TOMMY’S HONOUR
THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF GOLF’S
FOUNDING FATHER AND SON

KEVIN COOK

DEDICATION

2pm

EPIGRAPH

Beneath the sod poor Tommy’s laid,

Now bunkered fast for good and all;

A better golfer never played

A further or a surer ball.

A triple laurel round his brow,

The light of triumph in his eye;

He stands before us even now

As in the hour of victory.

Thrice belted knight of peerless skill,

Again we see him head the fray;

And memory loves to reckon still

The feats of Tommy in his day.

—from ‘Elegy on Tom Morris, Jr’

Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, 1876

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue: ‘Wake, Tommy’

1 Born in Scotland

2 Prestwick’s Pioneer

3 The Belt, the Ball and the Juvenile Celebrity

4 Return to St Andrews

5 Collision Course

6 Tommy to the Fore

7 Interregnum

8 The Better Ball

9 Surprises

10 Tommy and Meg

11 A Telegram

12 Winter

13 Grand Old Man

Epilogue: St Andrews Forever

Acknowledgments

Picture Credits

Plate Section

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE ‘Wake, Tommy’

THE WIND CAME off the North Sea, pushing sand and bits of straw over grass-covered dunes to the links. The wind smelled of seaweed. It hurried past the sandstone clubhouse and ran uphill to the Morris house, where it slipped under the door and stirred the embers of the previous night’s fire.

Tom Morris gave his son a mild kick on the backside. ‘Wake, Tommy.’

The boy twitched. He was thirteen and slept like a paving stone. After another kick he stretched and yawned. ‘What time is it?’

‘Tea time.’

His father, the early riser, had already rekindled the fire, boiled water and filled two cups. Tommy was stretching and rubbing his eyes as the old man put a cup and saucer in his hands. Outside, a cock crowed. Tommy sat up and sipped his black tea. It was bitter and scalding, hot enough to numb the tip of his tongue. Next came a chunk of oatcake, dropped onto the saucer as his father bustled past.

Tom Morris threw open the door to the street. His reddish-brown side-whiskers caught the day’s first light. He was forty-three years old, with teeth the colour of pale ale and a dusting of white in his beard. He rubbed his callused, veiny hands together as the breeze tossed motes of ash around the room, dropping ash on the Championship Belt on the mantelpiece and on Mum’s untouchable china dishes in their rack on the wall. ‘Chilly,’ he said. ‘We’ll have stingin’ hands today. Stingin’ hands.’

Tommy smiled. His father loved to say things twice, as if repeating something could double its import. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said, amusing himself. ‘Stingin’ hands.’ His father didn’t hear a word. He’d pulled on his cap and stepped into the wind, leaving the door flapping open behind him.

‘Wait,’ Tommy said. But the old man would not wait. Tommy gulped his tea, pulled his boots and jacket on, stuck the oatcake in a pocket and clattered out the door with his father’s clubs under his arm.

His footfalls echoed down Golf Place, a double row of dark stone houses. No one else was awake. Any caddie or gentleman golfer who was up at this hour would be hung over, cradling his headache in his hands and wishing he had died at birth. The links were empty except for gulls, crows, rabbits, a mule tethered to a post by the stationmaster’s garden, and Tom Morris, now joined by his panting son.

Tom examined his six clubs – driver, spoon, two niblicks, a rut iron and a wooden putter – and selected the driver. He took a pinch of damp sand from a wooden box by the teeing-ground and built a small sand-hill – a tee – for his ball to sit on. He took his stance and waggled his club at the ball as if to threaten it. ‘Far and sure,’ he said.

Tommy had heard the old motto a thousand times. He was supposed to repeat it, to say ‘Far and sure’ before the first swing, just as golfers had done on this spot for centuries. He was tempted to try something new, to blurt ‘Long and strong’, or ‘High and mighty!’ But he held back. His father might take offence, might turn into one of those stern Old Testament fathers he was starting to resemble. So Tommy mumbled ‘far’n’sher’ and watched the old man draw back the driver to start the slow, clockwork swing that all St Andrews golfers knew, laying the hickory shaft almost flat across his shoulders at the top, starting down slow as honey and then whipping the head of the club through the ball, which took off towards the white flag in the distance.

