Tommy’s Honour: The Extraordinary Story of Golf’s Founding Father and Son. Kevin Cook. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Kevin Cook
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Биографии и Мемуары
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007373086
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      TOMMY’S HONOUR

      THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF GOLF’S

      FOUNDING FATHER AND SON

      KEVIN COOK

       DEDICATION

      2pm

       EPIGRAPH

       Beneath the sod poor Tommy’s laid,

       Now bunkered fast for good and all;

       A better golfer never played

       A further or a surer ball.

       A triple laurel round his brow,

       The light of triumph in his eye;

       He stands before us even now

       As in the hour of victory.

       Thrice belted knight of peerless skill,

       Again we see him head the fray;

       And memory loves to reckon still

       The feats of Tommy in his day.

      —from ‘Elegy on Tom Morris, Jr’

      Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, 1876

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

       3 The Belt, the Ball and the Juvenile Celebrity

       4 Return to St Andrews

       5 Collision Course

       6 Tommy to the Fore

       7 Interregnum

       8 The Better Ball

       9 Surprises

       10 Tommy and Meg

       11 A Telegram

       12 Winter

       13 Grand Old Man

       Epilogue: St Andrews Forever

       Acknowledgments

       Picture Credits

       Plate Section

       About the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE ‘Wake, Tommy

      THE WIND CAME off the North Sea, pushing sand and bits of straw over grass-covered dunes to the links. The wind smelled of seaweed. It hurried past the sandstone clubhouse and ran uphill to the Morris house, where it slipped under the door and stirred the embers of the previous night’s fire.

      Tom Morris gave his son a mild kick on the backside. ‘Wake, Tommy.’

      The boy twitched. He was thirteen and slept like a paving stone. After another kick he stretched and yawned. ‘What time is it?’

      ‘Tea time.’

      His father, the early riser, had already rekindled the fire, boiled water and filled two cups. Tommy was stretching and rubbing his eyes as the old man put a cup and saucer in his hands. Outside, a cock crowed. Tommy sat up and sipped his black tea. It was bitter and scalding, hot enough to numb the tip of his tongue. Next came a chunk of oatcake, dropped onto the saucer as his father bustled past.

      Tom Morris threw open the door to the street. His reddish-brown side-whiskers caught the day’s first light. He was forty-three years old, with teeth the colour of pale ale and a dusting of white in his beard. He rubbed his callused, veiny hands together as the breeze tossed motes of ash around the room, dropping ash on the Championship Belt on the mantelpiece and on Mum’s untouchable china dishes in their rack on the wall. ‘Chilly,’ he said. ‘We’ll have stingin’ hands today. Stingin’ hands.’

      Tommy smiled. His father loved to say things twice, as if repeating something could double its import. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said, amusing himself. ‘Stingin’ hands.’ His father didn’t hear a word. He’d pulled on his cap and stepped into the wind, leaving the door flapping open behind him.

      ‘Wait,’ Tommy said. But the old man would not wait. Tommy gulped his tea, pulled his boots and jacket on, stuck the oatcake in a pocket and clattered out the door with his father’s clubs under his arm.

      His footfalls echoed down Golf Place, a double row of dark stone houses. No one else was awake. Any caddie or gentleman golfer who was up at this hour would be hung over, cradling his headache in his hands and wishing he had died at birth. The links were empty except for gulls, crows, rabbits, a mule tethered to a post by the stationmaster’s garden, and Tom Morris, now joined by his panting son.

      Tom examined his six clubs – driver, spoon, two niblicks, a rut iron and a wooden putter – and selected the driver. He took a pinch of damp sand from a wooden box by the teeing-ground and built a small sand-hill – a tee – for his ball to sit on. He took his stance and waggled his club at the ball as if to threaten it. ‘Far and sure,’ he said.

      Tommy had heard the old motto a thousand times. He was supposed