Tommy's Honor (26 page)

North Berwick—rhymes with Zurich—is a seaside resort of red sandstone walls and gray tile roofs. In 1875 its year-round population of one thousand was less than a good Sabbath turnout at Holy Trinity. North Berwick had two sandy bays, panoramic sea views and a brand-new telegraph office that had recently moved from the foyer of the Dalrymple Arms Hotel to a proper storefront. Town fathers called their burgh “the Biarritz of the North,” though without golfers and the crowds that came in their wake, the beaches and the Dalrymple Arms might have been as lively as Pompeii. The caddies of North Berwick were known for what one writer called “superfluous dress and infinite capacity for fiery liquors,” but then that was true of caddies everywhere, except for the superfluous dress. The North Berwick links lay at the foot of Berwick Law, the 600-foot hill that loomed over the town. Visible for miles around, Berwick Law was a long-dead volcano, sculpted into a blunt arrowhead shape by ancient glaciers. Above the tree line the arrowhead was gray rock patched with grass. From its rounded summit rose an odd relic, a twenty-foot arch that resembled a huge croquet wicket. The arch was the gaping jawbone of a whale, planted up there by early whalers. Over the years, while the town changed and the whalers were replaced by holiday-makers, waders, telegraph operators, golfers, and caddies, the jaw went on casting its hungry shadow down the hill. Today its shadow fell on Scotland’s best golfers and hundreds of spectators.

“The professional tournament,”
The Field
told its readers, “has this year been on a more extended scale than formerly, and has on the whole been highly successful.” In the tournament held on Friday, September 3, Tommy outgunned a strong field that featured the Park brothers, Bob Fergusson, and Davie Strath, as well as Tom Morris. Once again Tommy pipped Willie Park by a single stroke, leaving Willie gritting his teeth, cursing his luck. Then came a sudden protest: Another man came forward waving his scorecard, claiming he had beaten both Morris and Park. The
Fifeshire Journal
described the card, “which bore that a Musselburgh professional named Cosgrove had accomplished the 3 rounds of the green in one less stroke than Morris.” Bob Cosgrove, a decent player but no threat to the leading professionals, was the sort of crack Colonel Fairlie had worried about when he and Tom organized the first Open—the whisky-scented sort who needed a gentleman scorekeeper to keep him from cheating. Cosgrove had tried this trick before: He would shave strokes, turn in a low score and hope to make off with a few pounds. Now Cosgrove waved his scorecard, demanding the £7 first prize, while a mob of his fellow Musselburghers cheered him on. Kindly Bob Fergusson tried to make peace while his townsmen shouted at the umpire for disqualifying Cosgrove, touching off a dispute that threatened to become a brawl.

Tommy slipped away with his £7, enjoyed a celebratory dinner with his father, and made his weary way to their hotel room for a good night’s sleep before their battle with the Park brothers. He might have slept better had his father not left the window open.

Saturday broke clear and cool, a hint of autumn. Beach-combers padded through the sands beside the North Berwick links, pausing to grab for crabs skittering in tide pools. Behind them was Craigleith, a grassy rock 500 yards from shore. Farther out sat gray Bass Rock, a steep-sided crag protruding from the sea a mile and a half out. Then as now, the white sides of Bass Rock itched and moved—the motion of tens of thousands of gannets, the snowy seabirds that nest there. Male gannets fly off to hunt fish while females stay behind to sit on eggs. Gannets are hard on their young: They use their beaks to spoon fledglings out of their nests. Strong fledglings fly; weak ones tumble down the rock to the water where they float until they starve.

The water at North Berwick is bluer than the roiled gray of St. Andrews Bay. It is just as cold as St. Andrews Bay, as Tom discovered during his morning dip on Saturday, the fourth of September, 1875. He met Tommy for breakfast and then they ambled to the links to meet the Musselburgh boys. Newspapers were calling it the “Morrises’ Return,” a grudge match pitting the Parks of Musselburgh, who had staked a claim to be foursomes champions of Scotland, against the Morrises of St. Andrews, who aimed to take back that title along with £25 and pocketfuls of side bets. They would go four times around North Berwick’s short, quirky nine-hole course, where the outbound holes slanted toward beach dunes bordering a defunct rock quarry overgrown with reeds. Two stone walls angling through the course could send low approach shots caroming backward. A stand of firs jutting into the links tempted golfers to try to drive over the trees, risking what one prolix golf guide called “that bourne from which no traveler returns—for if you cannot carry it the penalty is that for a lost ball, viz., stroke and distance.”

