To the few in the States who have heard of him, Old Tom Morris must come across as, well, a quaint, somewhat mythical, figure from the past. You know, the golfers over there respect him, but they probably respect Lewis Carroll and all that Alice in Wonderland stuff too. A little bit too much Mary Poppins or Frodo or Gulliver to the whole thing. And wasn’t there a Young Tom too?1 Maybe they were related . . . ?
But the person who invented golf architecture was Old Tom . . .at the same time that he was winning four Opens and turning St. Andrews into the mecca for golfers. Under his direction, the Old Course was shaped into a coherent set of eighteen holes.
In fact, Tom Morris Sr.s, legacy runs though virtually every course in the world. Eighteen holes as the normal layout. Old Tom. Nine out, nine back. Old Tom. Top dressing greens. Old Tom. Fairway, first cut, second cut, goodbye Mr. Chips. Old Tom. Yardage markers. Old Tom. Separate tee boxes. Old Tom. The strategic placing of hazards. Old Tom. And, of all things, miniature golf. Old Tom.
When he took over at the Old Course, it really was an “old course”—as in, oh, “that damned old course, wish they’d put in something new or at least work on it a little.” Old Tom as a young guy was just a second-in-command when he started at the Old Course. Tom later related that a dispute between the number one guy, Allan Robertson, and Tom over the “gutta” ball2 led to Tom decamping to Prestwick, site of the first Opens (in fact twenty-four Opens in all) and then, in 1865, he came back to St. Andrews—"in charge.” St. Andrews began a resurgence and, in time, became the course we know as “St. Andrews.” With the flourishing of St. Andrews, Tom added the “New Course” right beside the “Old” to handle the overflow—this was in 1895. And then it was recognized that a kinder gentler new course was needed and Tom designed the “Jubilee Course” (1897). (In the past forty years, the Jubilee Course has been reshaped into probably the most difficult course in the St. Andrews complex.)
In 1891, Morris came to the Outer Hebrides and found a plethora of opportunities to lay out courses. He designed the original eighteen holes of Askernish as a tourist attraction for the wealthy elites of the United Kingdom when the kingdom was the head of an empire. The British Empire at its height seemed to rule the world, far surpassing France’s pesky, smaller, cut-rate empire and the German and Italian bargain basement empires. The British Empire had been built on small wars and shrewd diplomacy; but even at its height, it was a massive, but damned rickety, structure—held together with chewing gum and wire and a massive (and expensive) navy. It can be doubted if the Empire ever really broke even—the Empire ran not on Imperial resources, but on the might of Britain’s vast industrial plant.
When the Great War finished, only the shell of the Empire remained. The managers who would have run the industries had died as lieutenants, majors and captains. Those who would have become foreman, small-town councilors, and parish leaders died as corporals and sergeants. Oh, the Empire floated on, as Empires do and, while industrial and financial leadership had lost its young blood, the industries and the financial centers continued on, too wealthy to die, too depleted to innovate and improve. Even when I was young, maps of the world were still awash in the red used to signify the lands of the Empire, but the decline began swiftly, leaving behind elites who were less elite. And, certainly, less wealthy . . . and often without sons. (For those who wish to see the shadows of a world past, stay at the lodgings in Castlebay—a brief ferry ride away from the island of Eriskey just south of Askernish. The dining is still imperial, by the way.)
By 1922, crofting had begun on the course, the fairways were maintained by local men with scythes, and, from time-to-time, the occasional hole disappeared into the machair.3 An idea for a tourist airline to Askernish failed quickly as tourists found better landing strips in North Uist and Askernish tipped into its slow descent from Old Tom Morris to just “Old.” World War II took its toll and the course continued to disappear—the machair reclaimed its own.
Then, for once, war helped Askernish. The Cold War required offensive installations to fight a defensive war. The creation of a rocket installation to its north brought in all types of workers to build and maintain the installation and to handle the technology associated with rockets. For two decades or so, the degradation of Askernish stopped—the course of the sixties and seventies may not have been a prime layout—it had nine holes and eighteen tees (not at all uncommon for local courses), but it was a vibrant and active golfing community. The connections between the course that existed and the course that had existed, Old Tom’s course, were tenuous, but not completely broken.
