Tom morris of st andrews, p.26
Tom Morris of St Andrews, page 26
Tom continued to golf, to travel and, increasingly, to hold court outside the front door of the shop where he would sit with his grandchildren in the sunshine and talk to passers-by. Accompanied by them and their dog, Silver, he enjoyed walks on the Links while watching the play of the emerging talent in the club-makers’ competitions. The pride and pleasure he took in his grandchildren, who called him ‘Bosie’, was obvious to all. He enjoyed nothing more than parading them on the putting green on summer evenings and, dressed in their best, leading them to St Mary’s Church on Sunday mornings, bearing the youngest, Jamesina, born five months after her father’s death, high on his shoulders.
Tom’s elder grandchildren, Agnes and Bruce, were pupils at the Madras College where their younger sisters, Gray and Jamesina would also come to join them. They were active and popular in the Town, as was their mother, Lizzie, who although in prolonged mourning for her husband, was involved in the society of the Church and in the Sunday School at St Mary’s at the east end of Market Street: from their earliest years, all were participants on the Links. Agnes would experience golfing success in St Andrews as well as in Germany after her marriage to Willie Rusack. Her brother, Bruce, as he was known in the family, enjoyed extensive amateur golfing honours throughout Scotland and England. Like her brother, Gray would come to contest National Amateur Championships.
Lizzie’s family was a source of pride to Tom. His family competitions on the Himalayas Putting Green were commented upon in the local press, as was his attendance at a Madras College prize-giving ceremony to see Agnes receive her reading award. Photographs taken by the St Andrews photographer Fairweather show Agnes putting, with Tom and Silver in the background. If his grandchildren were a source of pride they also clearly brought him much joy.
The years throughout the 1880s and early 1890s must have been golden ones for Tom as they brought both comfort and social acclaim. He was made an Elder of Holy Trinity Kirk with duties at its second charge at St Mary’s. He was a member and stalwart of the Curling Club, as well as the Burns Club, enjoying the cronyism of the land-owning men of the Town and the University. Tom and his family had become stout and resolute middle-class Victorians.
Although he had his daughter’s family and those of his first cousins living in the Town as well as in nearby Tayport and Dundee, it was to his mother’s family, the Bruces, late of Crail and Anstruther that his own family remained closest. In local parlance, Jean Bruce’s two brothers had done well for themselves. Her elder brother had married into the jam-making Keiller family in Dundee and adopted the hyphenated Keiller-Bruce name. Her younger brother, who had trained as a tailor in Anstruther, was the proprietor of a tailors and haberdashers emporium in Leven, employing five men and three women. The Bruces of Leven had a fine house at Scoonie where Mr Bruce, a widower, resided with his three daughters and his son. Both father and son were leading figures in the Leven Thistle Golf Club. The Bruce family were as stolidly middle class as was Lizzie Hunter in St Andrews. Kate Bruce had been bridesmaid when Lizzie married James so it is not surprising that it was to the Bruces that she turned for help and support during her travels.
Lizzie travelled to visit James in America twice, returning with him to St Andrews, and on each occasion leaving Agnes Bruce from Leven in charge of her children and household. Agnes was the same age as Lizzie; she was a spinster whose role in life seems to have been running her father’s home in Scoonie with her two sisters, serving her father and brother. She appears to have helped out in St Andrews not only during Lizzie’s visits to America, but also at times when Lizzie took her family to Florence Cottage, the house that James had had built in Prestwick, next door to his parent’s retirement home, Hunter House, in the High Street.
In 1891, Lizzie took her younger brother John and her family to Florence Cottage with their 17-year-old housemaid from St Andrews. This could not have been an easy undertaking for the paraplegic John, nor for those that accompanied him, and it says much about Lizzie, as it also does about John’s closeness to his nieces and nephew. It also reflects the close connections that the Morris family retained in Prestwick.
Both the 1881 and 1891 census show that Tom was resident in the Pilmour Links house while John and Jof were listed as living in the flat above the shop on the Links Road. In the Pilmour Links house, as well as a living-in maid, Lizzie’s family also employed a daily help, doubtless to serve both properties for cleaning and laundry work. In the workshop, Tom was employing eight men by 1891, although he himself could have played little part in their management and productivity for, as well as supervising work on the Links, he appears to have played golf on a daily basis.
Tom played regularly with the members and guests of The Royal and Ancient, most frequently with Mr Everard, who would become the Club’s historian, and with Thomas Hodge, amateur artist who was the owner and head of a private boys school in the Town. Increasingly Tom’s games, no matter how casual, attracted small crowds of spectators with whom he would walk and chat casually. The Ladies Short Course, by then called the Himalayas Putting Green, was another of his favourite venues. Tom slipped easily and readily into the role of resident celebrity.
Tom clearly relished his renown. Parody poems and references to him in Punch and other magazines were collected and pinned to the wall in the shop, where caddies and visitors alike would gather to read them. His mail increased and the stream of visitors became a flood. Newspaper accounts of meetings, tournaments and matches began with a paragraph about his presence or absence at the event. He clearly worked tirelessly at the promotion of the game but he was also enjoying himself.
