Tommy's Honor Part 9

Winter.

The blood was gone, soaked up in sheets that were soon to be burned, but the scent of blood hung in the room. Meg lay in bed as if she were asleep. Beside her was a bundle no bigger than a cat. Male, the doctor said. A son. Stillborn, the doctor said, meaning that the child had not died in the womb but in the struggle to be born, a struggle that lasted four hours according to Dr. Moir, who reduced Meg's dying to two crisply penned lines in the town's death registry: Ruptured uterus, 4 hours Ruptured uterus, 4 hours.

Tommy sagged. "It's not true." After that night, wrote Tulloch, "He went about like one who had received a mortal blow."

In the coming days he let his father do most of what had to be done. It was Tom Morris who signed the death registry on behalf of the family. It was Tom who handled many of the funeral arrangements. There was whisky to buy, for one thing. Custom called for everyone visiting a house where a death had occurred to be offered a dram. Tommy roused himself enough to take a sip from time to time, feeling it warm his gullet like hot tea. He had little energy for choosing a coffin for Meg; or for buying a white linen mort cloth to wrap around her body and a smaller mort cloth for their stillborn child; or for hiring a hea.r.s.e and a team of black horses to pull the hea.r.s.e to the Cathedral cemetery; or for selecting a Bible verse for Meg's memorial cards, the black-bordered reminders that urged recipients to remember Margaret Morris and pray for her soul. Such matters were better left to his father, the diplomat. Tom Morris was a gracious host, shaking hands, offering each visitor a drink, making solemn small talk while Tommy did his best to nod h.e.l.lo.

The blinds in Tommy and Meg's house stayed shut until the hea.r.s.e came later that week to carry her away. The Morrises gave Meg a funeral like no Whitburn girl could have expected. Nothing signaled respectability like a fine funeral. Whitburn's poor, like the poor everywhere, dreaded getting a pauper's burial, a hurried ride to the cemetery behind a drunken coachman singing, "Rattle his bones over the stones, he's only a pauper n.o.body owns." Tenement dwellers paid a penny a week to burial societies that provided decent funerals for 3 or 4. A successful tradesman could be laid to rest for 20, a tradesman's wife for 10. But Meg's funeral was a 50 affair. No one put the price in the newspaper or even said it aloud, but the point was made by the hea.r.s.e, the team of horses pulling it, and the coachmen with their silk scarves and top hats with black silk hatbands. The point was that the deceased was no sinner and no housemaid but a respectable wife, her soul recommended to heaven by the Reverend A.K.H. Boyd.

For Tommy, still staggered by Sat.u.r.day's events, Meg's funeral was likely a blurred parade of black-clad mourners on green turf, her Whitburn relatives filing past in the same clothes they had worn to her wedding ten months before; the pastor mumbling prayers beside Wee Tom's old white stone and a pile of porridge-colored earth. The grave went more than ten feet down into the Cathedral churchyard. Cemetery plots were so expensive that families dug deep and sometimes buried as many as ten family members in a vertical queue. Meg's elm coffin held two bodies, for she was buried with her stillborn son in her arms.

If Tommy blamed his father for hiding the truth from him at North Berwick, he also loved Tom Morris enough to forgive him, or at least to try. In fact he moved back into his father's house. Tommy gathered up his clothes, razor, pocket watch, and Championship Belt, left his and Meg's house, and pulled the door shut behind him. He carried his things two blocks west, to 6 Pilmour Links Road, where he slept in a drafty room in the attic.

Everyone wanted him to play golf. The game did not stop to mourn Margaret: Willie Park won the Open at Prestwick that fall while Tom and Tommy grieved in St. Andrews. "It was a matter of much regret that severe family bereavement should have caused the absences of the Morrises," The Field The Field noted. "During the entire day the links presented a scene of gaiety and animation." Tommy's friends kept saying a match would take his mind off his grief, if only for a few hours, and wasn't that what he needed? His father thought so. "Just when you want to lay down and die, a good tight match will clear your brain," Tom said. Tommy was more inclined to take long, late-evening walks or to sit and drink, a habit he indulged more often as the days grew shorter. But in early October, a month after Meg died, he agreed to play again. Along with Davie Strath, Mungo Park, and Bob Cosgrove, the Musselburgh stroke-shaver, he entered the 1875 St. Andrews Professional Tournament. "Tommy...had been out of practice," noted. "During the entire day the links presented a scene of gaiety and animation." Tommy's friends kept saying a match would take his mind off his grief, if only for a few hours, and wasn't that what he needed? His father thought so. "Just when you want to lay down and die, a good tight match will clear your brain," Tom said. Tommy was more inclined to take long, late-evening walks or to sit and drink, a habit he indulged more often as the days grew shorter. But in early October, a month after Meg died, he agreed to play again. Along with Davie Strath, Mungo Park, and Bob Cosgrove, the Musselburgh stroke-shaver, he entered the 1875 St. Andrews Professional Tournament. "Tommy...had been out of practice," The Field The Field reported, adding that he lacked "his usual force and brilliancy" off the tee but swung with his usual flair "whenever the iron or cleek was put into his hands." Wearing a black armband that marked him as St. Andrews' youngest widower, he shot a tepid 93 and finished fifth. reported, adding that he lacked "his usual force and brilliancy" off the tee but swung with his usual flair "whenever the iron or cleek was put into his hands." Wearing a black armband that marked him as St. Andrews' youngest widower, he shot a tepid 93 and finished fifth.

Next he joined his father in a foursomes match against Strath and another professional, Bob Martin. With hundreds of spectators in his wake, Tommy flashed his old form, drilling drives and spoon shots into the wind, rapping putts that thudded into the back of the cup on their way down. He and Tom held a four-hole lead over Strath and Martin as they stood on the fourteenth tee. "The match seemed to be finished," according to Tulloch, "when Tommy broke down." Suddenly he could do nothing right. He bunkered his drives, foozled approach shots. Too weak or halfhearted to summon up a rally at the end, Tommy plodded through the Valley of Sin to the eighteenth green. "They lost every one of the remaining 5 holes and, consequently, the match."

