Sultans Of Swing

A visit to the home of golf provided the chance to walk in the footsteps of pioneers.

- John Parker

It was early July when I visited the old university town of St Andrews, but the Scottish weather was anything but summery. Occasional shafts of sunshine gave way to rain and hail that battered the town on the North Sea coast of Fife.

Hot it was not. I considered buying a polo-neck sweater from a well-stocked golf shop called Auchterlonies – until I saw the price. I briefly thought of snuggling up to a latte in the Northpoint cafe near the university, the place where Prince William reportedly first laid eyes on Kate Middleton. But I was looking for the hallowed markers of Scottish golfing royalty rather than traces of the House of Windsor.

After some searching among the many gravestones of local dignitaries and notables in the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral, I located the memorials to Old Tom Morris and his son, aptly named Young Tom Morris. The father’s is a slab of weathered stone, set into the ground by the eastern perimeter wall. The son’s, a couple of metres away, is a dark bronze statue in startling relief against a white marble arch. Kitted out in jacket and tie and crowned with a tam o’ shanter, he’s addressing a ball and ready to strike. His tragic early death, states the inscription, was “deeply regretted by numerous friends and all golfers”.

To call the Morrises golfing royalty may seem extravagant, but father and son won the British Open eight times between them from 1861 to 1872.

The younger Tom was just 17 when he first won the Open in 1868 – that record stands – and the next year he scored the tournament’s first hole in-one. The Morrises’ exploits are documented in