Few Town Hall soirées or visiting troupe of entertainers’ performances passed without his attendance, often with his grandchildren in the front row and few without some ‘ditty’ addressed to him. He attended club and social event dinners and, when pressed, was ready with a ‘vote of thanks’. Few charitable committees sat without him, for his name was enough to guarantee support and he appears to have gladly lent it to any worthwhile cause. Any fledgling golf club that called upon him for advice in laying out its course, or even to simply appear at its opening day ceremony, could count on his help.
Tom Morris had emerged from the great age of Victorian patronage to become a great Victorian patron himself.
34 The Gathering Storm
Considering the extent of Tom’s out-of-town activities, it is hard to see how and when he performed his duties as Links Superintendent. In his early years after his return to St Andrews, between 1865 and 1879, Tom must have been very active, as that was the time when the most extensive changes were made on the Course. Whins and heather were cleared and fairways widened. Some greens had accommodated two holes from as early as 1830, but it was Allan Robertson whom the Green Committee of The Royal and Ancient had charged with properly establishing them in 1856. Tom not only extended the double greens but also created entirely new ones. The 18th green was formed in 1869, and what is today the 1st green at the side of the Swilken Burn was established for play in 1872.
Hitherto play on the Course had been clockwise. Today’s 17th green was also the 1st green, the 16th was the 2nd and so on. With the construction of the 1st green it ultimately became possible to play the Course anti-clockwise. By the late 1870s Tom was regularly changing the direction of play and both the novelty and the general improvement of the Course in consequence was much appreciated. Laudatory notices of the quality of the Course appeared regularly in the press virtually from the time of his taking up stewardship and, singing his praises, became a regular feature in the St Andrews Citizen after every Autumn Meeting.
From 1876 David Honeyman ably assisted Tom full-time on the Links. David was a scratch golfer, fiercely loyal to Tom and assiduous in his attendance, if not perhaps his efforts on the Links. There was much humour about Tom and Honeyman’s activities throughout their years together. They were the topic of several cartoons and attributed with conversations of the ‘Pat and Mick’ kind, but if Honeyman was loyal to Tom, it was a loyalty that was reciprocated, because in 1889 Tom advanced David Honeyman a bond from the estate of James Hunter to purchase a house on North Street.
David Honeyman’s son, also called David, was also engaged on the Links. He too, was an able player and was a popular singer in the Town and a member of the church choir. Young David married in 1895 before leaving to take up an appointment as a professional in Mexico where he lived for five years before moving to the USA.
The extent of the Honeyman and Tom’s achievements on the Links is hard to gauge. They could draw upon Town Council workmen and redundant caddies in the winter months to augment the labour force but we know little of their conceptual contributions. Tom has been attributed with bunker placing and re-turfing of greens which, even if of his conception, required the official ratification of the Green Committee. This committee was made up of three or more members of the Committee of Management of The Royal and Ancient and would appear to have been a passive body, keeping no minutes of meetings until circumstances compelled it to do so in 1890.
Although we know little of the origins of most Old Course bunkers, the Green Committee’s records reveal a little of how those on the right hand side of today’s 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th holes came to be. In 1899 the Committee invited several leading amateur players to help position bunkers on the 2nd through to the 5th as well as the 9th holes. From The Royal and Ancient, Argyll Robertson, Fairlie, Everard, Balfour Melville, Macfie, Low and Freddie Tait were amongst them, as well as William Greig, a local artisan golfer. Clearly Tom must have supervised the construction of these bunkers but would appear to have played only an accompanying role in their numbers and siting. Before 1890, however, it seems that Tom had an entirely free hand in all that transpired on the Links and much of the decision making was left to him.
Tom certainly made extensive renovations but without detailed records from the Green Committee or reference in the press, we cannot conclude what renovations were of his own volition and what the Committee directed. The construction of the 1st and 18th greens were certainly supervised by him as was the reconstruction of what is now the 6th/12th green and the extension of the double green of the 7th and 11th holes.
There is some suggestion that the introduction and construction of fixed separate teeing grounds was his idea. This is not surprising for the practice of teeing-up, initially in 1754 within one club-length from the previous hole, must have made putting through duffers’ divots hazardous and frustrating. Being responsible for the quality of the greens, this damage must have perplexed Tom. The teeing distance from the hole was gradually lengthened to not less than six and not more than eight club-lengths. It is not surprising that when separate teeing grounds for all the holes were introduced in 1875, they merited a mention in the press and their adoption was instantaneous and widespread. One wonders why it took so long for Tom and the Green Committee to come to such an obvious solution to what must have long been a nagging problem.
Tom had other problems, too. Although honoured and revered in St Andrews and the locker rooms of The Royal and Ancient and the Honourable Company, his frequent absences from the St Andrews Links during his course construction, ‘consultancies’, were causing some disquiet. When compared to the standards of the new and blossoming courses in England in particular, the Course was increasingly found wanting.
From the onset of his tenure as Superintendent of St Andrews Links, Tom Morris performed a social juggling act that required considerable diplomatic skill. Serving the interests of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, his paymasters, while at the same time attending to the townspeople’s rights of access, their play and that of visitors, was no easy matter. Tom had no formal designated right to his power on the Links, yet he governed every aspect of it with benevolent tyranny and the fact that he maintained concord between all interested parties is amazing.
