Kevin Cook - Tommy’s Honour - The Extraordinary Story of Golf’s Founding Father and Son

KEVIN COOK

2pm

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

Cover

Title Page TOMMY’S HONOUR THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF GOLF’S FOUNDING FATHER AND SON KEVIN COOK

Dedication DEDICATION 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 2pm

Epigraph EPIGRAPH 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 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

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

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.