The Morrises and the Parks teed off at eleven, encircled by “a very large number of spectators…whose numbers were, despite the use of a long rope behind which they were kept, at times rather difficult to manage.” What
The Field
dubbed “golfomania” was on the rise. Hooligans from Musselburgh tugged the rope and hooted at the Morrises, while female spectators—another sign of the game’s growing popularity—applauded by tapping gloved fingers to their palms. “The prevailing enthusiasm may be guessed from the fact that in the throng the young lady visitors to North Berwick were numerously represented, all of them resolutely sticking to their posts abreast of the rope.”

The Parks drew first blood when Willie knocked in a putt and Tommy’s bid to answer stayed out, “the ball just running round the hole.” Tommy evened the match at the seventh, “and in the tussle for the eighth hole, the St. Andrews men had the better of it.” The Morrises were one up. Willie and Mungo struck back with a pair of booming, wind-assisted clouts at the long ninth to pull even. In the second round the Morrises held a one-hole edge when Tom found a bit of old music in his putter: “By a clever long put, Old Tom increased the lead to two.” He and Tommy boosted their advantage with help from Mungo, who kept knocking the Parks’ ball into bunkers, leaving his fuming brother to slash it out. Then Mungo flubbed a short putt. “By missing a put, Mungo failed to secure a half of the next hole,” the
Scotsman
grumbled on Willie’s behalf, “and through his brother’s shortcomings Willie had the pleasure of seeing the eighth also go to the Morrises, making their lead ‘three up.’”

After two nine-hole rounds—the midpoint of the match—the Morrises led by four holes. Tom tapped sweet tobacco into his pipe and breathed blue smoke during the luncheon break. A four-hole lead with eighteen to play wasn’t safe, but the day was shaping up nicely. He had already contributed more to the cause than in a dozen other tries as Tommy’s partner. Two dozen. Perhaps even more than that. As Hutchison wrote twenty years later, “never but on one occasion as North Berwick was old Tom much better than a drag upon his son.” That occasion was today.

The third round began at two o’clock. The long Sea Hole, a three-shotter that called for a carry over a jagged, shoulder-high boundary wall, became a six-shotter for the Morrises when Tom duck-hooked a drive: “On the way to the second hole,” the
Scotsman
reported, “fortune changed sides. Here Old Tom swerved to the left in his ‘tee’ shot, and brought his son into using the niblick.” Tommy slapped the Morris ball from a bad lie to a worse one, and Tom’s next swing barely moved it. Meanwhile the Parks’ gutty flew to the green. When Tommy’s aggressive approach “came to grief in a bunker,” his father picked up the ball. The hole was lost, but they were still four up.

Tommy’s bold play cost his side again when he tried to putt through the long, rocky bunker on the Trap Hole, a play the
Scotsman
deemed foolish: “Young Tom gave the hole to his opponents…the youngster had an easy iron lift to the green, but taking his putter, and trying to run the ball across the bunker, he failed.” The shot skipped into the sand and died short of the green.

Willie and Mungo were whittling away at the Morrises’ lead. They looked certain to pull within two at the next hole, where Tommy flailed at a bunkered ball only to see it catch the lip, pop straight up and roll back between his boots. Tom would have to get the next one close to keep the Morrises alive on the hole. “This the veteran did beautifully,” the
Scotsman
reported. With his coattails flapping, Tom sent a spray of sand toward the pin, the ball floating through chunks of flying sand to a skidding halt inches from the cup.

Tommy grinned, clapping his hands. The Parks could still claim the hole by getting down in two, but after Willie ran a thirty-foot putt to tap-in distance, Mungo blew the tap-in. The hole went to the Morrises.

Tom’s bunker shot had reversed the tide. Mungo, desperate to redeem himself, knocked an approach at the eighth hole over the flag, over the green and half the beach, “over-shooting…and running down to the seaside.” Willie hit a skillful pitch from there, but Mungo’s putt stopped four feet short and Willie missed from there. Mungo, the current Champion Golfer of Scotland, must have wished he were on a boat to Zanzibar. When the sides matched fours at the ninth hole, the third round finished the way it began. With nine holes to play, St. Andrews was four to the good.