Tom squinted as he followed its flight. Nodding, he reached into his jacket for his pipe and pouch. He tapped a few tobacco leaves into the pipe’s bowl, lit a match and breathed blue smoke. Mum detested that smoke but Tommy loved it, the sweet reek of his father. Tom stood five foot seven, a bit above average for a Scotsman of his time, but in Tommy’s eyes he loomed larger. Tom Morris was the Champion Golfer of Scotland. He was the hero of St Andrews, the only man who could beat the golfing brutes of Musselburgh. He was the official keeper of these famous four miles of turf, the links of St Andrews. Beloved by all men – excepting jealous golf professionals, several red-coated gentlemen of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, and the Musselburgh brutes – he was a pious churchman who was not above joking and drinking with foul-smelling caddies. Tom Morris was all these great things and one more: he was the one golfer Tommy was dying to beat.

Not to humble him, never that, but to be more like him. Not as a rival, but more like an equal. More like a man. Tommy was nearly as tall as his father, and suspected he would soon be stronger. And the more he grew, the more he believed that a boy needed to make his own name in the world. He needed to be more than his father’s caddie.

With such thoughts in his head and the scent of tobacco in his nose, Tommy took the driver from his father’s hand. He took a pinch of sand from the box, knelt to make a sand tee for his ball and then stood tall, waving the driver back and forth. His swing was short and fast: bang! Tommy’s drives didn’t always go straight, but a few went further than his father’s. This one sailed past the other ball before it bounced near Swilcan Burn, the brook that curled past the putting-green.

Tommy was thrilled. How many lads could hit a ball so far? How many grown men could?

His father was less impressed. Long or short didn’t matter so much to Tom Morris. Position mattered. Tommy’s drive was long, but too far to the left. Tom checked his pocket-watch as he set off towards the green. A minute later he was hitting again. Without a word he took the wooden niblick from Tommy and slapped a low approach the wind could not catch. His ball cleared the burn by a safe five yards and rolled to the back of the green.

Tommy faced a harder shot. There was no easy play from the left side. The only way to stop the ball near the hole would be a high, soft pitch, the opposite of the usual approach. But no one attempted such shots with the shallow-faced clubs of the day. Tommy had tried hitting shots from flat ground with the rut iron, a lofted club made for lifting a ball out of cart or wheelbarrow ruts. He found that he could make the ball drop and stop. Not every time – you had to strike it just right or you’d foozle the shot. But when it worked, the ball came down like a snowflake.

He waggled the rut iron. His father looked surprised – Tommy liked seeing that. He drew the club back, keeping his hands high, then yanked them straight down, chopping the rut iron’s heavy head into the turf. He grunted; dirt flew.

The ball squirted along the ground, bouncing two or three times before it splished into the burn. He dropped the rut iron. Damned useless stick. He lost the hole.

His father moved to the second teeing-ground a few yards away. There was no sandbox here; you fished a bit of sand from the bottom of the hole on the first green. Tom Morris fashioned his sand tee, then pulled his driver back over his shoulder – tick – and whipped it smoothly to the ball – tock. But this ball flew low. It was a ‘scalded cat’, a near-miss that skipped along the ground. On dry days a scalded cat would run out of sight, but this one kicked up dew and stopped only 120 yards out.

Tommy took his pinch of sand from the bottom of the first hole and made a perch for his ball. His father watched him take his stance. Was he aiming for Cheape’s Bunker? No sane golfer tried to clear that crater, not without a gale at his back, and the wind was blowing across the fairway. Tom shook his head – the boy was his own worst enemy.

But Tommy had a plan, and a picture in his mind. He remembered all the rounds he had played with his father, not the friendly foursomes but the singles, one against one. They were all losses. At home the old man was kind, even tender. He tucked Tommy into bed every night and they prayed together. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. But there was no kindness on the links, where Tommy was beaten again and again, leaving him to dream of the day he would win at last. A day when he told the ball to duck into the hole and down it went. A day when he willed the ball to curve in flight and it curved. Now he used the dream to picture his next shot. Pulling the driver back with his right elbow high, he brought it down and sent his drive on a beeline for Cheape’s Bunker. In mid-flight the ball curved to the right as if it knew where to go.

Sheer willpower may have helped, but so did something more tangible: the spin Tommy had applied with a swing that went from high and away from his body to low and closer, towards his left foot. That sidespin gave the ball a gentle arc from left to right, and his drive landed safely to the right of the bunker, leaving him a clear shot to the green.

‘Well played,’ his father said.

