On a Sunday one century
ago, Old Tom Morris got up
to go to the loo.
He was 86, a gray warhorse who had lived from the age of the featherie golf ball — a leather pouch stuffed with goose feathers — to the age of automobiles and aero planes.
Now he spent his days sitting by a window overlooking the Old Course at St. Andrews, letting the sun warm his bones as he reminisced.
He often remembered the first Open Championship. That was back in 1860, 48 years before, when only eight players showed up. One of them spent the night before the tournament in jail, sleeping off the whisky he'd drunk that day.
Several were illiterate — they signed the players' register with X's. The golfers looked so shabby that the host club gave them matching jackets to play in, checkered coats that made them look like lumberjacks.
Tom was the runner-up in that first Open. He lost to Willie Park, a long-driving tough whose go-for-broke style would make John Daly look like Chip Beck. Park grew up poor, swinging a tree branch he'd carved into a golf club. As a boy he beat the local baker in matches played for pies. Later he took out newspaper ads daring any man to play him.
Park also liked to sneak into Scottish towns where no one knew him. He'd play the local pro while hopping on one leg, swinging with one hand — and take every shilling the man had.
Morris and Park won seven of the first eight Opens but got more attention (and money) for their one-on-one matches. Golf was interactive in their day: Fans shouted and hissed; stood in greenside bunkers to watch the players putt; bumped the competitors while they swung.
During one riotous match, Park's supporters kept kicking Old Tom's ball backward. "This isn't golf," Morris said. So Old Tom walked off the course, sat in a pub and sipped a drink while the crowd howled.
His son Tommy, the Tiger Woods of the 19th Century, won four Opens in a row — a feat no one else has matched. Bold, dashing Tommy teased Old Tom about his yips ("You'd be a fine putter, father, if the hole were always a yard closer"), and always teamed with him in foursomes matches.
One day they played Park and his brother Mungo at North Berwick, across the Firth of Forth from St. Andrews. A telegram arrived: Tommy's wife was in labor, in danger of dying.
Old Tom kept the news from his son while they finished the match. This is usually portrayed as an act of mercy: Don't tell the poor boy. But it was a big-money grudge match, and Old Tom likely delayed, in part, because he was dying to win.
And win he did. The Morrises rallied to beat the Parks, then commandeered a boat and sailed all night. But they got home too late. Tommy's wife was dead, her child stillborn. That seemed to knock the spirit out of Tommy.
Three months later, on Christmas morning, 1875, Old Tom found his 24-year-old son dead in bed.
Golf 's "Grand Old Man" carried on for 33 years. He made rulings on balls stuck in golfers' beards (drop, loss of stroke) or smacked through top hats (buy the man a new hat).
He laid out famous courses including Royal Dornoch, Royal County Down, Machrihanish and the New Course at St. Andrews, though his £1-a-day work wasn't what Tom Doak does today.
He was 86, a gray warhorse who had lived from the age of the featherie golf ball — a leather pouch stuffed with goose feathers — to the age of automobiles and aero planes.
Now he spent his days sitting by a window overlooking the Old Course at St. Andrews, letting the sun warm his bones as he reminisced.
He often remembered the first Open Championship. That was back in 1860, 48 years before, when only eight players showed up. One of them spent the night before the tournament in jail, sleeping off the whisky he'd drunk that day.
Several were illiterate — they signed the players' register with X's. The golfers looked so shabby that the host club gave them matching jackets to play in, checkered coats that made them look like lumberjacks.
Tom was the runner-up in that first Open. He lost to Willie Park, a long-driving tough whose go-for-broke style would make John Daly look like Chip Beck. Park grew up poor, swinging a tree branch he'd carved into a golf club. As a boy he beat the local baker in matches played for pies. Later he took out newspaper ads daring any man to play him.
Park also liked to sneak into Scottish towns where no one knew him. He'd play the local pro while hopping on one leg, swinging with one hand — and take every shilling the man had.
Morris and Park won seven of the first eight Opens but got more attention (and money) for their one-on-one matches. Golf was interactive in their day: Fans shouted and hissed; stood in greenside bunkers to watch the players putt; bumped the competitors while they swung.
During one riotous match, Park's supporters kept kicking Old Tom's ball backward. "This isn't golf," Morris said. So Old Tom walked off the course, sat in a pub and sipped a drink while the crowd howled.
His son Tommy, the Tiger Woods of the 19th Century, won four Opens in a row — a feat no one else has matched. Bold, dashing Tommy teased Old Tom about his yips ("You'd be a fine putter, father, if the hole were always a yard closer"), and always teamed with him in foursomes matches.
One day they played Park and his brother Mungo at North Berwick, across the Firth of Forth from St. Andrews. A telegram arrived: Tommy's wife was in labor, in danger of dying.
Old Tom kept the news from his son while they finished the match. This is usually portrayed as an act of mercy: Don't tell the poor boy. But it was a big-money grudge match, and Old Tom likely delayed, in part, because he was dying to win.
And win he did. The Morrises rallied to beat the Parks, then commandeered a boat and sailed all night. But they got home too late. Tommy's wife was dead, her child stillborn. That seemed to knock the spirit out of Tommy.
Three months later, on Christmas morning, 1875, Old Tom found his 24-year-old son dead in bed.
Golf 's "Grand Old Man" carried on for 33 years. He made rulings on balls stuck in golfers' beards (drop, loss of stroke) or smacked through top hats (buy the man a new hat).
He laid out famous courses including Royal Dornoch, Royal County Down, Machrihanish and the New Course at St. Andrews, though his £1-a-day work wasn't what Tom Doak does today.