On the night of October 27 the ship Fantee Fantee ran aground in heavy seas just north of St. Andrews Castle. The ran aground in heavy seas just north of St. Andrews Castle. The Fantee Fantee turned sideways and began to break apart in rocks a hundred yards offsh.o.r.e. Sailors lit torches to signal their distress. Few of them could swim, for knowing how to swim was thought to jinx a sailor, daring the sea to sink his ship. Seamen said they'd prefer a quick drowning to a long, losing fight to stay alive. And even Captain Webb, the famed Channel swimmer, would have struggled in that night's thundering waves. The St. Andrews lifeboat fought the storm for several minutes before turning back. turned sideways and began to break apart in rocks a hundred yards offsh.o.r.e. Sailors lit torches to signal their distress. Few of them could swim, for knowing how to swim was thought to jinx a sailor, daring the sea to sink his ship. Seamen said they'd prefer a quick drowning to a long, losing fight to stay alive. And even Captain Webb, the famed Channel swimmer, would have struggled in that night's thundering waves. The St. Andrews lifeboat fought the storm for several minutes before turning back.

Like the meteor shower of '72, the wreck of the Fantee Fantee brought townspeople flocking to the sh.o.r.e. Tommy was probably in the crowd who watched the town's rocket brigade set up two cannons in the castle ramparts. The rocket brigade was the sailors' last chance. With blasts that shook the castle walls, its cannons launched rocket-driven lifelines toward the ship. "Port fires and blue lights were burned," the brought townspeople flocking to the sh.o.r.e. Tommy was probably in the crowd who watched the town's rocket brigade set up two cannons in the castle ramparts. The rocket brigade was the sailors' last chance. With blasts that shook the castle walls, its cannons launched rocket-driven lifelines toward the ship. "Port fires and blue lights were burned," the Citizen Citizen reported, "which illuminated, with an almost unearthly light, the surroundings, the vessel as well as the Castle ruin, and lit up hundreds of pale anxious faces of those cl.u.s.tered on its walls." After several tries, one of the lifelines found its target. Sailors lashed it down and began pulling themselves hand-over-hand through waves and rocks to the beach. "As man after man was brought safely to land, a cheer rent the air." Cheering would have echoed oddly in Tommy's ear. Aside from a few shouts during his failed outings of the past month, the last cheering he'd heard was on the day he and his father played the Park brothers at North Berwick. reported, "which illuminated, with an almost unearthly light, the surroundings, the vessel as well as the Castle ruin, and lit up hundreds of pale anxious faces of those cl.u.s.tered on its walls." After several tries, one of the lifelines found its target. Sailors lashed it down and began pulling themselves hand-over-hand through waves and rocks to the beach. "As man after man was brought safely to land, a cheer rent the air." Cheering would have echoed oddly in Tommy's ear. Aside from a few shouts during his failed outings of the past month, the last cheering he'd heard was on the day he and his father played the Park brothers at North Berwick.

The next morning, men with axes rowed out to the Fantee Fantee and chopped it up for salvage. By nightfall there was nothing left of the ship but its men, drinking and singing in St. Andrews pubs. They were the lucky ones. A month later a storm took down three ships and thirty-seven men. and chopped it up for salvage. By nightfall there was nothing left of the ship but its men, drinking and singing in St. Andrews pubs. They were the lucky ones. A month later a storm took down three ships and thirty-seven men.

"At this time there was a great golfing family from Westward Ho, playing splendid golf," Tulloch wrote, "winning great victories wherever they went." The golfing family's patriarch was Captain George Molesworth, a wealthy amateur who played with only three clubs: a driver he called Faith, a cleek known as Hope and a putter called Charity. Captain Molesworth took out advertis.e.m.e.nts in The Field The Field challenging any other father-son pair to play him and one of his three sons, the best of whom was eighteen-year-old Arthur. Tom and Tommy had never responded to Molesworth's challenge. They had nothing to gain by playing English dabblers who would want strokes or odds in a match against professionals. Then, in the fall of 1875, Arthur Molesworth challenged Tommy to single combat. challenging any other father-son pair to play him and one of his three sons, the best of whom was eighteen-year-old Arthur. Tom and Tommy had never responded to Molesworth's challenge. They had nothing to gain by playing English dabblers who would want strokes or odds in a match against professionals. Then, in the fall of 1875, Arthur Molesworth challenged Tommy to single combat.

The men of the Rose Club were all for it. What better tonic than demolishing a teenaged golf celebrity from England? "Tommy's friends readily entered into it with the view of rousing him," wrote George Bruce, "trying to infuse new life and vigour into his withered feelings." Tommy's friends pushed him to play the lad whose victory in the club championship at Westward Ho had made him an amateur prodigy, at least in his father's eyes. The Field The Field, parroting the Captain's claims, informed readers that young Arthur "has been successful in matches against a professional player from St. Andrews." That player was, happily for himself, not named. Whoever he was, he was not near Tommy's level and the Molesworths, knowing as much, set daunting terms: Arthur would play Tommy Morris only if he got six strokes per round in a punishing six-day, twelve-round match. Tommy would thus be spotting young Molesworth seventy-two strokes. The bait: 50. Tommy said yes.

"Young Tom has not been in robust health for some time, but he is now steadily at work and seems to be regaining his wonted vigour," the Citizen Citizen declared, adding that he was "not playing such a strong game as he did in his great matches against Strath...but on the other hand, he has generally been able to play well at the proper time, and the occasion may bring the play." declared, adding that he was "not playing such a strong game as he did in his great matches against Strath...but on the other hand, he has generally been able to play well at the proper time, and the occasion may bring the play."

On the last morning of November, Arthur Molesworth arrived at St. Andrews' first teeing-ground for his moment in golf history. Six years younger than Tommy, the eighteen-year-old had the high forehead and wispy mustache of a university man. He shook Tommy's hand in weather The Field The Field called "exceedingly cold, a strong breeze prevailing off the sea with occasional blasts of snow and hail." Little David Ayton, shivering as he cradled Tommy's clubs under his arm, teed up a gutty and stepped back, giving his man room to waggle. Thus began a match that would unfold in what called "exceedingly cold, a strong breeze prevailing off the sea with occasional blasts of snow and hail." Little David Ayton, shivering as he cradled Tommy's clubs under his arm, teed up a gutty and stepped back, giving his man room to waggle. Thus began a match that would unfold in what The Field The Field would call the worst weather the game had ever seen. would call the worst weather the game had ever seen.

