That’s Wet! a Golf blog in West Palm Beach Florida

For the love of the game?

My mum recently sent me quite a golf yarn written by The Guardian journalist Lawrence Donegan. As the story goes, Maurice Flitcroft once tried to qualify for The Open (The British Open that is) in 1976 where he posted a score of 121!

“It weren’t a fair reflection of my play,” he says. Others took a different view. Flitcroft’s round, wrote one correspondent of the era, was a blizzard of triple and quadruple bogeys “ruined by a solitary par”. — The Guardian, Lawrence Donegan

This didn’t stop Flitcroft from trying to later gain entry to The Open under other golfer’s names, a tactic he used to evade R&A officials who swore to keep him from their qualifying rounds after his first go.

“Undeterred, he entered the 1984 event under the name of Gerald Hoppy, a professional golfer from Switzerland - an affectation that lasted nine holes and 63 strokes, which was long enough for R&A officials to realise they had another Maurice Flitcroft on their hands. “Imagine their surprise when they discovered they had the actual Maurice Flitcroft on their hands,” he says, giggling.” — The Guardian, Lawrence Donegan

In fact, Flitcroft made qualifying for The Open a life long pursuit…

“In all he tried to enter five Opens, the last in 1990 under the pseudonym of Gene Paycheki - a golf pro from the US. He had a double bogey at the 1st hole in regional qualifying at Ormskirk and made bogey at the 2nd. He was about to hit his approach to the 3rd when an R&A official drove up in a cart and stopped in front of his ball. “He addressed me as Mr Flitcroft and I said, ‘No, my name is Gene Paycheki.’ But they told me they had recognised my son from another occasion when I’d run into them.” — The Guardian, Lawrence Donegan

Mr. Flitcroft, in what has to be one of the stranger golf tales I’ve heard, summed his golf passions up this way.

“Sure, I would have liked to have been famous for being good,” he says eventually. “But it’s quite good being famous for being bad. Despite what the R&A thought, I never set out to belittle them. Golf’s just a game and I tried my best. What did they need to get so uptight about?“

What does Mr. Flitcroft have to teach us about golf, regardless of our course prowess, playing speed, or swing? I like that he didn’t give up - it’s an attribute that many often laud over Tiger Woods, the game’s best player. He was always trying to improve his game. The ultimate definition of a hacker in my mind is one who is bad, knows it, and makes no effort to improve. Mr. Flitcroft doesn’t meet that definition and I rather liked that he saw it as a game, and one where he always tried to do his best - no matter the score posted…

Read the full article on Mr. Flitcroft here.