In the last go-round, the Parks got one back at the first hole and stole another at the second when “the Morrises found luck against them, as Old Tom had to play…from a bunker, while a promising swipe of his son’s was afterwards caught and spoiled on the top of a knoll.” Tom and Tommy won the fourth hole to go three up with five to play, but saw the fifth snatched away by “an admirable long put of Mungo’s, which somewhat redeemed the champion’s character.” At the next, where Tommy “played into a nasty hazard to the left of the green,” the Parks sliced their deficit to a single hole. Now the course swept downhill, with the outward holes to the left and a seven-foot stone wall protecting the seaside villas to the right. “The excitement among the onlookers was now intense, and it was doubly increased at the next hole, where Willie holed from fully a dozen yards’ distance, making the match ‘all even.’” Park fanatics cheered and threw their hats. Bettors called out odds for new wagers on the duel of the year, a thirty-six-hole contest that was deadlocked with two holes to play. The crowd bubbled around the golfers as they stepped to the teeing-ground at North Berwick’s eighth hole. Few noticed a boy moving through the gallery, a messenger from the telegraph office, pushing his way toward the golfers.

The Parks had the honor. Willie spoke to Mungo, who nodded. Tommy stood alone, staring at the green.

The messenger pushed through the crowd. He held a slip of paper: a telegram addressed to Thomas Morris. Which man was that? Spectators pointed and told him that there were two Thomas Morrises, father and son. But leave them be—they were busily engaged, playing golf for £25.

The messenger couldn’t wait. His telegram was urgent. He handed it to Tom, who read it while the others were playing.

Come home
, the telegram said.

It was from St. Andrews—probably sent by a frantic Jimmy Morris. Margaret’s labor had begun, the telegram said, and she was struggling.
Come home posthaste.

The bleeding would not stop. Meg lay in her new cast-metal bed, swaddled in sheets soaked with her sweat and her blood. Her sister-in-law Lizzie squeezed her hand. Clootie Dumpling, the midwife, ran for fresh rags to soak up the blood. An external cut might be cauterized with a red-hot iron from the hearth, but there was nothing to do about blood from inside but soak it up and pray. Clootie Dumpling brought rags and when the rags were full of blood she took new linens and bunched them between Meg’s legs while Meg wailed, for her hopes must surely be gone if they were using her fine wedding linens to soak up her blood.

The midwife sent for Dr. Moir.

Tom Morris stood in the hubbub on the North Berwick links, reading the telegram from St. Andrews.
Come home posthaste.
If he and Tommy left now they would lose. They would lose the match, the £25 stakes and side bets of more than that, and Tom’s field day would amount to nothing.

On the other hand, difficult births were common. Margaret might well be cradling her child in her arms by now. In any case, time was surely not much of an issue in this matter. He and Tommy were six to eight hours from home and the match was almost over. Walking in from here would save a few minutes at most, and the next train for Edinburgh wouldn’t leave for hours. How much difference could a few minutes make?

Tom put the telegram in his pocket.

On the penultimate hole, Willie Park hooked his drive into a bunker. The ball ran up the face and stopped. All Mungo could do was chip out sideways. The Parks would be lucky to make six while the Morrises, “who took a capital road for the pin,” lay three twenty-five feet from the hole. Tommy could have cozied one close for his father to tap in. That was the wise play. But Tommy wanted to make the putt. He set up over the Morrises’ ball, drew his putter back until it nearly touched his boot, and sent the ball barreling across the green.

“Duck in!”

Now there was no ball. The ball had hit the back of the hole, popped up, and fallen in, knocking all the wind out of the Parks’ loud, fist-waving crowd.

The mob wasn’t quiet for long. According to the
Scotsman
, “The Morrises were in this way ‘dormy,’ but the game for the last hole was watched with the greatest closeness by every one on the green, the spectators crowding in at times and giving expression to their sympathies in a not very becoming way.”

From the last teeing-ground the golfers aimed for the far-off green between Bass Rock and the left flank of Berwick Law. “After the ‘tee’ shot things did not look too well for the Musselburgh players, as their ball lay rather badly.” But Willie’s recovery put the Parks’ ball near the green, and Tommy overcooked his approach. The ball came flying in like a hornet, headed for trouble, only to take a crazy, lucky bounce—a rub of the green that led the Parks’ supporters to wonder why heaven so favored Tommy Morris. “[H]ad it not been for a lucky ‘rub’ which his ball came in for, it would no doubt have been into a bunker, and the result of the game might have been different. As it was, both holed out in 5, the match consequently being gained by the Morrises by one hole.”