Molesworth announced that he would take his strokes at the second, fifth, and eighth holes of each nine. He made them count in the early going. Tommy fell behind in the first round, hitting drives that fell short of his usual distance, but revived enough to take the last three holes. After a luncheon break he had a lapse at the fourth hole, Ginger Beer: Tapping in to win the hole while Molesworth's ball sat on the lip of the cup, he misfired. His putt brushed the other ball and both b.a.l.l.s fell in-the hole was halved. Still, he finished the day two holes up despite his six-stroke handicap.

The next day, Wednesday, began with a half after Tommy chipped to the first green from an ice-crusted puddle. He kept his two-hole lead until they reached the short twelfth, which had bedeviled him off and on since its scab-turfed days as the Hole o' Sh.e.l.l. "Mr. Molesworth secured the hole, reducing the lead against him to one," The Field The Field related, using "Mr." to signify young Molesworth's status as a gentleman. "After this, however, the game went steadily in favour of Young Tom, who had warmed up into his usual style." On the long fourteenth, where the challenger got a stroke, Molesworth topped his drive into a pot bunker. Soon Tommy was seven holes ahead. That afternoon Molesworth nearly drove the green with a gust-aided drive at the 300-yard Heathery Hole, but Tommy kept the pressure on, halving the holes on which Molesworth got a stroke, winning more than his share of the rest. At the end of two days' play he led by twelve holes. A third of the way through their wintry marathon, the Englishman looked beaten. related, using "Mr." to signify young Molesworth's status as a gentleman. "After this, however, the game went steadily in favour of Young Tom, who had warmed up into his usual style." On the long fourteenth, where the challenger got a stroke, Molesworth topped his drive into a pot bunker. Soon Tommy was seven holes ahead. That afternoon Molesworth nearly drove the green with a gust-aided drive at the 300-yard Heathery Hole, but Tommy kept the pressure on, halving the holes on which Molesworth got a stroke, winning more than his share of the rest. At the end of two days' play he led by twelve holes. A third of the way through their wintry marathon, the Englishman looked beaten.

On Friday The Field The Field's correspondent telegraphed an account that must have pleased his London editors, who had puffed the "Great Golf Match." Molesworth's tidy 45 on the outward nine that day beat Tommy's 47 straight up, and with his strokes he chopped three holes off his deficit. The golfers were trading blows like equals. "That an amateur from England, a stranger to the green, should have ventured into golfing Scotland," The Field The Field gushed, "required pluck, and Mr. Molesworth is not deficient in this quality." gushed, "required pluck, and Mr. Molesworth is not deficient in this quality."

On Sat.u.r.day, December 4, the links were top-dressed with snow. White golf b.a.l.l.s would be invisible, so the players used gutties that had been painted red. Tom Morris dispatched workmen with shovels and brooms to clear the putting-greens. Tom, puffing his pipe, followed the players while the tall, stiff-backed Captain Molesworth peered over smaller members of a gallery that would number more than a thousand before the day was out. Young Arthur Molesworth led early. Making a show of playing in shirtsleeves while everyone else wore jackets and wool hats, he capitalized on his handicap strokes while Tommy struggled to navigate icy greens and bunkers decked with snow. The challenger had a putt to win the Home Hole but three-putted from point-blank range, his ball skidding twice around the cup. That boosted Tommy's edge to nine with four rounds remaining.

On Sunday they rested, watching the sky. Dusk came early, a sign of a storm on the way. Most of St. Andrews was asleep when the first flakes came down, followed by more and more until the night sky was as thick and pale as Tom's whiskers. "On Monday...it was doubtful if the match could be proceeded with," The Field The Field reported. "A heavy fall of snow had taken place during the night and had drifted into wreaths of considerable depth, while overhead the sky hung thick." Tommy wanted to stay inside. Chasing a red ball through boot-high drifts was "no' golf." Several friends urged him to play, hoping that victory would bolster his spirits, while others told him to sit by the fire with a cup of tea to warm his hands, and perhaps a drop of something stronger to warm the inner man. Tommy had brought a new caddie with him, none other than Davie Strath, and Strath had no desire to see Tommy risk his health to finish off Arthur Molesworth. When the umpire declared the links unplayable, Strath made ready to lead his friend home. But the Molesworths objected: "Mr. Molesworth and his father, Capt. Molesworth, stated it would inconvenience them to delay." reported. "A heavy fall of snow had taken place during the night and had drifted into wreaths of considerable depth, while overhead the sky hung thick." Tommy wanted to stay inside. Chasing a red ball through boot-high drifts was "no' golf." Several friends urged him to play, hoping that victory would bolster his spirits, while others told him to sit by the fire with a cup of tea to warm his hands, and perhaps a drop of something stronger to warm the inner man. Tommy had brought a new caddie with him, none other than Davie Strath, and Strath had no desire to see Tommy risk his health to finish off Arthur Molesworth. When the umpire declared the links unplayable, Strath made ready to lead his friend home. But the Molesworths objected: "Mr. Molesworth and his father, Capt. Molesworth, stated it would inconvenience them to delay."

"I'll play," Tommy said.

In The Field The Field's account he "waived his objections, and, under a protest from the umpire, who gave it as his opinion that it was not weather for golf, the match was at once proceeded with."

Why play on frozen links with bunkers full of snow? According to George Bruce, Tommy felt a duty to friends who had bet on him and who would lose their money if he quit: "He repeatedly remarked to his friends and backers that but for them he would not have continued."

Even with Tom's workmen shoveling and sweeping, the greens were unputtable. The players chipped on and then chipped their "putts," trying to flip their gutties into the hole as if they were stymied. That should have given Tommy an edge, but he lost the third hole when Molesworth's long chip bounced into the cup. The challenger had his own misfortune at the next, the Ginger Beer Hole, where his tee shot found a patch of snow "and in driving out the ball split." It was hard enough hitting a frozen gutty that stung your hands with every full swing; worse to try chipping and putting with two-thirds of a ball.

"The next hole was played amid a blinding shower of snow. Mr. Molesworth's ball was buried in a snowdrift, and it took him two to get out; but Tom being short in putting, the hole was halved." This was comedy, but Tommy looked heart-sick. Reaching for the lump of pine tar in his pocket, trying to keep his hands on the club as he swung, he was on his way to a score of 112, thirty-five strokes over his course record. Molesworth was struggling even more, falling thirteen holes behind, but Tommy seemed not to notice. "His heart was not in the game," Tulloch wrote. "It was, indeed, not very far away-in the snow-clad grave in the old cathedral churchyard, where his wife and baby had been so lately laid."

