Golf has produced many legends built on brilliance. Maurice Flitcroft is the rare one built on the exact opposite.

A 46-year-old crane driver who had never played a single round of golf in his career, Flitcroft played the 1976 Open Championship by tricking The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (also known as The R&A), shot the worst score in the tournament's history, and spent the next 14 years running a one-man con job on the sport's most conservative institution.

The R&A banned him for life. He simply changed his name and came back again and again.

Flitcroft, born in Manchester in 1929, started taking golf seriously from the 1974 Piccadilly World Match Play Championship at Wentworth.

He had no clubs, no lessons, never played any single round at any golf club, but started believing that he could win The Open.

By the summer of 1976, he applied to enter Open Championship qualifying. The entry form asked him to declare himself either amateur or professional.

He couldn't tick amateur, since he belonged to no club and held no handicap. So he ticked professional instead — a category that, at the time, required no proof.

The idea was inspired by Walter Danecki, a postal worker from Milwaukee, who entered the 1965 Open Championship in the same way before shooting a two-round score of 221 during qualifying.

Nobody checked his credentials, and his entry for the qualifying rounds at Formby, ahead of the Open proper at Royal Birkdale, was accepted without question.

What happened next became one of British sport's most retold stories

Flitcroft almost missed his tee time after getting lost on the way to Formby. Then, Flitcroft, who had zero experience in actual golf, fought through the round, but the damage kept piling up.

On the par-5 seventh, he made a 12, complete with a question mark on the card. He finished with a 121, which was 49 over par and the worst score ever recorded in Open qualifying.

Some of the players around him were so upset that the R&A even refunded their entry fees. Flitcroft said he should have used his 4-wood and called it 'deadly accurate.' Instead, he had left it in the car.

"I just snapped at the 12th [hole] and accosted him," said Australian golfer Mike Cahill, per Wikipedia. "I yelled at him that this wasn't a circus and told him to get off the course."

The story made front and back pages across Britain within days. R&A secretary Keith MacKenzie wasn't amused with the stories, and Flitcroft was handed a lifetime ban from the Open.

The governing body tightened its entry rules in response, closing the loophole that had let him in, and reportedly went as far as hiring a handwriting expert to screen future applications for his forgeries.

But the ban couldn't stop him. Over the next 14 years, he tried at least five more times, using fake identities and, occasionally, a false moustache to enter the tournament.

He used aliases including Gene Pacecki (1978, 1981), Swiss professional Gerald Hoppy (1983), and Frenchman James Beau Jolley (1990).

But every attempt ended the same way. Officials recognized his game, if not always his face, and escorted him off the course.

His best showing under disguise came as Gerald Hoppy, who lasted nine holes and 63 strokes at Pleasington before being unmasked. His final attempt, as James Beau Jolley in 1990, ended after two and a half holes.

Read more at Club Golf!

Written by

Md Saife Fida