Mark Stillman captained his team to a win described as ‘the biggest sporting upset since Leicester City won the Premier League’Mark ‘The Bogeyman’ Stillman returns to his 16th hole nemesis
A Beverley man nicknamed “The Bogeyman” due to his usual poor form has become a sporting world champion in crazy golf. Mark Stillman captained a three-man squad to win the World Crazy Golf Championships team event, which took place in Hastings in June.
The competition saw teams compete from across the globe. Mr Stillman, 61, says he hopes his team’s win will help inspire Harry Kane’s men to victory in this summer’s World Cup. The team is made up of Mr Stillman, Wellingborough’s Rob Webb and Brad Ames, from Tonbridge.
Dubbed “The Oliver Reed Temperance Society”, they beat competition from 35 other teams from countries the world over. These included players from the United States, Australia, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria and Ireland.
Mr Stillman, who works with people who have autism in East Yorkshire, called the win “the biggest sporting upset since Leicester City won the Premier League in 2016″. He said: “We just play for the craic. Two of us only play one tournament a year and many of the players we were up against are professionals and internationals.”
The Oliver Reed Temperance Society, Wellingborough’s Rob Webb, Beverley’s Mark Stillman and Tonbridge’s Brad Ames, won the World Crazy Golf Championships in June(Image: Mark Stillman)
The team was named as a tongue-in-cheek homage to the late, legendary hell-raising actor Oliver Reed. Mr Stillman said: “It’s called crazy golf for a reason and I try with a few others to stop it becoming too sensible. But we were more Temperance Society than Oliver Reed in the build-up to this tournament.
“I’ve been up at 5am for the past three months running 10 miles each morning and we spent two hours in the pub before the start talking to a Robert de Niro lookalike.”
Stillman has been playing in the World Crazy Golf singles tournament since 2008, and says he has forged a well-cultivated reputation as one of the worst in the world. His nickname, The Bogeyman, comes from his talent of hitting more bad shots than good.
True to form, he lived up to his nickname in the singles competition over the weekend, finishing 83rd out of 103. The Oliver Reed Temperance Society beat Sly As A Fox by three shots in the sudden-death final on Friday, June 5.
The best 16 teams from a round of 18 holes qualified for the knockout stages, which were played sudden-death over one hole. This culminated in the final on the World Championship course’s most notorious, dreaded hole: The Windmill. The team event is the only category of the World Crazy Golf Championships with no prize money reward. But “The Bogeyman”, an author and former Edinburgh Festival stand-up comedian, is thrilled with his medal and plaque – and the kudos.
“Our win will, of course, finally put to rest my crushing disappointment at being unplaced in the World Gurning Championships in Egremont in 2015,” he said.
Watch the one-hole sudden-death final on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33ioELArBMM
Anyone interested can subscribe to Mark “The Bogeyman” Stillman’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@markstillman8775
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