Molesworth's best hope was that Tommy would collapse, as he had in his last foursomes match, or simply give up and leave the challenger to claim the stakes. Instead, Tommy rallied. To his friends it seemed he was emerging from shadows, regaining his powers. On Wednesday the eighth of December he and Davie Strath made their way to the first hole through ranks of applauding spectators wrapped in wool scarves and fur hats. The novelty of watching golf in curling weather had attracted such a teeming, avid crowd that the umpire called for a rope, another of the game's first gallery ropes, "to prevent crushing."

Strath, lugging Tommy's clubs to the Eden and back, did his best to help his friend through the last two rounds. He urged Tommy on. He picked Tommy's ball from the hole, teed it up, and handed over a driver that Tommy swung without a word. They were in accord now, dead-set on finishing, snow and ice be d.a.m.ned. "The snow still covered the green," The Field The Field noted, "and frost being very heavy the play, especially putting, was rendered even worse than on the previous day." Molesworth's handicap stroke got him a hole at the long Hole o' Cross, where both players made nine, but he lost the High Hole when his drive hopped into "long gra.s.s and snow, where he lost two strokes, and his fourth landed deep in a bunker among snow, and it took another two strokes to get the ball fairly noted, "and frost being very heavy the play, especially putting, was rendered even worse than on the previous day." Molesworth's handicap stroke got him a hole at the long Hole o' Cross, where both players made nine, but he lost the High Hole when his drive hopped into "long gra.s.s and snow, where he lost two strokes, and his fourth landed deep in a bunker among snow, and it took another two strokes to get the ball fairly en route en route to the hole." to the hole."

Tommy had one burst of brilliance left. He took the short tenth and treacherous eleventh "with four and three respectively, play which could not be excelled even with the green in its best condition." The long trudge ended on the eighth hole of that day's afternoon round, the 206th hole of the match. By then the greens had thawed. Tommy fired a 150-yard bolt to the Short Hole green and banged in the putt for a deuce on a day when other holes were won with sevens. His backers hooted and shook their fists. What a finish! The last hole of the year's last match was vintage Tommy-perfectly played.

All evening his friends drank to his victory and his health. Tommy drank and smiled but seemed not much more festive than Davie at his most sepulchral. He had hit some clever shots and felt some delight in doing that, even now. But what he felt most of all was cold. He was spent.

"After the match," Tulloch wrote, "he continued to be seen on the links and in his old haunts, looking ill and depressed." Those who loved him worried that Tommy had risked his health by playing for a solid week in bone-chilling cold. But later in December he showed new signs of life. Instead of drinking alone he would meet his brother-in-law James Hunter, Davie Strath, George Bruce, and other Rose Club members for dinner at the Criterion or the Cross Keys. He ate boiled beef and potatoes, showing an appet.i.te that heartened his friends. This rally was in character, they thought. On or off the course, in sickness or health, Tommy's spirit rose to the occasion.

Just before Christmas he spent two days in Edinburgh. Returning to St. Andrews in time to take communion during Watch Night services on Christmas Eve, he met his hometown companions for a late dinner. Perhaps Hunter or Bruce offered a holiday toast to the coming year of 1876. It would have been a muted toast, spoken softly, all of them mindful of Tommy's regrets.

It was near eleven when Tommy came through his father's front door that night, bringing the cold in with him. He went to look in on his mother and found her awake. Nancy, now sixty years old, was so ill with back and stomach ailments that she struggled to sit up in bed. Still she brightened at the sight of her eldest, her "extra gift from G.o.d" grown up into a man. Tommy sat and talked with her for a time before going upstairs to his bed. A few minutes later his father poked his head into Tommy's room to say goodnight. Then Tom made his way around the quiet house, snuffing out the last lamps, and the Morris place was dark until morning.

Tom was up early as always. Soon the fire was lit, a tea-kettle whistling. He and Nancy had their breakfast. So did Jimmy and Jack. An hour pa.s.sed and Tommy still hadn't appeared, so Tom went upstairs to wake him.

Tommy was still in bed. His father stood beside the bed, gazing down at his son's handsome face, as peaceful as if Tommy were in dreamless sleep. There was a spot of blood at one corner of his mouth.

"On the morning of Christmas-Day they found him dead in his bed," Pastor Boyd recalled, "and so Tommy and his poor young wife were not long divided."

The Citizen Citizen was blunter: "Retiring a little after eleven o'clock on Friday evening, he was found in bed next morning a lifeless corpse. A little blood had oozed from his mouth, and the doctor who was called said that death had resulted from internal hemorrhage." was blunter: "Retiring a little after eleven o'clock on Friday evening, he was found in bed next morning a lifeless corpse. A little blood had oozed from his mouth, and the doctor who was called said that death had resulted from internal hemorrhage."

Tommy Morris was twenty-four years old.

Generations of Scots have claimed that Young Tom Morris died of a broken heart. "It makes a nice story, but it is s.h.i.te," says David Malcolm of St. Andrews, who is a surgeon as well as a golf historian. "He died of a pulmonary embolism due to an inherited weakness. He could have gone at any time." And yet Tommy died at a particular time, three months after sailing home too late to be with his wife as she died in childbirth, three months in which he drank more than he had before, walked St. Andrews' cold streets late at night and played a week-long, two-hundred-hole match through a snowstorm. Grief, drink, and the cold may have weakened him until his pulmonary artery ruptured, filling his lungs with blood, drowning him in his sleep.

"The news spread like wild-fire over the links and in the city," Tulloch wrote. "Christmas greetings were checked on the lips by the question, 'Have you heard the news? Young Tommy is dead!' or the whispered, 'It can't be true, is it, that Tommy was found dead in bed this morning?'"

Now it was Tom who was stricken. When John Sorley, the town registrar, came around with the death registry it was Jimmy, not his father, who signed on the family's behalf. The census of 1871 had identified Tommy as "Champion Golfer of Scotland"; the death register of 1875 cast him as "Thomas Morris, Widower." And now his father had a new round of funeral arrangements to make. Most woeful of all was the chesting service on the Tuesday after Christmas. Friends and relatives gathered in Tom's parlor to talk and pray over legs of lamb and gla.s.ses of claret. They wrapped Tommy's body in a pure white linen mort cloth. Then Tommy rode the men's hands, including his father's callused, wavering hands, into his coffin. After a last prayer they screwed the coffin shut. They buried him the next day.

