maurice. He would wear a waterproof top and wellies, and stand
there for hours in rain and snow and God knows what else, whacking golf balls. I think a lot of people thought he was a madman.”
Maurice didn’t have a low enough handicap – or indeed any handicap – to enter the Open as an amateur, so wrote on his application he was a professional. It wasn’t a lie, he later wrote. “After
considerable soul searching I had in all honesty to admit that I was a professional – since it’s the money I’m after.”
Confident his hours of practise would pay off, and having paid a teenage caddy £2 to lug round his two golf clubs, he was as shocked as anyone else by his disastrous first day at the Open qualifier.
His performance was so hilariously
bad that onlookers even rumoured that Maurice was actually comic Marty Feldman playing a prank.
But in 1988 a golf club in Grand Rapids, Michigan, named a tournament after him. Organiser Buddy Whitten says: “It started as a lark, but most people can’t break 90 so they relate more to Maurice than to a touring pro.”
Maurice and wife Jean were flown over as guests. He said it was they had been out together “since their gas oven exploded”.
For years Maurice received post from around the world addressed to: Maurice Flitcroft, Golfer, England. And he remained sure he would become one of golf ’s greats.
The Phantom Of The Open is out in cinemas on November 5.