GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Brian Harman won the 2023 Open Championship, becoming the latest to live out every golfer's dream of capturing the Claret Jug.
Founded in 1860, the Open Championship, known in America as the British Open, is one of the pinnacles of professional golf.
"It is an icon," said Brent Rector, Blythefield Country Club's historian. "It is the oldest of all four major championships and has been won by wonderful players over the years — some of the best players that existed decades ago, right through today.”
At this point, you might be thinking, "I thought this was a story about bad golf?"
Don't worry, it is. Brian Harman is not the person referred to in the headline of this article.
The "World's Worst Golfer" was a man from Manchester, England, by the name of Maurice G. Flitcroft.
Flitcroft was born in November 1929. He was a man of many talents — a crane operator, shoe polish salesman, ice cream man and stunt-comedy high diver, just to name a few.
Golf was not one of them.
“The way that he acted, he was serious about his bad golf," Rector said. "He just happened to be bad.”
Flitcroft never played a single round of golf in his entire life until 1976.
"The Open Championship would allow you into one of their qualifiers if you declared that you were professional," Rector said. "So Morris just declared he was a professional."
Flitcroft shot a 121. For those aren't familiar with golf, that's a terrible score. There's no way to sugarcoat it.
In fact, it's the worst qualifying round in the history of the sport.
“I think we can say, Brent and me, that might be a record that will never be broken as the highest score," said Terry Moore, former editor of Michigan Golfer Magazine.
Flitcroft was banned from ever entering again. That didn't stop him from trying.
He got clever and started using pseudonyms like Arnold Palmtree, or wearing disguises to sneak his way into the field of players.
“He's kind of like a fun-loving gate-crasher," Terry said. "He had a dream about being noticed and having fun with it. Harmless gentleman, great sense of humor.”
While this was happening across the pond, Blythefield Country Club in the Belmont community of Grand Rapids was busy revising the rules of its spring stag, where members and guests play a one-day scramble tournament.
Typically, the goal in golf is to finish with the lowest score.
“This was just the opposite," Rector said. "We just wanted to have fun and to celebrate bad golf.”
Tim Moore, the tournament chairman and Terry's brother, went on a search to find a fitting name for this new event.
“Maurice Flitcroft was a name in the Guinness Book of World Records. That's all Blythefield knew," Rector said.
So, in 1978, Blythefield introduced the Maurice G. Flitcroft Spring Stag.
“They used to give some of the highest scores bowls of goldfish, bowling balls, and the highest score always got a free golf lesson from the professional," Terry explained.
Then, in 1988, Terry had an idea to fly out Flitcroft to West Michigan so he could play in the tournament named in his honor.
Both Rector and Terry agreed that Flitcroft's round, surprisingly, wasn't atrocious.
"Somebody asked him what he felt about, you know, teeing off on the first tee," Terry recalled. "He said, 'Well, I don't know what made me more nervous — driving off the first tee in a tournament named in my honor or driving on the right side of 28th Street.'"
The rule-bending, tradition-testing Flitcroft passed away in 2007, but his legend lives on.
Scott Murray and Simon Farnaby wrote a book about Flitcroft titled Phantom of the Open. In 2021, that book turned into a feature film of the same name.
Flitcroft will be remembered as a dreamer — maybe a little too big for his own good.
In his search for fame and fortune, he certainly found himself a spot in history, immortalized in the world of golf and in West Michigan.