Praise from Tom Morris! That alone made this a good day. And it might get better yet, for Tommy had a secret: he was learning to make the ball curve at will.

They played fast, as always, with Tom checking his pocket-watch. He hated spending more than two hours to play eighteen holes. As he marched down the fairway he would reach over and take a club from Tommy, who carried the clubs under his armpit. Within seconds of reaching his ball, Tom began his clockwork swing and dispatched the ball on a low, straight line. He knew every cranny of the links and always took the safe route, trusting opponents to make more mistakes than he did.

Tommy played a bolder game. He was strong – the only boy his age in town who could topple a full-grown cow, not that his father would allow mischief like cow-tipping if he knew of it. On the links, Tommy swung hard and took chances. If a high-risk shot failed, he would try again. And again. He was more than fearless. He was a joyful golfer, a boy who could laugh at a terrible shot and swing harder at the next.

His ball had found a level lie near Cheape’s Bunker. The ball was a dull white gutty, made of gutta percha, the sap of a gum tree in Malaysia, a far corner of Queen Victoria’s vast empire. Hard as rock, it made a loud click at impact, like a billiard ball hitting another. This one clicked and climbed like a rocket as he slammed it towards the putting-green. With a chip and a putt, he won the second hole. The match was even, one hole apiece. This was match play, the usual way of keeping score. Total strokes didn’t matter; each hole was a separate contest, and whoever won the most holes won the day.

They halved the next two as the wind picked up, humming in their ears. Neither golfer spoke much. Tommy won the fifth hole when his father left a three-pace putt a yard short. Everyone knew how Tom Morris struggled with short putts. ‘You’d be a fine putter, father,’ Tommy needled, ‘if the hole was always a yard closer.’

Tom smiled. The boy had spirit. But the boy was a long way from winning the day. In fact this was golf the way Tom liked it. Out-driven and outplayed for five holes, he was only one behind with miles to go.

Clouds turned red as the sun climbed over the sea. When a low cloud began drizzling, Tommy reached into a jacket pocket where he kept a lump of pine tar to aid his grip. He found the tar as well as a slick, blackened oatcake; the breakfast he had stuck in the wrong pocket. He tossed the oatcake over his shoulder for the crows to gag on.

At the sixth hole, called Heathery due to its rough, weedy putting-green, both players lay two and had thoughts of chipping in for three. Tommy often joked that this green was more brown than green. In spots you could see bits of the seashells that gave the hole its traditional name, Hole o’ Shell. On a windless day you could hear shells crunch under your boots. Putts didn’t roll here, they bounced. Tom had no trouble bump-and-running his way to a four, while Tommy two-putted for a frustrating five, the same five any club man could make with four gouty swings and a lucky putt.

The High Hole, the seventh, was where Tom loved to tell of the Great Storm of 1860. Waving his arm towards the beach, he re-launched the tale of Captain Maitland-Dougall, recalling the day when the captain stood poised to compete for the medals of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club. But a tempest rose up! Winds and five-yard waves capsized a ship in the bay. Ten men dragged the town’s lifeboat across the links to the raging surf, but who would lead them? Captain Maitland-Dougall! Dropping his clubs, he left his fellow golfers behind and leaped into the lifeboat, taking the stroke oar himself. A dozen sailors were saved that day, many pulled from the maelstrom by Maitland-Dougall himself. When the captain had rowed the lifeboat safely to shore, he returned to the links. Wet as an otter, his arms like lead weights, he took up his clubs and won the gold medal with a score of 112.

Finishing his story, Tom Morris looked as proud as if his own niblick were the stroke oar.

Tommy was, as ever, amazed by this story. A hundred and twelve? That was worse than straight sixes. He was no admirer of his father’s bosses, the club men in their red golfing jackets, calling themselves Captain this and Major that, wagering tens and scores of pounds and then swinging and missing. ‘God save Captain Maitland-Dougall,’ he said, still shaking his head at a winning score of 112.

Tommy won the High Hole but lost the eighth when his father rolled in a putt for a deuce (and tipped his cap). The eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh holes were where the course reached the top of its shepherd’s-crook shape and doubled back towards town. On the evil eleventh, Tommy’s tee shot met a sudden gust of wind, struck the face of the Hill Bunker and slid straight down. No one could save three from there. But his father took three putts (and Tommy tipped his cap). They halved the hole. The boy was still two holes ahead.

