Tom Morris of St Andrews, page 31
In 1890 Tom played in the Open Championship at Prestwick. Things had changed dramatically in the thirty years since it was first played on the course that he had formed with his own hands. Prestwick had now an 18-hole course as good as any, as well as a fine clubhouse sitting at the head of the links, comparable in many respects to that of The Royal and Ancient Clubhouse at St Andrews. The great swath of links land all the way to Ayr had, however, been built upon. Troon, in the other direction, by then had become a sizeable township with a fine golf course that stretched as far as the Prestwick links.
Changes had also taken place in the game itself. Mr John Ball, the outstanding amateur from Hoylake, took the laurels in the 1890 Open Championship from a field ten times the size it had been thirty years earlier when Willie Park had snatched the inaugural Challenge Belt from Tom by two strokes. It is hardly surprising that Tom was the only contestant in the 1890 field who had played in that first Open Championship thirty years earlier.
Tom did not return a card at Prestwick but he did the following year in St Andrews in 1891 when the field had more than doubled. Hugh Kirkaldy won through wind at gale force with continuous rain: but the local newspaper had more to say about Tom in his 70th year returning a card than it did about Hugh’s win. The novelty of his brother, Andrew, taking second place, two strokes behind, also detracted somewhat from Hugh Kirkaldy’s success.
A whole new generation of players was coming to the fore in St Andrews. As well as Hugh, Andrew and John Kirkaldy, there was Willie and Laurie Auchterlonie, a whole raft of Herds, Alex, David, James and Fred as well as David Ayton, David Anderson, Jack and Andrew Burns. There were others of lesser importance. The majority were club-makers or tradesmen who would come to make their living from the game. But there were also those, like Bob Kinsman, who had no trade and who made their living in the caddy ranks and, in the best tradition of their craft, were drinking men of repute. Kinsman was finally imprisoned in Cupar in July 1883 for recurring belligerence. As well as beating his wife and two neighbours, the two constables who tried to restrain him also needed medical attention.
When boys, Tom had chased these men off the Links and he did not command from them the respect with which the young men emerging from other parts of the country regarded him. The young St Andrews blades were resentful of Tom’s absolute unquestioned control. It was quite a widely held resentment. George Bruce in his Destiny and Other Poems refers to Tom as ‘The Pope’ and implies that, in every situation, Tom put the interests of The Royal and Ancient before those of the townspeople.
It is clear from Bruce’s verse that Tom was becoming marginalised from his own kind, both in the Town and on the Links, and it is equally clear that although he enjoyed centre stage wherever golf was played, he was no longer ‘one of the lads’. The photograph of the professional players assembled at the inauguration of Troon Golf Club speaks volumes. Tom and Jof are seen to be isolated in the very centre of the picture while all others appear to keep a respectful (or resentful) distance. This is hardly surprising, for Tom was on handshaking terms with the majority of the gentlemen players gathered for the event. Robert Hunter, Tom’s son-in-law’s brother, was an invited gentleman player and both he and Jof were residing in some style at Florence Cottage, Tom’s daughter’s house in Prestwick, for the duration of the event. These were not circumstances enjoyed by any other professional player of the day. His position and lifestyle in St Andrews was also not enjoyed by many and was resented by not a few.
With the benefit of over a hundred years’ hindsight it is not difficult to understand Tom’s attitude to the position that he found himself in. He appears to have been blissfully unaware of the social changes that had taken place about him. There was clearly status in pre-urbanisation Victorian society, but the relationship between master and servant, particularly in St Andrews, was an easygoing one largely based upon mutual respect. With the development of the cities and the factory system, a ‘them-and-us’ attitude grew and the expectation of privileges developed with the emergence of the managerial and professional middle classes. Tom treated everyone, irrespective of class, the same as he had always done. His easy familiarity with the upper classes was something that he had always enjoyed on the Links and it would appear to have been appreciated, at least by the older members of the Club. The younger men of the Links may have found this difficult to comprehend and may have interpreted his attitude to the gentlemen players as ingratiating and his equally casual relationship with them as condescending when he was, in fact, simply being himself.
