Meet golf’s most famous folk hero: Barrow's own Maurice Flitcroft
Last updated at 14:47, Thursday, 29 July 2010
WHEN I was a kid, Maurice Flitcroft could often be seen on the Strawberry Ground rugby pitches, hacking away with his golf clubs, his faithful pet Alsatian and apprentice ball-fetcher Beau by his side.
Me and my mates would sometimes incur his wrath by daring to play football too close to where he was aiming his nine-irons, or – worse still – by picking up a few of the dog-chewed old balls he had hit from the other end of the field.
Sometimes, we’d throw them back in his direction and carry on playing footy, and once, for a laugh, we nicked a few and ran away while he shouted at us from 100 yards away, waving his club in frustration and threatening to unleash Beau.
To us, it was just a bit of harmless fun – we didn’t even know who Maurice Flitcroft was – but to the shipyard crane driver and would-be professional golfer, our juvenile antics will have been a source of great annoyance.
After all, the man who is now an inspiration to hackers the world over will have been hard at work, honing his skills in readiness for his latest assault on The Open.
It’s this single-minded pursuit for perfection on the fairways that forms the basis for Scott Murray and Simon Farnaby’s entertaining new book The Phantom Of The Open – Maurice Flitcroft The World’s Worst Golfer.
A Manchester-born adopted Barrovian, Maurice is a legend of the game, having recorded the worst score in Open history – a 49-over-par round of 121.
He is revered as a true sporting underdog after fighting the strict traditions of the Royal and Ancient club with his repeated attempts to enter golf’s most famous competition, often using comedy pseudonyms and disguises.
Maurice only discovered golf in 1974 – aged in his mid-40s – when he watched the game for the first time on his new colour TV. He was instantly hooked and just two years later he was making Open history, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
He started out by practising putts into a coffee cup turned on its side on the living room carpet of his Laurence Street, Barrow, home, using a walking stick for a putter. He soon invested in a set of mail-order clubs, borrowed an instruction manual from Barrow library, and set about trying to perfect his swing on the playing fields and beaches of Furness.
In fact, most of his practice took place practically anywhere but on an actual golf course.
He couldn’t afford the green fees at Furness, and was turned away from Barrow for ‘clothing code infringements’. He did manage the odd hole or two at Barrow by sneaking on at the crack of dawn before the first members arrived, and he’d even practise putting in the dead of night on one of the Furness greens, handily illuminated by a nearby street lamp.
Most of the time, however, he created his own fairways and greens on Parkview school playing fields, football and rugby pitches, and Sandy Gap beach. According to legend, he would also crawl out of the cabin onto the arm of the 70ft crane he operated at the yard and fearlessy smash balls into the Irish Sea.
“Everyone thought he was crazy,” recalls Trevor Kirkwood in The Phantom Of The Open.
The Barrow market stallholder and friend of the late Maurice helped with the research for the book by giving the co-authors a tour of ‘Maurice-In-Furness.’ And he hits the nail on the head really – pretty much everyone did think Maurice was a little bit mad, an eccentric and sometimes belligerent character, but also a loveable rogue.
He had a streak of genius in him too – managing to outfox the R&A blazers who tried to ban him, with made-up monikers (Gene Pacecki and James Beau Jolley to name but two) in a game of cat and mouse that went on for years.
It all started with Maurice’s performance in the Open qualifier at Formby GC in the red hot summer of 1976, a competition he had managed to enter by stretching the truth slightly in his entrance application to the R&A.
Masquerading as a professional, while dressed in a blue fisherman’s hat and crumpled Fred Perry polo shirt, Maurice shot his way into golfing folklore.
It started with a triple bogey on the first after his tee shot went all of 40 yards. He then struck a 12 at the seventh, and went on to finish in 121 shots – although he did manage to par the 14th, an achievement he was very proud of.
So began a tabloid frenzy, and a love-hate relationship with the press and the R&A – the governing body hated him and effectively banned him for life, but the press loved him, and his antics and comments made for great copy. He told the newspapers the reason for his poor chipping around the greens at Formby was his pup Beau’s tendency to catch the ball before it was allowed to land and roll while he was practising, and he signed off his first ‘press conference’ by telling the gathered journalists he’d be back next year to challenge for the title.
Quote of the day, however, actually went to Maurice’s mam who, when told of his record round of 121, said: “Does that mean he’s won?”
Whether it was schoolboy fights behind the old Waterloo Hotel in Rawlinson Street, being locked up for inciting a mutiny while on national service in Italy, or joining a touring diving troupe pretending he was of international standard, Maurice was never far away from trouble.
But while he chanced his arm and bent the rules, he was also a proud family man and worked hard to provide for wife Jean and two sons – the late Gene and his twin James, who have enjoyed similar notoriety in Barrow, capped by an appearance on an episode of TV’s Trisha entitled ‘I Hate My Twin’.
Maurice worked in a variety of jobs, including bus conductor, lorry driver for a glue firm, door-to-door shoe polish salesman and, of course, Vickers crane driver, hoisting a luxury car seat into his cabin, along with an easel on which to paint, and a bookshelf for a small library!
There are a few inaccuracies with local place names, the usual negative stereotyping about Barrow’s isolation and image, and the odd dent to civic pride (describing Furness Abbey as the National Trust’s least popular property in the country is a bit harsh, as well as inaccurate as it belongs to English Heritage) but nevertheless, this is a great read.
A true David and Goliath tale, written in a fast-paced and entertaining style, which befits the crazy life and times of an unlikely Barrow celebrity – Maurice G Flitcroft.
MATT DAVIES
First published at 13:05, Thursday, 29 July 2010
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk
I used to practice with Maurice on the Grammar pitches when I was a teenager, I even played a round with him at Dunnerholme and Barrow (where I recall a heated exchange of words with the Captain as we came off the 18th green), I actually scored better than him on both rounds , so his 121 in the open was not unexpected - Maurice had an annoying habit of taking two practice swings and waiting an age for him to hit his shot - that said he was a loveable rogue and the book sounds like a fitting tribute to a man who was definetly one of lifes eccentrics.
Have your say
In this year's open. Tiger woods's best round was 67. When Maurice went round he shot 121, which means that although Maurice never played golf properly in his life, the world's No.1 player isn't even twice as good as him! With a little more practice, he may have won
Posted by Allan Palmer on 31 July 2010 at 13:36