From the twelfth teeing-ground they could see the town’s old towers. To the west was the Eden Brae, a grassy slope that leaned down to the mudflats where the River Eden fed into the sea. Fisher-women toiled down there, moving through acres of mussel-scalps a hundred yards out, gathering mussels for their men to use as bait. A wrack-picker shoved a wheelbarrow along the sand, heading for the corner where the tides brought great tangles of wrack – seaweed – that would fertilize gardens all over town. As a rule, the golfer and the wrack-picker eyed each other warily, each thinking the other a fool for doing the world’s dullest chore. But like everyone in town, this straggle-bearded wrack-gatherer knew Tom Morris. He looked up and waved.

Tom waved back. He took a deep, bracing breath of salt air and turned from the brae to the work at hand. He tossed a blade of grass to gauge the wind, then hit a modest drive, straight as a telegraph wire. It was easy to spend strokes on the way in. He spent carefully, tacking his way through the next three holes, giving Tommy every chance to stumble. Which Tommy did on the long fourteenth, hitting a spoon that rolled into Hell Bunker. Three swings later he rose from Hell with his face pink, hot with shame. His advantage cut to one hole, he was dying to make up for his blunder. And so, after a clean four on the fifteenth hole, he did exactly what his father expected him to do at the sixteenth: he took the bold line off the tee, smacking his drive up the right side along the railway tracks. It was the wrong play. You could make three that way – or seven or eight. But sometimes the wrong play works. Tommy’s drive landed 200 yards out, hopped to the right and stopped just shy of the tracks. Safe by the length of a thumb. From there he hit a spoon to two-putt distance and the hole was his. That made him dormy: leading by two holes with two to play, he could not lose. His father’s only hope was to win both of the last two holes to salvage a half, a draw.

Tommy had the honour at the Road Hole. He knocked his drive over the railway sheds, but turned his wrists a hair too soon. The ball hooked into knee-high grass. Three swings later he lay four in the greenside bunker, with Tom lying three on the edge of the green. Tommy scraped out of the sand and now lay five, forty feet from the flag. He shrugged and picked up his ball, conceding the hole. He was one hole up with one to play.

The Home Hole was short, less than 300 yards. Tom’s drive wasn’t long, but it was straight. By now there were golfers milling around the clubhouse – club members in red jackets. A few spectators, early-rising townsmen, stood near a mudpile behind the Home green. Two shovels jutted up from the mudpile, which was roped off with wood stakes and fishing line. Tom was building a new green up there, above and behind the current one. To reach it, future golfers would have to play over or through the hollow where the green was now. He had been casting about for a name for that hollow, a memorable name to fit with the old reliable Hell Bunker and Elysian Fields – ‘Shady Acre’ or ‘Slough of Despond’, something like that.

Teeing up, Tommy spat on his fingers. If he won or halved the last hole, he would carry the day. He took his stance and gave the ball a swat. His drive climbed towards the clouds over the town, blue-grey clouds split by shafts of sunlight. He lost sight of the ball, but the spectators watched it bounce thirty yards past his father’s. Tommy heard shouts and clapping as he crossed the old stone bridge over the Swilcan Burn, and he couldn’t help himself – he waved.

All this time, Tom Morris was busy playing golf. He bumped his ball to the hollow, just hard enough to send it running towards the flag. Would it fall for a deuce? There was new applause, then a groan as the ball slipped past the hole. Still, Tom’s three was a sure thing. Tommy had two strokes left to win the match.

He had thirty yards to the flag: a twenty-yard bump and ten yards of roll. But there was a patch of ankle-high grass just short of the green. He would have to clear that grass by an inch or two.

As he circled his ball, studying his lie, a pair of red-coated club men came to stand behind him. ‘I’d putt it,’ one said.

Tommy’s chip cleared the ankle-high grass, but by too much. It ran three paces past the hole. The redcoats were quiet. The whole town was quiet. Except for Tom Morris, who nodded at the ball and said, ‘You’re still away, son.’

The putt was uphill. It would go left, but if he aimed for the right-hand edge of the hole and hit it hard, it would fall. Tommy drew back his putter and rapped the ball, hard.

In it went. The redcoats whooped. Tom Morris nodded again. He walked past the hole and offered a handshake and, in that moment, Tommy was so happy that he didn’t want to blink. He didn’t want to move from this spot. He leaned back and flung his putter straight up at the sky. The club rose, turning like the wheels in God’s pocket-watch.

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