Tom Morris of St Andrews, page 18
Summer was being referred to as the golfing season by the end of 1871. In less than three years the number of professional events had more than doubled, exhibition matches had become public entertainment and the game a spectator sport. Press coverage of golfing events was a regular feature and prior notices of matches were posted in the sporting columns. The general public started to attend in the same way that it went to athletic contests and football matches. Golf suddenly became a topic of parlour conversation.
The game entered the Victorian home because of the social cachet associated with it. Golf was played by gentlemen of all ages. It was a game with decorum, played by men who wore jackets and ties; a caddy carried the clubs; there was little huffing and puffing and, although it required vigour, there was little or no sweat. The game was stylish, requiring skill and dexterity and it was played sociably with formality and rigid etiquette. Golf was the sort of sport that ladies could accompany their gentlemen to watch on a warm sunny summer afternoon and experience at first hand the excitement. Golf was tailor-made for the pretentiously genteel, emerging middle class of Victorian Britain.
In October 1874, under the headline, ‘The Popularity of the Game of Golf in Scotland’, a piece in The Times, Britain’s leading newspaper, gave the game the stamp of absolute respectability. The St Andrews Citizen, parochial and with a small circulation, still in its infancy and pretentious beyond its years, took delight in reproducing and poking fun at the article. The Times piece reads:
There are districts and burghs where every second inhabitant is a golfer. It is the game of the country gentry, of the busy professional man, of the bourgeoisie of flourishing centres of trade, of many of the artisans, and even of the roughs. People who have never taken a golf club in their hands have a high regard for it as a game which is eminently respectable. It is the one amusement which any ‘douse’ man may pursue, irrespective of his calling, and lose neither respect nor social consideration.
Sporting Scotland and much of England was preoccupied with the activities on the Links of St Andrews throughout the summer of 1873. The friendship and rivalry of Tommy Morris and Davie Strath first caught the public imagination with the outcome of the Open Championship at Prestwick in 1872 when Tommy won and Davie came second.
The first account of Tommy and Davie Strath on the Links was in May 1869. After Tommy and his father had suffered an ignominious defeat to David Park and Bob Ferguson in a £50-a-side match, Tommy and Davie took the Musselburgh pair on for the same sum and won handsomely. In the months that followed they beat every combination matched against them and were opposed in foursome with a variety of playing partners.
Tommy and Davie’s first head-to-head match that caught public interest was in May 1869 after the Spring Meeting of The Royal and Ancient and there was a lot of betting attached to it. Tommy won with a four-hole margin. He would never find it so easy again.
Over the five years that followed, in head-to-head matches and in foursomes with amateur or professional partners, honours were pretty even. Although Tommy was continually referred to as ‘The Champion Golfer’, there were those prepared to back Davie Strath in a ‘grand match’ where consistency, endurance and determination were as important as finesse. The young men’s close friendship, together with their competitiveness and superiority in the game, whetted the public appetite and raised the pulse of the betting men. Their matches gradually grew in importance to compare with the major prize fights of the day and were as widely reported.
‘The Great Golf Match at St Andrews’, as it was headlined in the Field of 2 August and reported in the national daily press, took place between Tommy and Davie Strath in the last week in July 1873. Played over three days and six rounds of the Course for a purse of £50 (or £100 depending upon the report), the Scotsman considered it ‘the most important golf match played since 1870 when Tom Morris encountered Willie Park over the best four greens in Scotland.’ It must have been generally perceived as such, for the Field remarked that ‘before the match commenced a large concourse of spectators had assembled on the green,’ and concluded that ‘all praise was due to Major Boothby (umpire) and others for the order they maintained.’
