Tom Morris of St Andrews, page 34
The American was too young to gain admission to The Royal and Ancient Club; that would come later, but the morning after his arrival his grandfather took him down to Tom’s shop to be fitted out with clubs and a locker. As a St Andrean by heritage, a student in its University and a Macdonald to boot, young C.B. would be expected not only to play the game and play it well, but also to respect its rules and traditions. This he did with a fervour that would bring him notoriety in America and make him the bane of golf club locker rooms for the rest of his life.
One can only guess at Tom’s reaction to the tall, well-built young American when he walked into the shop with his grandfather in September 1873, but it would be safe to conclude that if Tom did not find him interesting then Tommy and his golfing gang certainly would.
C.B. acknowledged that the game did not inspire him immediately but that it was not long before it did. Certainly he had arrived in the Town at a time when there was something of a golfing fever about. In the early 1870s, the regular matches that young Tommy engaged in on the Links attracted huge crowds and he, together with Davie Strath, Bob Kirk and Jamie Anderson, were popular figures whose matches and golfing adventures were the talk of the Town. Not surprising then, that the powerful American would come to find a place among them and make Tom Morris’s shop his second home. Young Macdonald’s exploits on the Links with Tommy and the other young golfing blades merited mention in The Field and the newly founded Sporting Intelligence, and these he proudly recalled in his biographical reminiscences some fifty years later.
In 1876, C.B. Macdonald returned to Chicago with a classmate from the University and immediately set out to attempt to play golf on a clearing that had been the site of Camp Douglas during the Civil War. But neither the time nor the place was favourable because, in American parlance, these were ‘root, hog or die’ days in Chicago and little if any outdoor sport was played at all. His golf was restricted to his frequent visits to St Andrews, and it was not until 1892 that he created his first seven holes on the estate of Senator John Farwell at Lake Forest, Illinois. A year later, in the spring of 1893, he built the first 18-hole course in America on a stock farm at Belmont, 24 miles west of Chicago.
Doubtless Tom was impressed when C.B. related his exploits during his visit in 1895. He must have been astounded in the summer of 1900 when he reported that there were now 26 clubs in the Chicago area alone and that he himself was the first official Amateur Golf Champion of the United States of America. Tom would learn with possibly even more pleasure that Henry James Whigham had succeeded C.B. as Champion in 1896 and retained his title in 1897, for Tom had known Jim Whigham since his boyhood in Prestwick.
Whigham’s father, David Dundas Whigham, had become one of Tom’s most fervent supporters when he joined the Prestwick Club in 1860. D.D. Whigham was a lawyer who became the owner of a large and successful vintners business in Ayr. He had four sons, each becoming distinguished in different walks of life and all excellent golfers. After studying at Oxford, Henry ‘Jim’ Whigham became a journalist of repute in the US. He was wounded during his reporting of the War of Independence in Cuba and eventually became the editor of Metropolitan magazine. Tom would have been delighted but not at all surprised by Jim’s successes in America. He had long been acclaimed at Prestwick the best golfer of the Whigham brothers and had distinguished himself at St Andrews, Westward Ho! and Liverpool as well. Had Tom lived to learn, years later, that Jim Whigham married C.B. Macdonald’s daughter, he would doubtless have been amused.
Tom would also have been elated to hear from C.B. and Jim Whigham their first-hand account of Findlay Douglas’s winning of the US Amateur in 1898, for Findlay was also a St Andrean of whom much was expected. Findlay had distinguished himself on the Links of St Andrews from a very early age. From his home in Market Street, he was educated at the Madras College where he was an acclaimed scholar and athlete as well as a golfer, before going on to excel at the University as well. C. B. Macdonald had been instrumental in securing employment for Findlay in New York and introduced him to the golfing set of Long Island. The long-hitting 22-year-old quickly established a name for himself in US golf and fulfilled expectations by winning and subsequently repeatedly challenging the final for the US Amateur title. To Tom, Findlay Douglas was the model St Andrean and he was forever extolling his virtues.