"I have a picture in my mind of the popular young Tom," the golfer Edward Blackwell wrote of his youth in St. Andrews. "I remember, too, his sad and sudden death, the gloom it cast over St. Andrews, and in some respects the most imposing funeral that has ever taken place at St. Andrews."

Tom Morris, who never wasted a penny in his long life, spent more than 100 to bury his son. He hired a gleaming hea.r.s.e pulled by black horses festooned with long black ostrich feathers. Top-hatted attendants in silk scarves walked ahead of the hea.r.s.e as it carried Tommy to the Cathedral cemetery. Half the town followed the hea.r.s.e. The cortege was headed by black-clad Morris men: Tom, Jimmy, and sixteen-year-old Jack, pulling himself down South Street in his Sunday-best suit. Tommy's brother-in-law James Hunter was there along with other Rose Club members, R&A gentlemen, professional golfers, caddies, fisher-folk, and hundreds of others, many carrying wreaths of evergreens and artificial flowers. Scottish families had been ruined by less lavish rites, and Tom would soon turn to Hunter for a 200 loan. But in these last bitter hours of 1875 Tom was determined to give his son a champion's funeral, a farewell that their town would never forget.

"The remains of poor Tommy were yesterday followed to the grave by a large cortege of persons from all quarters," the Citizen Citizen reported on December 30, "and the city, usually dull at this season, wore its gloomiest as the mournful procession deployed through the streets." At the cemetery, where the Morris plot had been dug up yet again, Pastor Boyd prayed over Tommy's coffin and spoke of resurrection. Tom watched as the coffin was lowered into the grave that held Tommy's wife and stillborn child and, below them, the bones of Wee Tom, buried twenty-five years earlier. reported on December 30, "and the city, usually dull at this season, wore its gloomiest as the mournful procession deployed through the streets." At the cemetery, where the Morris plot had been dug up yet again, Pastor Boyd prayed over Tommy's coffin and spoke of resurrection. Tom watched as the coffin was lowered into the grave that held Tommy's wife and stillborn child and, below them, the bones of Wee Tom, buried twenty-five years earlier.

For months afterward, Tom wore a black armband to show that he was in mourning for Tommy. On Sundays, when he kept the links closed and spent much of the day in church, he wore the armband over the sleeve of his tweed jacket while performing his duties as a church elder. One of his duties was to pa.s.s around the money bag that functioned as a collection plate. Another was to hear parishioners' confessions, and it is fair to ask whether Tom second-guessed himself while listening to the Sunday whispers of truants, blasphemers, and impure thinkers. Did Tom Morris feel that he too had something to repent?

An autographed photo of Tom in his seventies, his shoes shiny even in a bunker.

THIRTEEN.

Grand Old Man.

A quarter of a century is a very little thing in this city's thousand years," wrote Pastor Boyd in quarter of a century is a very little thing in this city's thousand years," wrote Pastor Boyd in Twenty-Five Years of St. Andrews Twenty-Five Years of St. Andrews, "but it is a great thing, and a long time, to us who have lived through it. It has changed those who survive."

During Tommy's lifetime, the most pivotal quarter-century in golf history, Tom Morris became the first true golf professional and Tommy became the game's leading man. Now that time was past and Tom, walking uphill from the cemetery, felt the weight of his fifty-four years. He was often quoted in dialect in those days, once by an English writer who heard the mourning father say of Tommy's death, "It was like as if ma vera sowle was a'thegither gane oot o' me."

Did Tom regret letting the North Berwick match go on while Margaret died? If so, he took solace in his faith. Thy will be done Thy will be done. And there was at last some good news for the Morrises in the first months of 1876. Lizzie was expecting a baby. Perhaps Tom would have a grandchild after all. He felt a pang when Lizzie sailed with her husband to America, but in March he received a telegram announcing the birth of his grandson, born to Lizzie and James Hunter in Darien, Georgia. They named their child Tommy Morris Hunter.

Lizzie's son was never healthy. The baby died in May, only two months old. This news was another blow to Tom, but he carried on. What else could he do? Each morning he changed into his swimming long johns. He padded out to the dunes, hung his jacket with its black armband on a whin bush, steeled himself and waded into the bay, which was icy in May, merely frosty in June. After his dip he dried off, dressed for work, and spent another day supervising workmen ("More sand!"), inspecting caddies, tapping the club secretary's window, replacing divots (a visitor was amazed to see the great man "taking up bits of cruelly cut turf and placing them in blank s.p.a.ces with a press of his foot"), and partnering R&A golfers as if his soul were intact.

Tom played a leading role that fall when Prince Leopold drove himself in as captain of the R&A. This was the Royal and Ancient Golf Club's proudest moment, the first royal visit to St. Andrews in more than 200 years. Crowds surged toward the prince's royal railcar at every stop it made on its journey east through Fife; in one village a thousand people turned out to see the train speed by without stopping. On the night of the prince's arrival in St. Andrews, townspeople lit every lamp in every building, giving the town a glow that outshone the half-moon that came out that night. At eight the next morning the hemophiliac prince, surrounded by his fretful retinue, stepped from his carriage to the first teeing-ground. Prince Leopold was terrified. How could he hit a golf ball with so many of his subjects watching-and so many caddies, hoping to grab the royal gutty, crowding so close to the tee? The greenkeeper came to his rescue. Tom Morris bowed, tipping his cap, and encouraged His Royal Highness to take a smooth, steady swing with his eye fixed on the ball. Tom teed up a ball, using a bit more sand than usual to add height to the shot. Prince Leopold waggled. He swung, the cannon sounded and the ball sailed over all the caddies-a drive worthy of the crowd's delighted applause.

The prince blinked. "How was that done, Tom?" he asked. "I never got the ball off the ground before." After luncheon and a fox hunt, he and Tom beat two R&A golfers in a six-hole match. In the gallery stood a dark-haired woman who had come from Oxford to see her friend the prince: twenty-three-year-old Alice Liddell, for whom Lewis Carroll had written Alice in Wonderland Alice in Wonderland.

