Golf greats Young Tom Morris and Davie Strath cut down in their prime
THEY were masters of the green, competitors and contemporaries whose commercial tours ripped divots in the stern golf establishment at Scotland’s ancient and windswept St Andrews club.
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They were masters of the green, competitors and contemporaries whose commercial tours ripped divots in the stern golf establishment at Scotland’s ancient and windswept St Andrews club.
As they toted up championships, Young Tom Morris and David Strath toured Scotland and into England to play the first exhibition matches on their own accounts, without official sanction.
They further antagonised St Andrews’ golfing establishment, who still set golf rules everywhere except the US and Mexico, by insisting on receiving money upfront before a match, establishing the concept of appearance money. Both were cut down in their prime. Young Tom, and his equally talented greenkeeper father Old Tom, were remembered in Kevin Cook’s 2007 book, Tommy’s Honor: The Story of Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris, Golf’s Founding Father and Son. Tommy’s Honour, a movie based on the book, opens in Sydney on Thursday.
Strath, the first professional golfer to set foot in Australia although he did not pick up a club, was lost for 127 years, until his unmarked grave was found in 2006 in the Presbyterian section of Melbourne General Cemetery. Born at St Andrews circa 1849, one of Alexander and Susan Strath’s four sons, “Davie” Strath was runner-up in the British Open three times in the 1870s. His oldest brother George was a caddie to Old Tom Morris and quit carpentry to become a golf professional and course designer.
Next brother Andrew won the Open in 1865, but Davie was the family star. About two years older than Young Tom Morris, born at St Andrews on April 20, 1851, Davie finished second to Young Tom in 1870 and 1872, and the pair played a £100 side match over the Old Course in 1873, which Davie won by two holes. They played two more matches, both won by Morris, but their aggregate scores in the final two matches were the same.
Davie was runner-up at St Andrews again in 1876 in one of the Open’s most controversial championships. Critics claimed organisers forgot to book the course so competitors played among public members. In the second round, Strath’s second shot at the 14th struck the forehead of an upholsterer, “who was playing out”, and then fell to the ground. The match ended in a tie with Bob Martin. Asked to return for a playoff the next Monday morning, when the committee would make their ruling, Strath refused. Martin walked the course alone to claim victory.
In 1878, as greenkeeper at North Berwick, Davie developed consumption, which also killed two of his brothers. George died in the US at age 75. After winning the Glasgow tournament, a doctor advised he visit Australia, where the climate might help. He sailed in autumn but caught a cold while on the ship in December. He was taken to the home a friend at Carlton, where he died on January 24, 1879, when his name was recorded as David Struth.
Old Tom Morris, born on June 16, 1821, at St Andrews, took up golf by age 10, when he used a homemade club to hit wine-bottle corks pierced with nails around streets playing “sillybodkins” with other boys. He started caddying and was hired as an apprentice at 14 to Allan Robertson, considered the world’s first professional golfer. Morris was a greenkeeper, clubmaker, ball maker, golf instructor, and course designer when he contested the first British Open on October 17, 1860 at Scotland’s 12-hole Prestwick Golf Club. The tournament was restricted to professionals and attracted eight golfers who played three rounds, won by Willie Park Sr on 174, beating Old Tom by two strokes. Morris won in 1861, 1862, 1864 and 1867.
Young Tom, strong for his age, could hit over great distances with a low, penetrating ball flight. He won his first Open in 1868, at age 17, to become the youngest major champion in golf history, a record that still stands. After four consecutive Open titles, in 1874 Young Tom married, possibly against his father’s wishes, to Lanarkshire miner’s daughter Margaret Drinnen, 10 years his senior. Margaret was heavily pregnant when father and son agreed to a £25 match team match at North Berwick in September 1875, facing brothers Willie and Mungo Park.
After a four-round contest, won by the Morris’s, Tommy was given a telegram “announcing that his wife was seriously ill and requesting that he should get back to St Andrews with all possible haste”. The Scotsman reported two days later that a summer resident at North Berwick offered to sail them across the Firth of Forth in his yacht. Just after it left, a messenger reached the pier with a second telegram, saying Margaret had died after delivering a stillborn son. Tommy’s friends agreed to allow the yacht, within hailing distance, to sail “without acquainting those on board with the distressing news, fearing that the shock to the unhappy husband would be too great”. Young Tom became “seriously unwell” in October, with an unknown illness. He died aged 24 on Christmas Day, 1875, probably from cardiovascular failure caused by pneumonia.
Old Tom contested another 19 Opens, playing his last in 1895. He died in 1908, after falling down the stairs at St Andrews’ New Golf Club.
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