There is no doubt that in 1893 C.B. Macdonald was responsible for Jim Foulis’ departure from Tom’s shop to make a new life for himself and his brother in Chicago. Appointed by C.B. as professional at his newly founded Chicago Golf Club, he won the US Open Championship in 1896 at Shinnecock Hills. In St Andrews, Tom flew a flag from outside the shop to celebrate the event and had a printed announcement of Foulis’s success in the window. His brothers followed him to Chicago and the Foulis boys and their friends played a pivotal part in founding the United States Professional Golfers Association. They were prolific in the construction of golf courses throughout the Mid-West of America and instrumental in establishing their friends from St Andrews in lucrative appointments at the golf courses they constructed. James Foulis learned the club-maker’s craft in Tom’s shop, and his father, who was Tom’s first employee, was still working there when son James made his first visit home.1
Tom did more than anyone else to help and encourage local young men to make a name for themselves in the outside world and his pleasure in their success was boundless. But the young men needed little encouragement from him after both Findlay Douglas and James Foulis returned home in 1902 to tell of their successes. Although the dapper young Findlay cut a dash in the Town in his ‘city-slicker’ attire, it was Foulis who made the greater impression with the players on the Links and the men in the club-makers’ workshops. Foulis had laid out twenty-seven of the thirty-five courses in and around Chicago, and on his home course he enjoyed the assistance of eight greenkeeping staff. His new-found wealth was obvious, but when he related the respect and the total lack of any social discrimination that he enjoyed in America, his former workmates were astonished. What had been a trickle of club-makers from St Andrews to the US became a veritable flood: others would soon follow from Elie, Carnoustie, Montrose and every other Scottish and English golfing place as well.
There was probably a little hyperbole in Findlay Douglas’s remark that by 1900 a quarter of a million Americans had seen the light and were spending over $20 million on golf annually, but it was clear that golf was booming in the United States. There was at least one golf course in every state. Robert Hunter and the Manson brothers had long since played off in Georgia and were having regular matches with clubs in Florida. Robert and his son, James, had also firmly established golf in Mobile, Alabama. There were 165 courses in New York and 157 in Massachusetts, Texas already had five and California 17. The demand for golfing equipment was escalating and St Andrews was the principal beneficiary.
Tom Morris’s workshop did not expand to meet the demand for golf clubs from America, but Robert Forgan’s shop next door did. By 1895 Forgan was employing 50 trained men and had three clerks in his office. Ever with an eye to expanding his business, Robert Forgan readily advanced a sum of money to anyone securing employment in America. The sum was enough to cover the costs of travel and settling in the US and he also made extended credit available for his workshop’s wares. This was not an entirely magnanimous gesture, for he was also establishing a conduit for the sale of his clubs and balls, as well as raising the profile of his name, in a burgeoning marketplace.
Forgan not only had the contacts on the ground for the sale of his wares but he also had an inside track in the US financial world. His eldest son, James, emigrated to the United States and became an established figure in Mid-West banking. He progressed to co-found the National Bank of Chicago with David, his younger brother, who claimed to be the first man to hit a golf ball in Minnesota. Through hundreds of city store outlets and dozens of professionals’ shops in the US, to say nothing of the rapidly expanding home market, it is not surprising that Forgan’s factory was turning out hundreds of thousands of clubs and shafts each year.
Robert Forgan, the head of the club making firm, died on 15 December 1900. His obituary notice in the local, as well as national press, was that of a successful businessman and Free Church bastion who had produced a family that had achieved at the highest level in the church and in the financial world of the US.2
On the courses of the New World, the players were more likely to be playing with a club bearing the insignia of the Prince of Wales Feathers and the Forgan name, than they were with one carrying the ‘T. Morris’ stamp. But in the bars and restaurants of the newly-founded country clubs, it was the Morris name that was the most revered, and C.B. Macdonald saw to it that few locker rooms were without Tom’s image on the wall. Tom Morris had already attained iconic status in golf before it spread like a virus through America. The rich literature of golf had established his place in the history of the game: he was deemed to be the model golfer.