Later that week came the second Open ever held at St. Andrews. Davie Strath led for most of the day and had the Claret Jug within reach as he played the Road Hole. Unluckily for him, the R&A had failed to reserve the links for the tournament, leaving the professionals to share the course with the usual foursomes of gentleman golfers. Playing the Road Hole in semidarkness at the end of a long, slow round, Strath saw a crowd around the green. Spectators, he thought. He let fly and watched his approach shot bean a local upholsterer named Hutton who was lining up a putt. Mister Hutton keeled over as if he'd been shot. He was still rubbing his head as Strath, shaken, putted out for a six, which he followed with another six on the Home Hole to tie Bob Martin for first place in the Open. But tournament officials questioned Strath's score. He may have played out of turn, they said, and skulling Mr. Hutton may have kept his ball on the green and saved him a stroke. If he won his playoff with Martin tomorrow morning, they said, they might still disqualify him.

Strath, who had defied another red-coated committee on the day he declared himself a professional, refused to play under such a threat. "Settle it now or I won't be here in the morning," he said. The officials refused, Davie stuck to his word, and Martin claimed the Claret Jug by walking the course the next morning.

Tom Morris came in fourth, his best Open finish since 1872, and then went home to help tend his wife in the gray stone house at 6 Pilmour Links Road. Nancy, sixty-one years old, was in constant pain. A white bedpan called a "slipper" was a boon to her. The slipper was a ceramic wedge that slid under a patient who could not sit up. Nancy lamented her aches and the indignity of using such a thing. She lamented the loss of her children and grandchildren, and on the first of November, 1876, All Saints' Day, she "joined them in heaven," as Pastor Boyd put it, leaving Tom to arrange yet another Morris funeral. After which, as before, he returned to his duties in his shop and on the links. Old Tom was a marvel, people said. In little more than a year he had buried Tommy, Tommy's wife and their stillborn son, grandson Tommy Morris Hunter, and now Nancy. Five dead and Tom still standing. When a writer asked about the cause of Tommy's death, Tom said he didn't believe that grief could kill a man. "People say Tommy died of a broken heart," he said, "but if that was true, I wouldn't be here."

Two Septembers later Tom, Jimmy, and several hundred others gathered around the Morris plot in the Cathedral cemetery. Sixty Scottish and English golf societies had taken up a collection to pay for a Tommy Morris monument in the cemetery. It was a sign of golf's growing importance that a representative of the Crown, John Inglis, Lord Justice General of Scotland, presided over the unveiling. The monument, which still stands in the south wall of the churchyard, shows Tommy in his tweeds and his Balmoral bonnet, preparing to drive a ball over the cemetery to the sea. "In memory of 'Tommy,' son of Thomas Morris," reads the plaque at his feet. "Deeply regretted by numerous friends and all golfers, he thrice in succession won the Championship Belt and held it without envy, his many amiable qualities being no less acknowledged than his golfing achievements."

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Inglis, addressing the somber gallery standing four-deep around him, "we are met to inaugurate a monument to the memory of the late Tommy Morris, younger." With that the Lord Justice General nodded toward the honoree's father. "You will allow me to say that we have some consolation still, for we still have a Tom Morris left-Old Tom-and I may venture to say that there is life in that old dog yet."

After Tommy died, Tom cut back on the money matches he had lived for. He devoted more time to promoting golf and making sure that golfers remembered what Tommy had done. Tom went on to lay out more than sixty courses, including County Down, Dornoch, Macrihanish, and Muirfield. Building a course-clearing whins, digging and filling bunkers, turfing greens-could cost 100 to 300, but Tom's fee for designing one never varied: He charged 1 per day, often completing his work in a single day. And wherever he went in Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales, he spun tales of his famous son.

Old Tom's rustic charm played well on the road. After hiking some barren, windburned heath for half an hour he would turn to his hosts and say, "Surely Providence meant this to be a golf links." Each course he laid out was "the finest in the kingdom, second only to St. Andrews," at least until he laid out the next one. Tom showed novice greenkeepers how to top-dress and rake putting-greens. He pioneered inland golf by introducing horse-drawn mowers for fairways and push-mowers for greens. Beyond that his work as a course-maker consisted largely of walking and pointing. "Put a hole here. Put another over there," he would say, leaving plenty of time for a free lunch before he headed back to the railway station. If he stayed all day it was often to be feted as a visiting dignitary. After a singer serenaded him at one lavish dinner, Tom said, "I did no' think much of her diction." No one had the heart to tell him she'd been singing in French.

Still the old greenkeeper was sly enough to have some fun with an Englishman who saw him rolling putts one day.

"What! Do you play the game?" the man said.

"Oh, aye," said Tom Morris. "I've tried it once or twice."

In 1886 Tom went to Dornoch, in the Highlands 110 miles north of St. Andrews, a cold whisper from the Arctic Circle, to extend the links there to eighteen holes. The Dornoch Golf Club's junior champion was a boy named Donald Ross, a carpenter's apprentice who tagged along while the old man hiked the dunes overlooking Dornoch Firth. Five years later Ross left home to work for Tom at St. Andrews. He may have helped Tom build a new course on the ancient links there. Called simply the New Course, Tom's layout was in some ways better than the original, which has been known ever since as the Old Course. Ross returned to Dornoch for a stint as the club's greenkeeper before moving to America in 1899, his head full of pictures of Tom's links: elevated greens; gra.s.sy hollows and hungry bunkers; subtle deceptions that rewarded local knowledge. Over the next half-century he would design Pinehurst #2, Seminole, Oak Hill, Oakland Hills, and the more than 500 other courses that made Donald Ross the most important golf-course architect of all. Even if Tom Morris had never seen Prestwick or planted a flag at County Down, his influence on Ross would still make him a crucial figure in the game's evolution. But Ross was only one of his disciples. Charles Blair Macdonald kept a locker in Tom's shop before he crossed the Atlantic to build America's first eighteen-hole course at the Chicago Golf Club and lay out the National Golf Links of America, a bit of Scotland in Southampton, New York. Alister Mackenzie studied Tom's handiwork before designing Cypress Point in California, Royal Melbourne in Australia and, with Bobby Jones, Augusta National; Mackenzie t.i.tled his book on course design The Spirit of St. Andrews The Spirit of St. Andrews. Albert Tillinghast, who learned the game from Tom, went on to lay out Baltusrol, Bethpage, and Winged Foot. Harry Colt, who spent boyhood summers at St. Andrews, improved Tom's Muirfield links before working with the American George Crump to fashion Pine Valley, a course many regard as the world's finest. In the last a.n.a.lysis Tom Morris's chief contribution to the game may have been in course design, a multibillion-dollar business that grew from the barrow, spade, and shovel he used at Prestwick and St. Andrews.