Davie Strath was the victor in this encounter by three holes, but such was the excitement generated that a return match for the same purse was played four weeks later. Again, Jamie Anderson carried Tommy’s clubs and Tom Kidd caddied for Davie Strath. Captain Maitland Dougal discharged the duties of umpire in front of what The Scotsman called ‘a large and fashionable assemblage.’ The Field of 30 August reported every stroke played, ‘as the match is exciting considerable interest in all parts of the kingdom, we make no apology for entering into details.’The Sportsman, one of the most widely circulated newspapers of the day amongst the gambling fraternity, went further with the details of this encounter. Tommy, it claimed, was putting up £50 to Davie’s £40 and that more than £2,000 nationwide was being bet on the outcome, £600 allegedly in Liverpool alone.
Tommy won this match by 4 holes. It was concluded on Friday and on the following Monday and Tuesday, they were out again, Tommy partnering his father in a four-round foursomes for £25 against Davie Strath and Mr Gilbert Mitchell Innes. Tommy and his father took the laurels by 13 holes in front of an ‘excited and fashionable crowd’, according to The Scotsman.
Even the Ladies’ Home Journal felt obliged to bring the game to the attention of its readers, albeit through the patriarchal and condescending pen of Henry Kingsley. His headline assumed some knowledge of events in September 1873, for it reads:
The Great St Andrews Golf Match.
There is no doubt that the great and charming game of golf is winning its way slowly and steadily. The Scotch know a good game when they find one. They found golf or goff in England when they conquered us, and they have made a speciality of it ever since. Next to a nice ecclesiastical case (an intrusive case is generally the most amusing) a Scotchman loves a game of golf. At the present moment, the Established Church, Free Kirk, United Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and, for aught we know, some of the old Scotch Roman Catholics, have got something extraneous to argue about. Young Tom Morris is playing Strath at St Andrews. The madness is not confined to Scotland; that most sober of papers, the Daily News, which has no particular connection with Scotland, has every detail of the great game wired to London, regardless of expense. The Times itself does the same. The claimant’s nose is quite pulled out of joint by these two young Scotchmen, at least in the opinion of every man who has ever seen the game of golf.
These were lucrative events for Tommy Morris and Davie Strath for, quite apart from the purse on offer, their cronies were always at hand to pass a cap among the crowd for a collection, ‘silver if you please, sir.’ Over the 1872 summer season Tommy earned in excess of £200 in prize money. It is impossible to assess what he received for foursomes matches and made in wagers, or ‘presents’, from grateful backers, but his prize money alone that year equates to over £20,000 in present day terms.
It is not surprising that neither Tommy nor Davie left St Andrews to take up professional appointments elsewhere. As early as 1869, The Field reported Tommy’s receipt of Blackheath’s offer of the position of resident professional. Tommy did not go to London but his friend Bob Kirk did; he was reported to have accepted an appointment at Stirling in 1870 but that also came to nothing. Similarly, despite the fact that the St Andrews Citizen reported in May 1871 ‘the imminent departure of Davie Strath for New York’, detailing his farewell dinner and presentation with a new set of clubs, Davie also remained in the Town. These young men may have hungered to see the big outside world, but they clearly had too much of a good thing going in St Andrews, and everywhere else that the game was played, to contemplate leaving.
Tommy was indubitably the central figure in the game. Described as ‘a tall, handsome athlete, and unmatched at all parts of the game’, he brought a new flavour to golf and introduced a new attitude to those playing it. Together with Davie Strath, he introduced a new dash to the game. Like Willie Park, he issued challenges that were posted in Bell’s Life in London and The Sportsman, but unlike Park, Tommy did not direct his challenges at any particular player. Tommy and Davie were prepared to take on anybody, any time, any place, for any stake, in singles matchplay or foursomes golf. Unsurprisingly no one rose to the challenge.2
They were both very popular and, from their photographs, somewhat dashing figures in St Andrews. Together they were instrumental in founding the St Andrews Rose Golf Club in 1868. Made up in the main of former pupils of the Madras College, the Rose Club members were young men who were socially aware and ambitious. Certainly they appeared determined to make an impression in the Town when it held its inaugural ball in January 1872, as it was on a scale hitherto unseen in the working classes of the community, surpassing any local social event that had gone before. The St Andrews press was clearly impressed with the assembly, the music and the catering. The decor of the Town Hall appears to have been spectacular with pride of place given, centre stage, to Tommy’s Championship Belt.
