Tommy's Honor (18 page)

Tom was devout, dutiful, successful. But a nagging disquiet was growing in him. The former King of Clubs wasn’t ready to settle for keeping the green, paying bills, and playing the occasional £20 foursomes match. All he needed, he thought, was a big-money match to prove there was still some life in Old Tom. He got his wish when Willie Park offered him a sucker bet.

Twenty-one miles as the rook flies, the distance from St. Andrews to Musselburgh was far greater by rail and ferry. There was no straight way over the sheep-dotted fields of Fife and the wide gray Firth of Forth. The trip could take half a day. Musselburgh was a weathered, Roman-built port five miles east of Edinburgh, where the links shared space with a horse-racing track and a dirt path that coal miners took on their way to the pits. The Musselburgh links were also home to the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, a fact that made for some clashes of manners. Once, when an Honourable Company player in his golfing jacket and leather breeches drove a ball that conked a passing miner, the victim charged the golfer, waving his fist.

“But my dear fellow,” the gentleman explained, “I shouted ‘Fore.’”

“Then
five
,” said the miner, dropping him with one punch.

Musselburgh had been a hub of golf for a century, but the Morrises had lately moved the focus northward. This insult lodged in Willie Park’s craw. Park was often described as “his own man,” being too cussedly independent to serve as anyone’s greenkeeper or lesson-teacher. Like every other Musselburgh loyalist he believed that he, Willie, was a better golfer than Tom Morris, and he was right. Park was longer off the tee than Tom, stronger if less accurate with his cleeks, and a far better putter. Over the years he had beaten Tom more often than Tom had beaten him. Still St. Andrews had cast a pall over Musselburgh ever since Tom swore off tobacco and topped Willie in their marathon of 1862, almost a decade ago. Now Musselburgh’s golf-fanatics were riveted by talk of a rematch between the warhorses—single combat over four greens for £100. The stakes, as usual, were put up by gentleman, with the winning player expecting a cut of ten percent, plus any side bets he won. As the stakes rose to £125 and then £150, Tom’s pulse quickened.

There were several gloomy auguries for Tom, who had publicly sworn off marathon matches back in ’62: The thirty-seven-year-old Park was in his prime while Tom was in his fiftieth year; Park seldom missed a short putt while Tom had days when he couldn’t make one; and plans for the 144-hole match called for the last thirty-six to be at Park’s home links at Musselburgh, the lion’s den. Still, Tom’s yearning for a restorative victory was so strong that not even Tommy’s warnings about finishing on “Willie’s dunghill” could sway him. When the stakes reached £200, he said yes.

In London, the editors of
The Field
framed the issue: “During the past 14 years the two players who have stood forth most prominently in the golfing world are Tom Morris, the custodian of the links at St. Andrews, and Willie Park, the professional at Musselburgh. The great question as to who is the best player has never been definitely settled.” The fact that Tommy Morris was now golf’s best player may have dampened interest in the opening rounds between his father and Park, who took a 1-up lead during the first day’s play before a small gallery at St. Andrews. The contest resumed three days later at Prestwick, where Tom’s putter regained the flash it had shown in his youth. He made everything under three paces and sent one long sidewinder bounding and curling more than thirty feet until in hopped into the hole. “Morris, driving in great style and playing both his quarter-strokes and his putts with beautiful precision, drew ahead of Willie,” read the next issue of the
The Field
. “A very lucky but withal well-played long putt turned the tables.” Winning the day by two holes put Tom a hole ahead at the marathon’s halfway point. But when his Prestwick cronies said he had seized the advantage, Tom shook his head. Were he in Park’s boots, he said, he’d be delighted to be one-down after seventy-two holes on Tom Morris’s two home courses, heading east to decide the matter at North Berwick and Musselburgh.

North Berwick was technically neutral, but the briny resort on the Forth’s south bank was half an hour by train from Musselburgh. Three days after Tom’s victory at Prestwick, a host of Park-backers applauded his demolition at North Berwick. Park won six of the first nine holes to go five ahead overall. By then he was walking like a hunter stalking a wounded deer, hurrying forward. Tom responded by slowing his pace. He paused to tamp a dollop of tobacco into his pipe. He lit it, breathed blue smoke and only then followed Park through the throng to the next teeing-ground. In the following hour Tom ground out fours and fives, inching his way back into the match, looping pinpoint drives while Park swung ever harder. Tom whittled Willie’s lead down to sawdust and then, while spectators whistled and hissed at him, took the last hole to regain the lead. With 108 holes in the books and thirty-six to play, he was one hole ahead. The train from North Berwick took him toward the setting sun, toward Musselburgh.