War gives and war takes away. The winding down of the Cold War saw the end of the Askernish golfing community as military personnel left. And once again, the machair and the sand began to pull the course into the past that existed before Tom had visited. An Askernish course still existed, but it was a shadow of the local nine hole, eighteen-tee, course that itself was a shadow of Tom’s vision.
Then, something happened, something unexpected—for no one, except local golfers and a few tourists, really cared about Askernish, a course somewhere, out there, in the dunes. Even the memory that Old Tom Morris had once laid-out a course across the distant dunes of South Uist had faded—a few remembered that at least some of the course had been designed by the grand old man of golf, but most simply did not know or, if told, did not care. The course at the turn of the twenty-first century was obviously not a Morris course. But, in September of 2005 something extraordinary happened. To quote from the Askernish website:
[In an] estate office in Girvan, September 2005 - Gordon Irvine (Golf course consultant) was trying to organize a sporting trip for himself and friends. . . . it was mentioned [to Irvine] that a golf course [lay] upon . . . South Uist estate – [a course] designed by a very famous architect, . . . a course still with much potential. Having never heard of this course, or even of South Uist, Gordon was [skeptical] of the story . . . Gordon phoned the chairman of the club, Ralph Thompson. When Ralph told him the club had been designed in 1891 by golfing legend "Old" Tom Morris, Gordon was unbelieving! But Ralph was insistent, and after providing proof of "Old" Tom's visit, [he] persuaded Gordon to visit the island to survey the course at Askernish.
Gordon came to Uist on the 5th of December . . . he couldn't believe the quality of the land and turf, exclaiming he had found "the holy grail". Ralph, Gordon, and greenkeeper Colin MacGregor investigated the area [where] the original course was believed to have lain. Gordon declared that he had never seen better land for a links course . . . .
And so, the reclamation saga began. Using extant records, ground radar, even satellite imagery, a growing coalition of enthusiasts, including a goodly number from outside the UK, began to reshape the course back towards Tom Morris’s plans. It was an archeological dig—there had been so many courses in one place and so many changes and tweaks, it was hard to tell exactly which layer of course was truly original. Much of the original design will probably never be reconstructed—although, in some places, parts of the original Askernish have been definitively recreated. Those devoted to Askernish have done an amazing job of getting the course back to a plausible recreation of what a course in the 1890s, out among the dunes, would have looked like and played like.4
Of course, never having played in the 1890s, I had no idea what I was getting into when I pulled into the parking lot. There was a little pro-shop, mostly snack bar, with a minimal amount of golf stuff, and, when I pulled in front of that shop, the air was clear and gray at the same time while the dunes in the distance appeared to be low, not nearly like the impressive dunes at Wick. I had absolutely no clue that those dunes were blocking winds that could roll a Sherman tank . . . ok, that’s an exaggeration . . . they were blocking winds strong enough to knock a player clean off balance and push a golf ball completely off a green.
Oddly enough, the last time I was there, there was very little recognition that Tom Morris had built the course outside of the Askernish-issued guide to the course itself. And that is something that should be changed, Morris perhaps had a greater impact on the sport than any other individual ever did, to which this recreation of golf before the turn of the twentieth century offers mute testimony.
For those not aware of the story, there was a Young Tom, Tom Morris, Jr., who had his father’s skills, if not more, but died on Christmas Day, 1875 at the age of twenty-four.
Gutta-percha ball—the ball had a gutta-percha center as opposed to the “featherie”—the very expensive golf ball filled with feathers that had come into fashion in the mid-1500s.
Machair is a rare type of soil composed of mostly crushed, actually powdered, seashells fertilized first with kelp and seaweed and then animal droppings and found almost solely in the Outer Hebrides. If you can imagine a soil composed of powdered seashells, kelp, and seaweed, and then heavily, and I do mean heavily, fertilized by seabirds, sheep, and cattle, then you have a sense of the richness of this soil found so far from mainland Scotland. Long strips of this odd and unusual soil run130 miles along shoestring islands stretching north and south through a very chilly Atlantic Ocean.
There was no consistency in equipment before the 1930s. Some guttas could be hit 300 yards or more with the right equipment. The key was the size of the ball—some were larger, some were smaller. Clubs also had a wide variety of different sizes and shapes. A goodly number of clubs were one of a kind—many of which, like Ted Ray’s “snieler” niblick, back before WW I, we will never know much about.
Very interesting read!
What a fellow Old Tom Morris was. Until this article, I really had no idea how old the game was…