The word has come down through the generations that Tommy and Davie mixed with the ‘fast set’ and there is some suggestion of this in the wagers on foursomes matches with amateur partners. Then there was Tommy’s relationship with one Mr Frederick Fair.
Fred Fair was certainly of the fast set. Tommy played regularly with him throughout the summer of 1874, partnering him in foursomes against Davie Strath and various other partners, possibly Fair’s friends from London. Fair and his friends’ names appear in The Field’s reports of matches played at Blackheath and Clapham Common, usually involving one or other of the Molesworth brothers. Mr Fair, as The Times carefully worded it, ‘now or lately residing in St Andrews,’ was called as a co-respondent in a widely reported divorce case brought by Mr Thomas Gardyne of Forfar against his wife, ‘currently residing somewhere in London’.
Tommy certainly had the money to mix with this set and it is clear that it caused some resentment. The professional players from Musselburgh neither made, nor had the opportunity to make, the income earned by the St Andrews players. It was hinted in The Scotsman that the row after the September meeting at North Berwick, when Tommy was awarded the £20 first prize after the disqualification of Cosgrove, was the result of the Musselburgh players’ generally held opinion that favouritism was shown to the players from St Andrews. The Musselburgh men may have had a case, for in the press and the public’s perception, the Park brothers and Bob Ferguson played only supporting roles in the contests with the Morrises and Davie Strath, even when they won. To the general public, golf and St Andrews were synonymous, and this was anathema to the Musselburgh men.
St Andrews had long since eclipsed Musselburgh as the premier golfing venue and the Morris family was at the focal centre of golf in the Town. The Musselburgh men may have resented St Andrews and the Morrises pre-eminence in the game, but they had much to be thankful for as well. St Andrews and the Morrises had brought golf to the attention of the masses and created a public appetite for the game. The rewards may not have been evenly spread amongst those who made a living from the game, but everyone benefited from its rising popularity.
From this time on, every young man who played the game well in Musselburgh, St Andrews or anywhere else, reaped the rewards of Tommy’s flair and his father’s quiet charm; characteristics that they had somehow transferred to the game itself.
23 The Beginning of the End
The good times for Tom and Nancy were not to last. The summer bonanza of visitors to St Andrews for the golf and the sea-bathing had not even begun, when preparations were started for a match to take place over the North Berwick links in September 1875. From the outset there was widespread interest in the newspapers. Tom and Tommy Morris, father and son from St Andrews, against the brothers Willie and Mungo Park from Musselburgh, every one of them past Open Champions. It was a repeat of the previous year’s match at North Berwick, when the Park brothers had won. It was just another contest for the Morris family, but after this match nothing would ever be the same again.
Arranged for Saturday 4 September, information about the encounter was soon being extensively reported in the newspapers throughout Scotland. Even the Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow press were remarking upon the amount of betting and the current form of all four participants.
Professional golf tournaments were part of the summer entertainment of the Scottish East Coast seaside resorts. In North Berwick, the Town Council, led by Provost Brodie, together with a number of summer residents, put together an annual purse for a professional tournament that drew huge numbers of spectators and made for lively commerce for the town. The presence of Tommy Morris was mandatory and a Morris versus Park match guaranteed a bonanza.
Tommy and Davie Strath had played a tight head to head at Leven’s Dubbieside links and following the professional matches held at Burntisland the week after, the odds shifted heavily in favour of the Morrises. All four contestants in the forthcoming big North Berwick match were at Burntisland, where Tommy won comfortably from Bob Ferguson who tied with Davie Strath in second place. Tom was fourth with both Mungo and Willie Park well down the field. Afterwards, Tommy and his brother Jof took on Bob Ferguson and Willie Paxton from Musselburgh for fifteen shillings to five shillings put up by Mr Robert Clark; the Morris brothers won by 4 and 3. Throughout that summer Tommy Morris appeared invincible.