Spectators arrived in force on Saturday, the last day. After an early rain the sky cleared enough to let silver-white bolts of sun fall through the clouds. Spectators paced, gossiped, laughed. Some sipped from pocket flasks. Some were there not only to cheer Park and hoot at Morris but to bat Tom’s ball out of the air if they got a chance. Interference by spectators was a growing problem, most of all at Musselburgh. Andra Kirkaldy called Musselburgh’s rowdy crowds “unruly bullocks” and “damned miners.”

Every important match had a referee who could declare one golfer the winner if spectators misbehaved, but the referee who ruled against a hometown player might trigger a riot. So players often dealt with interference as a rub of the green, a twist of fortune that was part of the game. A rub of the green could be good fortune—a crow snaps up your ball and drops it into the hole—or bad. At Musselburgh, golfers from St. Andrews could count on getting rubbed the wrong way.

The nine-hole Musselburgh course erupted in hoots and cheers when the golfers appeared. Willie Park was joined by his brother David and Bob Fergusson, while Charlie Hunter and Bob Kirk stood on Tom’s side. Hunter, one of Tom’s Prestwick cronies, had been greenkeeper there since Andrew Strath died. Kirk, the son of Tom’s longtime caddie and one of the game’s leading players, would act as Tom’s caddie today. A peppery fellow with a short fuse, Kirk watched with mounting annoyance as the spectators pressed in around Tom. They pushed so close that Tom’s first backswing nearly ruffled one Park-backer’s beard. Tom stopped his swing and stepped away from his ball. Referee Robert Chambers, an Edinburgh publisher and R&A man, waved the crowd back. Tom took a breath, then hit a low fade into the widest part of the first fairway. The next sound was applause, but it wasn’t for him. It was for Park, stepping up to take a practice swing.

“The weather was showery,”
The Field
’s report began, “and a high wind interfered with play. Eight thousand spectators were present, and crowded in on the players, there being great excitement over the game.” Over twenty-seven holes, neither golfer gave in inch. With nine holes to play, Tom still led by one. By then the town’s artisans had gotten off work—Saturday was a half day. They dashed to the course. Many had already placed bets on the match; others made last-minute wagers as the final nine began. The crowd was feverish—men and boys charging onto greens before approach shots landed. Park stood whispering with the tall, quiet Fergusson while men in the crowd shouted, “We’re with you, Willie” and “Musselburgh forever!” One writer called the multitude “disgraceful…the players were pressed in upon in a very rude manner, and were scarcely allowed room to use their clubs freely.” Kirk, Tom’s caddie, irked the crowd by shouting, “Keep back, keep back!” Park could have calmed his followers but left that task to the referee, who called in vain for order while spectators pressed so close that they could have picked the tobacco out of Tom’s jacket pocket. On the second hole a man kicked Tom’s ball sideways. Tom played it as it lay and lost the hole. Soon another spectator kicked Tom’s ball into high grass. Then, 138 holes into the 144-hole contest, the golf devolved into farce. Tom missed a short putt. Spectators laughed and cheered. Referee Chambers, raising his hands, appealed to the crowd’s sense of fair play. He looked to Park for help, but Willie was on his way to the next tee with a 1-up lead.

Tom stood watching Park’s boosters crowding the green. Some waved to him. Some swung their feet to show what they’d like to do to his next shot. “The crowd, anxious for their favourite, the local man, to win, transgressed all rules of fair play,” Hutchison wrote, “and repeatedly injured the position of Tom Morris’s ball, to such an extent that the latter declined to continue.”

Tom had longed for a victory over his old enemy, but this was chaos, not golf. He walked past his ball and kept going, past the bellowing spectators, past the putting-green and through the door of the nearest pub, Mrs. Forman’s Public House, where he found a chair and sat puffing his pipe while referee Chambers faced down the jeering crowd. “The match is postponed,” Chambers declared. “We will finish tomorrow.” He was threatened, spat at.

