Film Review: Phantom of the Open is a comedy hole-in-one

A celebration of the plucky underdog - and the feelgood movie we need right now

The Phantom of the Open: a charming, feelgood round of golf comedy

★★★★☆

A keen golfer himself, PG Wodehouse published scores of golf stories that had little to do with the sport itself, but instead focused on the delusions of the wide-eyed optimists who devoted themselves to the ‘pestilential pastime’. The Phantom of the Open (12A) is based on a true story, but Maurice Flitcroft (Mark Rylance) could have stepped from a Wodehouse story: made redundant from his job as a crane operator in 1975, Maurice took up golf with the ambition of qualifying for the British Open in the following year, during the course of which he shot a round of +49, the worst score in the history of Major golf.