Horace Hutchinson made the perspicacious observation that ‘his unfailing courtesy, kindliness, tact and perfect temper have kept all the various interests, that are a little apt to run counter to each other at St Andrews, jogging along without friction.’ There can be no doubt that Tom was a despot on the Links and Hutchinson provides a brilliant insight into the nature of this:
Town clubs, students’ clubs and the Royal and Ancient, have all done, like good little boys, what ‘Old Tom’ has told them to do all these years – has told them with such a way of telling that they had not the least idea that they were being ordered about – Tom also not precisely understanding what sort of tyrant he was; and so they have all gone along together in friendly wise, as if shamed into mutual friendliness by the perfect gentleness of the old man, their common mentor.
Things were, however, changing, and it was becoming clear that a seventy-year-old, no matter what esteem, respect or vigour he enjoyed, could not continue to satisfy all interests. With the increasing popularity of the game, more and more people resorted to the Town primarily to play golf. Hotels were proliferating and the letting of rooms to summer visitors made a major contribution to the income of many family households. If the increasing numbers of golfing visitors brought problems of access to the Course, they also brought problems of wear and tear and it was Tom Morris’s responsibility to see that this was put to rights.
Tom had set greenkeeping standards from the outset at Prestwick. His nephew, Jack Morris at Hoylake and Charlie Hunter at Prestwick, had enhanced these standards with the encouragement of green committees that were both active and knowledgeable. He himself had raised standards further with his improvements at St Andrews but these required increased maintenance and made greater demands upon labour. His travels as a course consultant placed additional burdens on his time and, coupled with his advancing years, were taking their toll on his efforts. Time caught up with Tom Morris at the start of the 1890s when he first experienced its ravages with the Green Committee of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club.
David Lamb was appointed Chairman of this Committee in 1891 and his first action was to establish a minute book. It is clear that problems were developing with the upkeep of the Course. Not only was there press criticism of its condition during the 1891 Open Championship, but also the fact that the Green Committee felt that it had now become necessary to keep a minute book, suggests that all was not well. It becomes clear in the 1891 minutes that the Committee was set to be more attentive to the decision making in the day-to-day running of the Course and to establish standards of maintenance. It would henceforth instruct Tom and keep a closer eye on his activities on the Links:
It was agreed to instruct the greenkeeper to have all the bunkers properly dug up and in the future to see that no grass was allowed to grow where it should not be in them. The greenkeeper having been called up was then and there instructed to see that in future the grass was properly rolled after rain; this only having been done up to this date in the most casual way once or twice a year at most.
Although one can only speculate about the feelings of the Green Committee, this was clearly not the comfortable assembly that had gone before and it must have been a confrontational meeting for Tom. He was told to employ two other men to dig the bunkers and further informed that shortage of labour was not to be used as an excuse for the greens not being properly rolled.
This was not simply a new committee flexing its muscles, for it is clear from the September minutes of the Management Committee of The Royal and Ancient, that there was general dissatisfaction with Tom’s endeavours on the Links:
There was read a complaint signed by several members regarding the management of the links and the frequent absences of Tom Morris, the custodian. After careful consideration the meeting resolved that David Honeyman, who has been employed on the links for some time, should be appointed foreman and be responsible for the work done.
It is noteworthy that it was the ‘frequent absences’ that were referred to as the root of the problems. Tom had never felt the need to seek permission to go away to advise on the building of golf courses, or to participate in competition or exhibition matches, and there is no record of the Green Committee hitherto complaining. He saw himself not only as the green-keeper but also as the custodian of the Links of St Andrews; indeed he was frequently referred to as such. He was an icon in the rapidly expanding world of golf and knew himself to be an important figure in every department and at all levels in it. His word had always been law on the Links: his judgement had never been questioned and he knew that the public perceived him as an ambassador for the Town, The Royal and Ancient and the game itself. The face of golf was, however, changing and the authority of St Andrews was being questioned as the Course was increasingly contrasted and compared with the great new courses emerging in England. The Royal and Ancient was undisputedly regarded as the premier golf club but a new breed of men was coming to the fore in the game at large, and they were not reticent in criticism of it. Golf magazine, the first publication dedicated exclusively to the game and published weekly, was founded in 1890 and from the outset it was sometimes critical of the old order. Leading amateur players were emerging from England where little consideration was afforded to tradition or heritage, and these men were finding a foothold in committees of The Royal and Ancient Club. For them it was efficiency, quality and productivity that mattered. They were not, in general, the gentry of old, but men of business who were less tolerant of sentiment in running the affairs of their Club.
Subsequent minutes of the Green Committee make clear that instructions for the maintenance of the Course went directly to David Honeyman, bypassing Tom completely, and that the new arrangement was made absolutely clear to him and that he agreed with it. The Committee instructed Honeyman, for instance, to re-turf the whole of the 6th green. He was also charged with making new holes on the greens on Monday mornings, as well as being issued with detailed instructions for rolling, fertilising and top dressing with a soil and sand mixture.