Willie Park said no, the match was still on. According to
The Field
, Park maintained “that the referee had only to do with disputes as to holes, and could not postpone the play.” So Park went on. With his brother and a pained-looking Fergusson walking behind him, he played the last six holes alone and claimed victory. The stake-holder, a gentleman named Dudgeon whose role was to hang onto the backers’ money until there was an official winner, was nowhere to be found. He was holding at least £200; some reports suggest that late betting by the gentlemen sponsoring the match boosted the stakes to £500. Given the customary 10 percent share for the winning golfer, Tom or Willie stood to have a career day.

At eleven the next morning, Tom and Chambers returned to the fourth hole. Park was there, too—without his clubs. Chambers invited him to play, but Willie refused. “I finished yesterday,” he said. He watched Tom play alone, taking twenty-six strokes over the last six holes, four more than Park had taken on the same holes the day before. After Tom putted out on the final green, referee Chambers declared him the victor. The crowd hissed and booed. Backers of both players claimed victory. There were lawyers among the backers on both sides, and stakes-holder Dudgeon was soon served a court order instructing him to keep the money safe pending legal action.

Finally, six months later, the courts declared that neither Tom nor Willie had won. The riotous Musselburgh match was nullified. The backers got their money back and neither player won a penny. By then, poor Dudgeon had suffered a nervous breakdown. After eight rounds of golf and more than a thousand swings the only winner was Mrs. Forman, whose pub became famous as the spot where Old Tom Morris nursed a blackstrap while crowds outside sang for his hide.

The game was in constant flux, inventing itself on the fly. In 1871 the Edinburgh University professor Peter Tait had a brainstorm: Night golf! Rather than illuminate the course with lanterns, Tait proposed to paint golf balls with glowing phosphorus. He headed for St. Andrews along with two colleagues: Thomas Huxley, the biologist whose grandsons included Aldous, the writer, and Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Andrew Huxley; and the famed German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz. Joined by Tait’s brother-in-law, the chemist Alexander Crum Brown, the scientists teed off in the dark and watched their drives rise and fall like shooting stars. They cleared Swilcan Burn with glowing approach shots. “The idea is a success; the balls glisten in the grass,” wrote Sir John Low of the R&A, who got off his pony long enough to record the event. “All goes well until the burn is passed, and Professor Crum Brown’s hand is found to be aflame; with difficulty his burning hand is unbuttoned, and the saddened group return to the Professor’s rooms, where Huxley dresses the wounds.”

Golf grew despite being limited to daylight hours. Within days of Tommy’s victory in the 1870 Open, the
Fifeshire Journal
was looking toward the future: “As Young Tom carries off the Belt to St. Andrews and retains it, a new champion trophy will require to be furnished…. We understand that it is the intention of the Prestwick Golf Club to order another Belt, but we have not learnt what the design will be, or the probable cost.”

Time was short. If the next Open was to coincide with the autumn meeting of the Prestwick Golf Club, like previous Opens, it had to be organized by the spring of 1871. There was talk of allowing the R&A and the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers to share the tournament with Prestwick, with the three clubs splitting expenses and the Open rotating among their home links. Perhaps North Berwick and the English club Westward Ho would join in as well. Gilbert Mitchell Innes, a prominent Prestwick member, said his club would be foolish to pay for a new Belt or other trophy before such matters were resolved. He proposed a motion at Prestwick’s spring meeting in April, 1871: “In contemplation of St. Andrews, Musselburgh and other Clubs joining in the purchase of a belt to be played for over four or more greens, it is not expedient for the Club to provide a belt to be played for solely at Prestwick.” Why drain Prestwick’s coffers when other clubs might split the cost?

Harry Hart could not believe what he was hearing. The diminutive secretary of the Prestwick Club said it would be foolish to cede control of the Open to save fifteen or twenty pounds. Feisty as a terrier and not much taller, Hart countered Innes with a motion calling for the club to go forward alone. But he was wasting his time. For many Prestwick members the Open was a trifle, far less urgent than their own medal competitions. Stuck in a smoky room after the long winter of 1870-71 had finally thawed into April, they were dying to get out on the links. Their vote was quick and decisive: Innes’s motion passed. For the price of a horse, Prestwick gave up control of the Open.