Not far from Alister Mackenzie's locker in Tom's workshop was another wooden locker, a relic that held Tommy's clubs and club-making tools. "Undisturbed since he last touched it," Tom often said. But he often disturbed it. While showing a visitor around the shop, filling the fellow's ears with well-worn stories, Tom would open the locker and pluck out a club. "Tommy's last putter," he would call it, or "Tommy's last niblick," placing the stick in the visitor's hand. "Take it-keep it." Of course his workshop turned out putters and niblicks by the gross; this so-called relic, part of a growing supply of "Tommy's last clubs," could be replaced tomorrow. Cynics would call him a s...o...b..at, but Tom knew that every golfer who left with one of those clubs would spread the gospel of Tommy Morris.

Tom surprised himself by playing better as his beard turned white. He couldn't drive the ball 180 yards anymore, or even 150-"I can no' get through the ball," he told Andra Kirkaldy-but his yips disappeared. Tom Morris was now the maker of short putts. "I never miss them now," he said. After winning a tournament at Hoylake he celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday by shooting 81 at St. Andrews, only four strokes off Tommy's famous course record. He did it with ten 5s, seven 4s and a trey-the only time Tom ever went around the old links without a 6 on his card. "No' that ill for an old horse!" he crowed.

By then Old Tom had another nickname. He was golf's "G.O.M.," short for "grand old man." The term was borrowed from Prime Minister William Gladstone, the original G.O.M. (whose rival Disraeli said the letters stood for "G.o.d's only mistake"). Twelve years younger than Gladstone, Tom was no less grand to golfers, though his latest honorific puzzled one grumpy old Musselburgher. The aging, ailing Willie Park had outplayed Tom through most of their careers only to see his rival hailed as the game's patron saint.

In 1879, at a tournament in haunted North Berwick, Tom and Willie had finished far behind younger professionals while drawing the day's biggest crowds. Three years later Tom did his fellow warhorse a favor: He agreed to play Park for 200. Tom was sixty years old, Park was forty-nine. Their last battle was, in effect, the first senior golf event. "No match of recent years has created anything like the excitement attaching to this," proclaimed The Field. The Field. Tom, who had little to gain, made the match because it would bring Willie one last week of headlines as well as a hefty fee. Still Tom's sympathy ended at the first teeing-ground. With more than a thousand spectators following the match, he stung the hole with sharp short putts and beat Park by four. Tom, who had little to gain, made the match because it would bring Willie one last week of headlines as well as a hefty fee. Still Tom's sympathy ended at the first teeing-ground. With more than a thousand spectators following the match, he stung the hole with sharp short putts and beat Park by four.

Soon a man whose sole vice was his briar pipe saw his photograph on cigarette packages. Pictures of Tom Morris seemed to be everywhere. Thomas Rodger, the calotype artist who had photographed Tommy in the Championship Belt, superimposed an image of Tom over an image of a river to make a postcard showing Old Tom Morris "walking on water." Tom wanted no part of such blasphemy, but the card was a bestseller.

Golfers from as far off as India and America wrote to the venerable Morris, whose word was law wherever the game was played. One summer a St. Andrews lad named Freddie Tait, son of the professor who had painted golf b.a.l.l.s with glowing phosphorus, hit a drive that tore a hole in a bystander's hat. Tom told young Tait to buy the man a new hat. "Be glad 'tis only a hat you'll buy," he said, "and not a coffin." It was a rare penalty for Tait, who was golden like Tommy, so lucky that when he dropped a hunting knife while wading in the bay, he found the knife by stepping on it-its blade sticking straight up between two of his toes. He grew up to be a gentleman golfer and soldier. After winning the Amateur Championship twice and getting shot in the leg during the Boer War in 1899, Freddie Tait rushed back into battle a month later and was shot in the heart. He was thirty. By then Prince Leopold had slipped on wet stairs at the yacht club in Cannes, France, cracking his knee and dying in a haze of blood and morphine. He too was thirty. Two years after that Tom's son-in-law, James Hunter, died in Georgia at age thirty-seven. Lizzie brought her husband's body and her four surviving children home to St. Andrews, where she helped look after Old Tom.

Davie Strath saw his money-match prospects dry up after Tommy died. The melancholy Strath became greenkeeper at North Berwick, then fled to Oz to preserve his health. "Oz" was what Scots called Australia, where warm January afternoons were thought to save consumptives' lives. Davie had begun coughing blood by the time he booked pa.s.sage to Melbourne, a trip that took eighty-four days. His throat closed on the way and he died speechless in 1879, three years before a German scientist identified the tubercle bacillus.

Jack Morris, Tommy's paraplegic brother, worked late in his father's workshop on the night of February 21, 1893. Jack, thirty-three years old, had been "making golf b.a.l.l.s up to a late hour," according to the Citizen Citizen, "and on retiring to rest was in his usual health." He died in his bed. "It is understood death was caused by a spasm of the heart." In fact Jack's heart may have stopped after his pulmonary artery ruptured, just as Tommy's had done.

"Tom has had his share of trial," a friend wrote. "His wife and children are dead, save two-Jimmy and his only daughter, a young widow." Still Tom kept his chin aimed toward heaven. Being gloomy was a bit of a sin, he said, because it suggested that we know the Lord's business better than He does. All Tom knew for certain was that the game he and Tommy loved, the game poor Jack, Prince Leopold, Lang Willie, Colonel Fairlie, Lord Eglinton, Willie Park, and countless others all loved, was thriving. There had been only seven golf societies in Britain in 1800, and a dozen in Tom's youth. By 1880 there were sixty. By 1890 there were 357. By 1900 there would be 2,330.

In the fall of 1895, twenty years after Tommy died, Tom played in his last Open. He was seventy-four years old, a deadeye with the putter but too weak to muscle the ball from a heavy lie in one of his bunkers. Attended by a crowd that had more than its share of gray whiskers, he came in seventy shots behind winner J.H. Taylor, the same Johnny Taylor from Devon who had mistaken Tom for St. Andrew thirty years before. And with that, Tom bowed out of the tournament he helped create. He had played in twenty-seven Open Championships, including the first fourteen, winning four times and striking more than 5,000 shots in Open compet.i.tion. Now he was content to light his pipe and watch younger men play, though he still served as starter when the tournament returned to St. Andrews, giving each pairing a word of encouragement before nodding and saying, "You may go now, gentlemen." He also teed up the incoming R&A captain at each fall's Driving-In ceremony. Unlike Tommy, he never chafed at serving other men. "I've always tried-as my business it was-to make myself pleasant to them," Tom said of his employers, "and they've been awful pleasant to me."

