Belgian Brilliance

Long before Thomas Detry, there was Flory Van Donck

Thomas Detry calculates his shots in meters, speaks four languages, and has traveled far and wide from his native Belgium to play golf very well.

It’s safe to say the late Flory Van Donck, another stylish Belgian golfer who stood 6 feet, 2 inches, would have been able to relate.

With a dominant Sunday performance at the WM Phoenix Open—shooting a 65 and winning by seven strokes—Detry became the first player from Belgium to win on the PGA Tour. During a final day when current World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and a former occupant of that perch, Jordan Spieth, spiced up the leaderboard, it was Detry who held steady, staying as cool as his pre-round ice bath throughout and roaring to the finish with four consecutive birdies.

“I woke up this morning early, 4 a.m., couldn’t fall back asleep,” Detry said after winning at TPC Scottsdale. “But then, deep inside me, I kind of really trusted myself. I felt like I’ve been doing a lot of really good things in the past to put myself in that position, and I felt like I was kind of ready to win. This one, nobody was going to take it away from me.”

Detry was due, having had two runner-up finishes among nine top-10s on the PGA Tour, and a playoff loss among a handful of seconds on the DP World Tour. His impressive victory was the fifth in six PGA Tour events in 2025 by an international player.

Despite his excellent play and breakthrough victory—at age 32, in his 68^th career PGA Tour start—Detry has a long way to catch up with countryman Van Donck, who died at 79 in 1992, the year before Detry was born.

To most Americans in the middle part of the 20^th century, Van Donck was an obscure name in their newspaper’s sports section. He popped up on their televisions twice on Sunday afternoons in the 1960s on “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf,” playing Jay Hebert in a 1962 show from Paris and against Dave Marr in 1964 in Belgium. Van Donck is documented by the PGA Tour with playing in seven of its events, all in the 1950s. His best finish was a tie for sixth in the 1954 All American Open outside Chicago.

Between French-born Arnaud Massy, who won The Open Championship in 1907, and a later generation including Spaniard Seve Ballesteros and German Bernhard Langer, Van Donck arguably was the finest male golfer from continental Europe.

Van Donck, whom Herbert Warren Wind once labeled “the tall, suave Belgian,” is credited with at least 60 professional victories, triumphs that made him a golf notable in Europe and filled up the back pages of his passport. Van Donck won in France, Germany and Switzerland and in England, Portugal, Italy and Uruguay.

Although the European Tour (now called the DP World Tour) wasn’t formalized until 1972, Van Donck won seven times to top the circuit’s Order of Merit in 1953, matching the record victory total of Australian Norman Von Nida in 1947.

Van Donck’s finest hour might well have come in the 1960 Canada Cup (later known as the World Cup) at Portmarnock Golf Club in Ireland. In a battle of fellow 48-year-olds, Van Donck defeated Sam Snead by two. Arnold Palmer, fresh off his U.S. Open triumph at Cherry Hills, tied for third place five strokes behind Van Donck.

Reporting from Portmarnock, Oscar Fraley of United Press International—famous for co-authoring The Untouchables—described Van Donck as “the tall handsome Belgium [sic] who tutors his nation’s royal family in the fairway arts.” Van Donck was a fixture in the World Cup, representing his country 19 times, more appearances than all but three players. He played for the last time in 1979, at 67, the oldest golfer to compete in the event.

When it comes to Open Championships held in the 1950s, Ben Hogan’s victory at Carnoustie in 1953 to complete his “Triple Crown” and Peter Thomson’s four wins (1954-55-56-58) dominate the conversation. Yet Van Donck, despite never winning, had a standout Open record in the period as well. He had eight top-10s in the decade, seven of them when he was in his 40s.

Van Donck’s run from 1955 through his last Open in 1959 resembles a Jack Nicklaus stretch two decades later: tie for fifth, second, tie for fifth, tie for fifth, tie for second. In 1959, at Muirfield, he came to the 72^nd hole needing a birdie to tie Gary Player but bogeyed to finish two behind the 23-year-old South African. If Van Donck had pulled off a victory, at 47 he would have surpassed Tom Morris Sr. (46 in 1867) as the oldest Open champion.

Had Van Donck prevailed, it’s doubtful he would have been sipping a beverage from the claret jug.

Two years ago, the Confederation of Professional Golf (CPG), an organization of national PGAs around the world, presented its Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously to Van Donck.

“My father would have been very honored with this recognition, but he was also a very humble man, so would likely have also been a bit shy about it,” his daughter, Claudine Van Donck, told the CPG website. “I remember he had many, many trophies in our attic wrapped in newspaper as he was too modest to show them.”