I don’t normally do requests, but a GolfWRX reader asked me to consider penning an article featuring Old Tom Morris.

I was lucky enough to be a member of the New Club in St. Andrews for a few years while I worked in Edinburgh in the 1990s. The club and the town hold fantastic memories for me, and I considered my time playing there to be a privilege. Just by being in St. Andrews you get a sense of history. Golf is in the blood; it is part of the fabric of the town. The game that is now played all around the world really stemmed from here, and we have Tom Morris to thank for that. He didn’t invent the game, but you would be hard pressed to find an individual who made such an impact. So I feel like I have a link to the town and the man, who spent a lot of his later life in the New Club.

Imagine working a 12-hour day, including some heavy laboring, digging out gorse, humping sand from the beach, mowing the greens, repairing clubs, making golf balls, giving lessons and then acting as starter for some foursome matches and allocating caddies. Sounds like a busy day, right? But then imagine playing three rounds of golf the very next day (12-hole rounds) to win The Open. Well that’s what Tom Morris did in the 1864, beating 15 other competitors at Prestwick in the fifth British Open. The prize then was £6, a good return when you considered the average annual wage was just twice that. But you can bet Old Tom was back at work the next day. In fact, that seemed like the norm for the average club professional back then. There was little glamour and a lot of hard work.

Thomas Mitchell Morris was born in 1821 in St. Andrews and he started caddying and playing golf from a young age. His father was a weaver, but that industry was in decline and unusually he was hired as an apprentice at age 14 to Allan Robertson, generally regarded as the world’s first professional golfer. He worked with Robertson for several years, making balls and clubs, caddying and playing as his partner in matches. The team became known as “The Invincibles,” and they were never formally beaten. By the time Morris was in his early 20s, he was the second-best player in St. Andrews. He eventually left St. Andrews after falling out with Robertson over golf ball technology (the feathery vs. the guttie), and took a job on the West coast of Scotland at Prestwick in 1851. He returned to St. Andrews in 1865 and took over as Keeper of the Links. He remained at St. Andrews until his death at 87 years old in 1908.

It seems a bit far-fetched but Tom and his peers really were the early pioneers of the professional game of golf. Up to that point, the game was only really for the well-heeled. The landed gentry played their own championships, but it was generally acknowledged that the hacks (the caddies) had much more talent for getting the ball around in fewer strokes. These players, though, were generally socially shunned for various reasons, including raggedy appearance and alcohol use. But over time, and supported by an appetite for gambling, the gentry supported the early advances of the professional game. They found sport backing their favorites to do battle in exhibition matches. Tens of thousands would turn up to watch these matches, with partisan crowds and lots of gambling. Tom was at the right place at the right time and had the perfect combination of talent, hard work and personality to make it happen.

As a golfer, Tom was at least the equal of any man living for a great number of years. Although the first few Opens were rather limited in entrants, his achievements still stand the test of time. For the record, Tom won the Open Championship four times: in 1861, 1862, 1864 and 1867. He still holds the record of the oldest winner at 46 in 1867. And with his son, Young Tom Morris, he holds the record as being part of the only father/son pair to finish as winner and runner up (in 1869).

Tom would have won a lot more if he’d been a better putter. He suffered terribly from the yips, and it seemed to have cost him dearly. Put him 12 feet from the hole and not a better holer-out could be named. But his Achilles heel was 18 inches to two feet. In later life, he improved, but at one point it was a heavy reputation he had to shoulder. Even his son and foursome partner Young Tom was quoted as saying, in jest, “Gin the hole was a yaird nearer him, my fawther wad be a guid putter.” And a practical joker in his day, Wolfe Murray once went so far as to address a letter to “The Misser of Short Putts, Prestwick,” which the postman took straight to the champion.

Not only was he the best player in his day, he was a visionary in terms of club design, course design and green keeping. His use of sand on the greens was discovered by accident. He was carrying sand from the beach to fill a bunker when the wheelbarrow broke and his load was spilled out over a green. He brushed most of it up and got on with his task, but in the following few weeks he discovered a lot of growth in the area where the sand was. Accidentally, he’d invented top dressing. And he also introduced the concept of actively managing hazards (in the past, bunkers and the like were largely left to their own devices, becoming truly “hazardous”).

It’s all too easy to refer to people these days as legends. That status is given very freely, especially in sport and it dilutes the really great ones. But Old Tom was truly one of the legends of the game.

If this story has whetted your appetite, I can recommend a great book: Tommy’s Honor: The Story of Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris, Golf’s Founding Father and Son by Kevin Cook. I hear they are making it into a movie, and I hope they do. It should be great.