The early books on golf were written by men of Scots origin in the main, and the earliest of golf journalists were, if not of St Andrews origin, then certainly of St Andrews residence. These early scribes had ready access to Tom and he, always ready for a ‘blether’ or a ‘crack’, was only too delighted to tell them anything that they wanted to know – and often he would tell them anything that they wanted to hear. Few golf writers of late nineteenth century golf failed to quote him or at least refer to him as a source. And if Tom’s memory was not what it had been, he was at least always able to come up with something.
Tom’s homespun philosophy, which was particularly popular in gentlemen’s magazines and the early golfing journals, was punctuated with quotations in his Fife vernacular and embellished with anecdotal humour. The general public’s perception of the game, with the English gentleman player, the ragamuffin irreverent caddy and the dour subservient Scottish professional, was established through these journals. When their American counterparts appeared, they adopted this perception and tailored it to their own situation.
An account of a visit to St Andrews is a recurring feature in early American golf magazines, and a meeting with Tom Morris was an imperative to the piece, although much of what appeared was reproduced from what had gone before in the English journals, with further embellishment. Tom Morris went from icon to legend and eventually to myth.
It was not solely in golf journalism that a friendship with Tom Morris was a passport to an opportunity. Richard Tuft, who came to sponsor Donald Ross, would use his and Ross’s early connections with Tom Morris as a byline in their promotion of Pinehurst. Alfred Tillinghast, who would come to rival Ross as the supreme American builder of golf courses, was another visitor who, in 1896, had Tom pose with him for a photograph outside the shop and would thereafter refer to him with first name familiarity.
To the new converts to golf in America, a visit to St Andrews signalled their graduation in the game. A word with Tom Morris was something to relate to their friends, and if they could give his regards to the Scots professional at their country club and put on show the putter with which Young Tommy had won the Champion’s Belt, they were on cloud nine.
The social and sporting status of having played at St Andrews and met the ‘great ol’ man’ was established by the turn of the century and, after a lapse of 500 years, St Andrews had again become a place of pilgrimage.
45 Relinquishing the Barrow and the Spade
Tom’s tenure as Custodian of St Andrews Links came to an end in June 1903 when he wrote his letter of resignation to Charles Stuart Grace, Secretary of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club. He was 82 years old. He had held the post for nearly 40 years and served at least six different Green Committee Chairmen. He was still being paid £50 a year by the Club for his services, the same sum that he had received at the onset of his employment in 1864.
It is clear that Tom did not want to retire and it took three attempts by the Royal and Ancient Committee to persuade him to do so. What is also clear is that the Committee was also mindful of the old man’s feelings and of the importance to him of being publicly regarded as the central figure on the Links. It could not have been an easy situation for the Committee and one feels as much sympathy for its members as one does for Tom in his reluctance to face reality.
The condition of the St Andrews greens had caused concern for some time. Criticism had become commonplace and increasingly vociferous. Indeed, the greens had become a regular source of humour and it is from this date that the words ‘mair saund, Honeyman’ attributed to Tom by Thomas Hodge some twenty years earlier, became well known.
The Committee first confronted the situation in August 1900, when criticism of the condition of the Old Course was widespread. Constant comparison was made with other, by then well-established courses, some of which Tom had played a part in constructing and advising on their maintenance. Many of these courses were inland and laid out on land far more fertile than the barren links land of St Andrews. It became increasingly clear that the Green Committee had to act to raise standards on the Links
Doubtless after discussion with Tom, they resolved to advertise for ‘a competent man to take charge of the St Andrews Links under the supervision of the Green Committee with Tom Morris’. Tom would continue to play his part, although the part that he would play was not entirely clear.