Tom Morris was the patriarch of a successful family that had found itself middle class as the times had made it so. He was a celebrity, not through choice but through his longevity at the heart of golf, although his winning personality and open forthright friendliness also contributed. His position in the new class-conscious society was made all the more complicated by Andrew Lang’s references to him as ‘Professor Tom Morris’ and ‘Nestor of Golf’ and having eulogised him in ballad form with the preposterously pretentious Latin subtitling ‘Ecce, Senex Andreanus’. He may have been amused and delighted with the references to him in Punch and society magazines, but it alienated him from many in a township that relished its parochialism.
40 A Constant Benefactor
The sparks from George Bruce’s verse may have kindled the young blades’ resentment of Tom’s absolute authority in St Andrews and beyond, but many were nevertheless indebted to him and it was something that they never forgot. Sandy Herd in his autobiography wrote about Tom finding him his first job as a club professional. Tom, he said, would keep them all informed of tournaments and provide support and encouragement for those wishing to make a life for themselves in the game. Newly founded clubs, even in America, would contact him to find a professional for them and his recommendation was always good enough to ensure an appointment.
Sandy Herd, whose grandfather was a weaver and virtually retained as a caddy by the Whyte-Melvilles, was familiar to Tom from childhood and was a particular favourite. His father and uncles were among Tom’s closest and oldest friends and his grandfather was Tom’s first recorded foursomes partner when they played against Allan Robertson and Sandy’s brother Willie in 1842. It was Old Sandy who most frequently carried Tom’s clubs and who had seen him through his early battles on the Links before he left for Prestwick. He had travelled to all of the courses with Tom and in his later years found a place beside John Morris at the back of the workshop making golf balls. The young Sandy would be of more than mere interest to Tom and his ultimate success in winning the Open in 1902 must have given everyone in Tom’s shop much satisfaction.
Andrew Kirkaldy, or Andra’, was altogether different. His family was from the West of Fife where his father was a miner who eventually moved to St Andrews, the three young Kirkaldy brothers soon becoming involved in the golf and caddying on the Links. Tom was clearly very supportive of them. Hugh was the best player of the three and came to win the Open at St Andrews in 1891, with Andra’ runner-up and John a long way down the field.1 Hugh died at the early age of 34 after closely challenging three further Open Championships.
Andra’, however, was the character in the family and it is his name that endures. In 1879 he and Jamie Allan from Westward Ho! tied for second place behind Jamie Anderson in the Open Championship at St Andrews. In 1880, however, soon after the Open at Musselburgh, he was in Dundee carousing with some friends when they met a recruiting sergeant from the Highland Brigade and they all ‘took the Queen’s shilling’ and enlisted in the Army. Andra’ was a soldier for six years, serving mostly in India and in 1882, he saw action at the infamous battle of Tel-al-Kabir in the Egyptian campaign. He was wounded in the arm and leg, wounds that he was wont to curse in later years.
When Andra’s six years soldiering ended in 1887, he took the sixpence a day on offer as a Reserve and came home to St Andrews. Showing that he had lost nothing of his ability during his time away, he took sixth place in the Open Championship of 1888. In the following year at Musselburgh, he met Willie Park Jnr in a play-off and, for the next few years, was rarely out of the running. Andra’ had missed his chance while off soldiering, for he was soon overtaken by Vardon, Taylor and Braid, the triumvirate who came to dominate the game and the Open Championship for the next twenty years.
Tom found a place for Andra’ as the Professional at Winchester where he first met the young J. H. Taylor, but his rough and ready outspoken ways were not exactly suited to the club servant role, especially in England. Within six months he was back home in St Andrews living as best he could from his income as a tournament professional and exhibition player, particularly with Ben Sayers and Sandy Herd. After Taylor’s success in the 1895 Open at St Andrews, when Sandy was second and Andra’ third, Taylor put out a challenge of £50 for two rounds of the Old Course. Andra’ took him on and, much to the delight of the whole Town and Tom in particular, Andra’ won on the last green. According to Andra’s memoirs, Tom was overjoyed and said that ‘the result had taken years off him’.
