PITCH PERFECT

Instant classic comedy-drama The Phantom Of The Open takes a big swing at the colourful life of “world’s worst golfer” Maurice Flitcroft. But as director Craig Roberts and star Mark Rylance reveal, a lot of time was spent hacking in the rough before they got the tone just right…

- JAMIE GRAHAM

the new film by actor- turned-writer/director Craig Roberts is at once a character study, a comedy-drama, a love story, a biopic and a sports movie unlike any you’ve ever seen. How could it be like anything that came before when it focuses on Maurice Flitcroft, a chain-smoking shipyard operator from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria who posed as a professional golfer to obtain a place in the 1976 British Open? What followed, all of it televised, was golden, and while it won’t be spoiled here, suffice to say that any triumph that this particular underdog experienced was not of the sort that Hollywood would recognise.

Flitcroft, here played by Mark Rylance, only took up golf in 1974, and it’s hard to say just how serious he was. Did he genuinely believe he had talent and deserved to rub shoulders with Seve Ballesteros? Or was it one big ruse in order to get on TV and perhaps cock a snook at the establishment of this elitist sport? Both the director and the star of The Phantom Of The Open believe he was sincere, but they can’t be sure.

“I think from what we’ve seen in the interviews, and speaking to his son James, there’s an innocence to his ambition – he believed that he could do anything,” smiles Roberts. “The movie that I kept mentioning in preproduction was The King Of Comedy because I just felt… you know, Rupert [Pupkin] believes he’s really funny, and that’s what’s so amazing about it. Everyone outside of him doesn’t, but he does. But also… I don’t know. Sometimes in Maurice’s interviews, I can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. He just knew how to manipulate situations. You couldn’t quite tell whether he was joking at them. It’s very interesting.”