Mr C.B. Henderson of the New Luffness Golf Club was the successful candidate and was appointed at a weekly salary of 35 shillings and to start his duties on Monday, 1 October 1900. Mr Henderson’s tenure as ‘overseer’ on the Links was neither a long nor a happy one. In April 1901 he was brought before the Committee and reprimanded for fighting with one of his staff. He was also reminded that he could be dismissed with a week’s notice and, further, that he was to understand that his position was under that of Tom Morris, from whom he was to take orders. This reminder speaks volumes. Clearly, Mr Henderson and Tom did not always agree on green-keeping issues, and it also seems that the greenkeeping staff had divided loyalties. On 2 January 1902, the Committee decided to dispense with Mr Henderson’s services and he was asked to leave in March.
Henderson had been appointed to St Andrews Links with glowing references and was a popular enough choice at the time. As a churchgoer and teetotaller, his fight with one of his staff seems oddly out of character and one cannot but suspect that the habits of Honeyman and the rest of the greenkeeping staff, developed under Tom, may have been more than the man could endure.
The Committee’s solution to his departure would certainly support this conclusion. They decided at a meeting which Tom attended in January after Henderson’s dismissal, that the responsibility for the holes and putting greens should be the responsibility of a new appointee, while the remainder of the Links should be in the charge of Honeyman under Tom Morris.
This restructuring of the Links management was a judiciously diplomatic solution to the problem of Tom’s position, but it did not satisfy everyone on the Committee. Further meetings were held in January to discuss proposals regarding the structure of the greenkeeping staff. The minute of the meeting held on 19 January 1903 is telling:
The Committee having for some time past had under consideration a proposal to alter the position of Tom Morris by making him a consulting Green Keeper with the same salary as at present, and to appoint as Green Keeper, another man who would have charge of the Links and undertake the superintendence of the workmen, and having now ascertained that Tom was not in favour of the suggested rearrangements but was desirous of remaining in his present position, resolved to take no further steps in the matter.
This statement beggars belief. Tom was 82-years-old, and after a mild stroke in the autumn of 1902, he was left restricted in his movements and slurred in his speech. It is clear that the Committee was in awe of him and simply unable to confront him with the reality of his situation.
But complaints about the condition of the greens continued and the Committee was soon forced again to tackle the problem of Tom’s position. It appears that the members of it took the view that they had to persuade Tom to retire rather than simply tell him that he was being retired, in his own interests, due to his age and infirmity. At the 1903 May meeting of the Green Committee, the question of ‘rearranging’ the Links staff was again discussed. The upshot of this meeting was that the Rev. R.A. Hull ‘kindly consented to see Tom Morris on the subject and to report thereon to a meeting of the Committee to be held on Saturday, 13th June’. In other words, the good Reverend was left with the job of making Tom an offer that he could not refuse: he proved to be the right man for this delicate job. He was an outstanding golfer, well respected in the Town and Tom’s much-esteemed friend. Such was the pressure at the time that the Committee was very much dependent upon him finding a solution.
The reaction of the Committee when the Reverend reported back to them on 13 June is not recorded, but it was undoubtedly a collective sigh of relief. He was able to tell them that Tom would go quietly and that they were free to reorganise the management of the Links as they saw fit. Needless to say, the Committee was prepared to accept Tom’s resignation, but, rather brilliantly, asked him to continue in office until they found a suitable replacement. They also undertook to continue to pay his salary for the rest of his life, appointing him ‘Consulting Green Keeper’. Doubtless of more importance to the old man was the fact that he was also asked to ‘continue to afford assistance as heretofore on Medal Days.’ This request for him to continue in his role of Starter for The Royal and Ancient’s medals was an enlightened one. It reveals more about Tom and the Committee’s insight into his character than anything else. To Tom it was a statement of his worth and a measure of the esteem in which the gentlemen of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club held him. To Tom, recognition was everything. It was an affirmation of his importance and, more significantly, with his high-profile position of Starter, he was seen to be important.