When the North Berwick Professional Tournament was played on the Thursday before to the much-discussed Morris/Park match, the odds were thrown into confusion. Tommy played badly in the first round and his father worse. Both Willie and Mungo played well. In the last round, however, Tommy found his form and beat Willie by a single stroke to win the event. This was not without controversy; Cosgrove from Musselburgh had returned a card one stroke better than Tommy which the referee refused to accept because ‘it was marked incorrectly’. Cosgrove complained bitterly and at length but his disqualification stood.
This controversy almost put paid to the eagerly awaited Parks versus Morrises match and it brought to a head the long-held animosity between Musselburgh and St Andrews. J. Campbell and R. Cosgrove from Musselburgh and W. Dunn, also from the ‘Honest Toun’, but at that time acting as professional at North Berwick, were all disqualified for incorrectly marked cards. When the referee Mr Hume, a respected solicitor, announced this, an ugly scene ensued during which Willie Park and the other Musselburgh players stated that unless Cosgrove was awarded the £7 first prize, ‘they would play no more with any of the St Andrews men’. A foursome match between Willie Park and Bob Ferguson against Tommy and Davie Strath, which was about to begin when the announcement was made, was immediately called off. As reported in The Scotsman, the Musselburgh men left the course with Willie threatening to withdraw from the ‘important’ match the next day. ‘In the event of it breaking down’, the paper suggested, ‘some other match will no doubt take its place’. The hullabaloo about the disqualification was soon put aside when Pringle and Paxton replaced Park and Ferguson on the tee and the foursome match began. But Willie Park was never likely to withdraw from a Morris match. He and Mungo had taken the money with a 3 and 2 win over the Morrises the previous year and were not likely to pass up the opportunity of a £25 pot.
On Saturday 4 September 1875 at 11 a.m., the match that had been talked about for months played off on the links at North Berwick. Tommy hit the first ball and, after the first three holes were halved, the Parks drew first blood at the 4th. With two rounds of the 9-hole course completed, however, the St Andrews pair was 4 up. After a break of an hour for lunch, the third round was played and halved. In the fourth and last round, the Parks rallied and won four holes back to stand all square with two holes to play. The St Andrews partnership of father and son took the penultimate hole and halved the last to win the match by one hole and take the £25 pot.
What followed has gone down in golfing history, as well as local folklore. It certainly must have been a most painful and sad experience for Tommy Morris and for everyone who knew him. In St Andrews that Saturday afternoon, Tommy’s wife, Margaret, died while giving birth to a stillborn child.
The newspapers gave differing accounts as to how the news was received on the links at North Berwick and the events that followed. Drama has been added to the tragedy by a multitude of scribes since, but the fullest and probably the most accurate account was given in The Scotsman on Monday, 6 September. According to this report, the match was over and the Morrises declared the winners, when a telegram was handed to Tommy,
announcing that his wife was dangerously ill and requesting that he should get back to St Andrews with all possible haste. With no train from North Berwick that would make the connection with the last Fife train from Edinburgh, the Morrises were about to set off by road when Mr Lewis, a summer resident in the town, offered to sail them across the Firth of Forth in his yacht moored in the harbour.
This offer was accepted and the craft had just cleared the harbour mouth and was hoisting sail when a messenger reached the pier with a second telegram ‘stating that Mrs Morris had given birth to a son, but that both mother and child were dead.’
The Scotsman continued:
The purport of this message being made known to a number of Tommy’s friends who had been seeing him off, they agreed, although the yacht was within easy hailing distance, to allow it to sail without acquainting those on board with the distressing news, fearing that the shock to the unhappy husband would be too great. Meanwhile rumours of what had taken place found their way to the green where the match between Park and Strath was in progress, and spreading among the groups on the Links, cast a gloom over the remainder of the play, much sympathy being everywhere expressed for Morris who had been married for scarcely a year.