Andra’ was, however, somewhat selective in his memoirs. Perhaps understandably, he failed to recall his other appearances, those in front of the magistrates. In the late 1880s and early 1890s he was fined ten shillings for fighting with a club-maker friend in South Street and again when the two got off the Dundee train, drunk and prematurely at Guardbridge, assaulted the Station Master on realising their error.
What Andra’ also failed to recount in his memoirs was the anguish he caused Tom with regard to an appointment made for him in 1895 at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club at Southampton, Long Island in the United States. A letter from Tom retained in the Club’s archives shows that Tom had brokered Andra’s appointment as professional there, that he had accepted the position and that the club had sent the money for his passage to America. Andra’, however, had meantime got caught up in a series of exhibition matches with J. H. Taylor, and reneged on the arrangement, leaving Tom somewhat embarrassed.
Andra’ spoke in glowing terms of his debt to Tom in his autobiography, and more importantly, the gruff, insensitive Andra’ took it upon himself to express gratitude on behalf of the caddies. He related how Tom would often give a caddy with a family money in the winter when there was little work, always admonishing him that he spend it on meat and not on drink.
In 1910, Andrew Kirkaldy was appointed the first Honorary Professional of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, a position he held with distinction until his death in 1934. His portrait in oils by Sir William Hutchison hangs in the Clubhouse as a permanent memorial to an exceptional, if slightly flawed but certainly popular, St Andrews man.
Donald Blue and Archie Stump were two caddies with whom Tom was much concerned. Both were characters living in the Model Lodging House in Logies Lane and were clearly ‘a few pennies short o’ the fu’ shillin’. An old soldier, Donal’, as he was known, was always kilted and very popular with the summer visitors who would match him against Stumpy for £5, simply to laugh at their game. Tom felt very strongly about these ‘matches’ and was behind some admonishing letters in the local paper written under the pen name Dum Spiro Spero by his friend David Louden. Both Donal’ and Stumpy spent the winter months by the fire in Tom’s shop with the workmen.
Andra’, as well as Sandy Herd and others, related an enduring story of Tom’s authority on the Links, although the time and actual match vary according to the writer, but it could well have been a recurring event. When a gentleman referee in a match appealed to the crowd for order on the 1st tee and when, despite this, the crowd made a rush to the bridges to cross the Swilken Burn, he made a further despairing appeal, again to no effect, Tom shouted out ‘Stop! Did you not hear what the gentleman said?’ The crowd came to an immediate halt and order was maintained from that moment on.
Sandy Herd was one of three Open Champions who came out of Andrew Scott’s plasterer’s yard. Jack Burns was another, and he too left the Town to take an appointment as a professional in England. Jack, however, returned after a year to take up a steady job as a plate-layer on the railway line. Forever after, when asked how he was playing, he would always reply that he had never been off ‘the line’ for years. Willie Fernie was also out of the plasterer’s yard but was very different from his close friend Jack. Willie took a job at Dumfries before moving to Troon, where he became a renowned figure and participated with huge success in many tournaments and challenge matches, including winning the Open in 1883. Willie also designed golf courses in the West of Scotland as well as on the Isle of Skye and Isle of Arran.
Many more left St Andrews to travel as far afield as America and Canada at Tom’s suggestion of a professional position. All five of the Herd boys found permanent and good jobs as professionals, with James winning the US Open the first time that the event was held over 72 holes.2
James Foulis left Tom’s shop for Chicago after the members of the Rose Club and his work mates in the shop gave him a bumper dinner in the Cross Keys Hotel. Young David Honeyman left for Mexico, leaving his place on the Links with Tom and his father. Young David was a scratch player and a leading figure in the Liberal Club whose members also gave him a farewell dinner. James Ventor and James Tabor, both employed in Tom’s workshop, took up appointments in Paris and Zurich respectively. Ventor and Tabor are not local names and one has to assume that they came to the Town to learn club- and ball-making. Both were skilled players, for Ventor won the Clubmakers’ Medal in 1895 and Tabor, shortly before his departure for Zurich in 1902, was champion of the Liberal Club.
