Let It Be Recorded: McQuitty Never Quit

W.J. Robinson, a club pro from Kent, hit a tee shot on the 18th hole at St. Margaret’s-at-Cliffe on June 13, 1934. A cow crossed the fairway. The ball conked the cow on the head. The cow staggered 50 yards and dropped dead.

Robinson still had a better day than Guy McQuitty.

Harry Bradshaw hit a ball into a broken beer bottle at the British Open of 1949. He got conflicting rulings on whether the lie was unplayable, so he swung at the bottle. The ball flew out.

He still played better than Guy McQuitty.

Bernhard Langer’s ball wedged in the branches of a tree at the Benson and Hedges Invitational in York, England. Langer shinnied up the trunk, stood in the fork of the tree and hit the ball out. Probably used a tree-iron.

And he still did better than Guy McQuitty.

Nigel Denham was finishing the first round of the English Open at Moortown in 1974. His shot hopped past the 18th green, went up the steps into the clubhouse and came to rest in the bar. He opened a window and pitched the ball onto the green, 12 feet from the pin.

Susan Rowlands was about to putt in the 1978 Welsh girls’ championship at Abergate. A mouse ran up her pants leg. She holed the putt. The mouse ran down.

The Duke of Windsor once played a round on the Jinja course in Uganda. He was allowed to lift a ball out of a hippopotamus footprint without penalty. Course rules were fair this way, also saying: “If a ball comes to rest in dangerous proximity to a crocodile, another ball may be dropped.”

If only Guy McQuitty had a good excuse, as those golfers did. Something that interfered with him. Animals, minerals, vegetables. Anything.

But, no. He only had one real explanation for why he shot 95 in the first round of the 1986 British Open, and 87 in the second round.

He played lousy.

At least Mike Reasor had a bum shoulder when he shot 123 and 114 in the final rounds of the 1974 Tallahassee Open. Any player who made the cut there automatically qualified for the following week’s tournament. But you had to finish all four days. Reasor, who got hurt between rounds, wanted that exemption, so he kept playing.

Guy McQuitty is no quitter, but he doesn’t have to be. He is done. Boy, is he ever done. Stick a fork in him.

After it had taken him 95 strokes to finish the opening round, McQuitty came back for more. But by the first tee, he was shaking. “I was scared to stand over the ball,” he said.

The 23-year-old Englishman had carded two pars on Turnberry’s first 18 holes. The only greens he hit in regulation were plants, leaves and passing green automobiles. “I lost all concentration after awhile,” he said. “I couldn’t even visualize how to swing the club.”

There had been precedent for giving up. In 1935 at Muirfield, an unknown Scotsman opened his British Open with 7, 10, 5, 10. It took him 65 to reach the ninth cup. He took another 10 at the 11th. At the 12th, he hit into a bunker, tried four times to hit it out, then walked away.

Even while McQuitty was struggling last Thursday, a countryman named Andrew Broadway found himself at 57 after 10 holes. Broadway withdrew. But McQuitty would not. Club members back home at Exeter had financed his trip. “I couldn’t let them down,” he said, in the quote of the tournament.

He played the first nine Friday in 47, even getting a birdie on the fourth hole. That put him 37 over par for the Open.

McQuitty did not exactly draw a crowd for the back nine, but a photographer aimed a camera at him. “Want my picture?” McQuitty yelled. He ducked into a baseball catcher’s squat and covered his head with both hands, like someone who had noticed the sky falling.

He saw every inch of Turnberry. Traps, weeds, trees, creeks . . . portable washrooms, too, probably. Certainly every grain of sand. Coming down the 17th fairway, a greenskeeper, rake over his shoulder, followed a few steps behind McQuitty, not letting him out of his sight.

At the 18th, McQuitty, by that time 42 over par, approached the green. There was polite applause. He waved and smiled. Might as well have been Nicklaus at Augusta. When he rolled in a putt, a spectator asked McQuitty’s caddy: “Does that give him a par?” The caddy replied: “He’s parred the last four, actually.”

Darned if he hadn’t. McQuitty’s final four holes were 3, 4, 5, 4. He was in the groove.

Later, on the clubhouse steps, the apple-cheeked blond with the faintest mustache stood bravely and recounted his effort.

“Did you lose many balls?” he was asked.

“Oh, how many did we lose?” McQuitty said, consulting his caddy. “Twenty? Thirty?” He was laughing.

“Ever consider quitting?”

“Well,” he said, “at one point I thought, you know, ‘I wish I weren’t here. This course is beating me up.’ But that’s a silly thing to say. I just told myself, ‘Well, might as well keep going.’ ”

His total score was 182. There once was a British Open player named George Ritchie who shot 87-84--and still beat Guy McQuitty’s score by 11 shots.

Ten years ago, an Englishman named Maurice Flitcroft, a crane operator, wanted to play in the British Open. He entered the first round of the qualifying event and shot 121. Tournament officials later discovered he had never played 18 holes of golf in his life. They sent him back his entry fee.

Guy McQuitty is a professional golfer. They intend to keep his.