Tommy’s Honour: The Extraordinary Story of Golf’s Founding Father and Son. Kevin Cook

       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,’

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