There was one born and bred St Andrean whom Tom insisted was the best and for whom a short employment in America was regretted. Fred MacKenzie was a great golfing talent. He won the ‘Telegraph Cup’, the precursor of the Scottish Amateur Championship, when he was only seventeen years old, and went on to win it three years in succession, as well as most other amateur tournaments. Fred represented Scotland against England at Hoylake when he played and beat Bernard Darwin with whom, in the process, he formed a lifelong friendship. Then, in 1902, Fred spent the summer in America for health reasons. While there, he unknowingly jeopardised his amateur status by taking sums of money for playing matches and teaching golf. Fred was unlucky because at that time The Royal and Ancient had been confronted with a problem from Hoylake that Horace Hutchinson had brought to general attention.
The redoubtable Douglas Rolland had entered for the first Amateur Championship. What was to be done about it? It had happened before when Dougie had entered a tournament at Dubbieside, Leven, after he had taken £6 as runner-up in the Open. The Innerleven Club had refused his entry even though Dougie pleaded that he was making his living as a stonemason and not as a professional golfer. He made the same point at Hoylake, and it was then that The Royal and Ancient made the enduring rule that if cash was accepted for playing golf, then the recipient was deemed henceforth to be a professional. It is interesting that when the Hoylake club declined his application, Hutchinson reported that Rolland had taken the refusal well.
Fred MacKenzie had no intention of becoming a professional. He had tasted life at the highest level of amateur golf when he represented Scotland against England and he was running a very successful family ironmonger’s business in St Andrews. Tom remonstrated on Fred’s behalf with The Royal and Ancient authorities but to no avail. The argument went that if one exception was made, hundreds would follow. Fred continued to play for another thirty years but never in competition. He was 23 years old when his golfing career came to an end but, for another thirty years, Fred Mackenzie was the player that every significant figure in the game sought out in St Andrews.
It was not only able players that benefited from Tom’s attentions. He was renowned for his encouragement of the young and aspiring, as well as to those who came to the game later in life and ‘caught the golfing bug’. Dons of the University, like Andrew Lang and Professor Tait’s visiting science colleagues, were exposed to the glare of his charm and wrote devotedly about him. Then there were also the caddies and in particular their wives and families who were the recipients of his kindness. The feckless of the caddy ranks were always guided to a generous golf bag, and Tom would take particular care that the rewards for their labours reached their homes before it was exchanged for a tipple in the pub.
Tom Morris was not only the father figure of the game, but also a constant benefactor to all those golfers who needed his help.
41 In Social Limbo
With the increasing popularity of golf and the burgeoning numbers of professional and outstanding amateur players coming through, Tom found it increasingly difficult to keep a foot in every camp. Although he championed the caddies and encouraged every emerging young player, it was particularly difficult for him in a township where not a few were of the opinion that he behaved above his station and that he and his family had been too quick in forgetting their origins. Tom, they said, ‘was little more than a caddy, though he would like you to forget it’.
The townspeople’s perception of Tom is perhaps understandable when one reflects on the extent to which he was ‘adopted’ as a friend by the families of The Royal and Ancient members. He was also the darling of the well-to-do who came to reside in the Town, as well as the holidaymakers who clearly enjoyed his celebrity. He could be seen being driven about the Town in carriages and subsequently motorcars. He would greet gentry with familiarity and ladies solicitously, before perhaps, being taken out to tea or sharing pride of place at social functions. No presentation of prizes at the Ladies Golf Club could take place without his attendance and no charity bring-and-buy was held without his presence. He was a frequent guest of Professor and Mrs Tait in Edinburgh and the Blackwood publishing family at Strathtyrum House. When he was asked to lay out a course, or perhaps merely assess the suitability of a piece of land, he was invited as a guest and afforded the hospitality befitting a dignitary.