In 1898, Lizzie Morris died at age forty-five and was buried in the Morris plot in the Cathedral cemetery. Her father mourned his only daughter, pulling a black armband over his sleeve yet again. He doted on her children, his only grandchildren. And he carried on, bunting a gutty around the links with provosts, professors, and statesmen including a pair of future Prime Ministers, Arthur Balfour and H.H. Asquith. No visitor escaped Tom's promotion of the game and of what he called "my dear native town," or his many tales of Tommy's brilliance.

Even after his back bent under the weight of his years, Tom never lost his good humor. When a neighbor bought an expensive telescope, golf's G.O.M. took a look at the moon and said, "Faith, sir, she's terrible full o' bunkers." In 1902, the year Tom got a ride in the town's first automobile, the R&A commissioned a portrait of him by Sir George Reid, president of the Royal Scottish Academy. Tom duly reported to Reid's studio in Edinburgh, where he sat for the better part of a week. When the renowned artist asked him to strike a golfing pose, Tom stuck a hand in his pocket and stood frozen in place. Reid asked what he was doing. "Waiting for the other man to begin," Tom said. After Reid's portrait of him went up in the R&A clubhouse, where it still hangs, an observer described Tom's reaction: "He gazed upon it mutely for some time, and then remarked, 'The cap's like mine.'"

In 1906, the year Tom turned eighty-five, Jimmy Morris died at age fifty-two. A good player but never a great one, Tommy's golfing brother had led the 1876 Open with two holes to go only to take nine swings on the Road Hole. He led again at Prestwick in 1878, until Jamie Anderson pipped him with help from an ace at the penultimate hole, where Anderson's ball struck a hill behind the green and rolled back into the cup. Nine years later Jimmy matched Tommy's 77 on their home links and briefly shared the course record, but soon another golfer shot 74. After that, Jimmy lived quietly, managing his father's shop. And after a grand funeral, with flags flying at half-mast all over town, he joined the rising queue of his kin in the Morris plot in the Cathedral cemetery. And still Tom lived on.

In his last years Tom wore a great black overcoat and leaned on a cane. He kept his shoes, heavy brown brogues, polished to a mirror shine. His walks on the links were now confined to the acres near his shop. A collie named Silver, his constant companion, would wait for hours outside the shop, then bound up when Tom emerged and fall in step behind him as he fired up his pipe and set off toward town or teeing-ground.

Tom's visits to the Cathedral churchyard were his hardest work. His rusty knees made it a ch.o.r.e to find safe footing in the gra.s.s. Like any man of eighty-five he was afraid of slipping. Sometimes he leaned on a gravestone. Even in summer the stones were cool to the touch. Here was Allan Robertson's head-high obelisk with its bust of Allan on top. Nearby lay Tom Kidd, the dapper long driver who had used his ribbed cleeks to beat Tommy at the watery Open of '73. Jamie Anderson was here too, in a sad unmarked grave. Tom was surely glad that Jamie's father, Auld Daw, had gone sooner and was therefore spared that knowledge. Auld Daw had often bragged of how he put Jamie through college with coin from his ginger-beer cart. But after winning the Open in 1877, '78, and '79, Jamie developed a thirst for fine whisky that became in time a thirst for whisky of any sort. He went into club-making, drank his meager profits, died poor and got a pauper's burial.

Tom made his way to the cemetery's south wall. By mid-morning the dew had evaporated. The turf was dry-good footing for his shiny brogues. Tom made his way between other families' plots to the Morris plot and Tommy's monument. The statue of Tommy that Lord Justice General Inglis had dedicated in 1877 was nearly life-size, now weathered with age, white paint chipping off the out-of-round ball at the statue's feet. This statue of Tommy had been addressing that ball for twenty-nine years, five years more than Tommy lived.

Near the statue stood the white marker that Tom still thought of as Wee Tom's stone. There were now five more names on it. Tommy, whose name was listed second, would have been angry to see the careless line devoted to Meg ("Margaret Morris or Drennen...who died 11th Septr 1875"), whose maiden name was Drinnen, not Drennen, and who had died on the fourth of September. By the time the stone was carved, no one noticed the errors.

There was no room for more names on Wee Tom's stone. When Tom's time came, he would need a new marker. He knew his time was near. Eighty-six-year-old Tom Morris had lived to see the future through his squinted eyes. He had lived to see the year 1908, when men flew in aeroplanes and sent their voices through wires at lightning speed, and he had read the Ninetieth Psalm enough times to see the words without opening his Bible: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

One day a reporter followed him home. Tom invited the man in for tea. Leading him up the gravel garden path between the shop and his house, Tom climbed a flight of stairs to his sitting room overlooking the links. "He lights a gas stove in his house, where he has stored lots of wood for clubs," his guest wrote, "thorn and apple and lindenwood for heads, hickory and ash for shafts. Sits in his armchair and lights his briar-root pipe. A large window looks out over the putting green on the first hole, the teeing ground of the starting point, the rocks, the sea of which he says he 'never wearies.' He'll still holler at local lads playing on the Home green: 'Off that puttin' green!' with a roar like a wounded lion."

Tom was amused at the way writers practically queued up to visit him, filling notebooks with what they must have hoped would be his last words. "Let us look at him in his home," Tulloch wrote in a magazine story. "Above his mantelpiece there is a large frame containing photographs." The largest showed his golfing sons-Tommy on one side and Jimmy on the other, above the course record they had briefly shared: the magical number 77. "The walls of Tom's sanctum are covered with photographs of famous golfers and great golf matches. His bedroom is similarly decked, and on his toilet-table and mantelpiece are heaps of golf b.a.l.l.s. He always sleeps with the window open, and one morning he woke to find himself half-enveloped in snow." Tulloch was already burnishing anecdotes for the biography he would publish within weeks of Tom's demise. "His habits are very simple, and on a Sunday night you will find him, after having seen him officiate as an elder of the Town Church, quietly reading his family Bible with the big print. And if you ask him, he will rise from its perusal to show you the famous trophy, the champion belt of red morocco with rich silver ornamentations, bearing golfing devices. This became the property of young Tommy through three annual consecutive wins."