his own long-dead grandfather – climbing down the ladder out of the clouds. When asked why, his grandfather cried: ‘More chalk!’
Tom learned more than ball-making and old stories in Allan’s house. He learned that a man can have multiple aims. Tom, like his father, was a straight-forward character, striving to serve God and family by working hard, speaking plainly and deceiving no one. But the more he knew of ball-making the more clearly he saw that it took no great skill to stuff and sew golf balls. Why then should the great Robertson have chosen Tom Morris to be his apprentice? They weren’t cousins. Allan had always been cordial to Tom’s father, but the men were not friends. Of all the lads who could use a leg up into a thriving trade, why Tom?
From the week Tom went to live in the Robertson cottage, fifty paces from the links, Allan schooled him in the game as well as the trade: how to grip the club for more control, how to hit shots high or low to suit the weather, how to flip the ball out of sand. On summer evenings when the sun stayed up past ten o’clock, they played match after match of two or three or nine holes, with Allan giving Tom strokes and beating him anyway. There was always a bet. Playing without betting, Allan said, was ‘no’ golf’. After Tom had lost the few pennies Allan had given him that week, they played for plucks – winner gets to keep one of the loser’s clubs. This made no sense, since both of them played with Allan’s clubs, but the boss didn’t mind as long as he won. Tom didn’t mind, either. He welcomed any chance to leave the sweaty kitchen for the great green links. Boss and apprentice spent long hours out there, hours of thunder and wind, much of which came from Allan’s mouth. He loved to sound off on things he had read in the Scotsman and Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, from politics and art to the price of good leather. Tom, straining to hear as the wind blew the words down the fairway, gathered that good leather cost too much, that India was a powderkeg, that Lord Palmerston was not to be trusted, and that some mad Englishman had dug up a Grecian Venus that had no arms.
Tom listened harder when the subject was golf. He heard about the weaknesses of gentlemen like Sir David Baird, who might be the R&A’s best ball-striker, but who could not play in rain. Monsieur Messieux, the Frenchman, could hit the ball a mile, but was merde on the putting-green. There were other secrets: an invisible break on the eighth green; a spot to the right of the twelfth green that would kick a ball straight left. Each night, lying on his straw mattress, Tom pictured the golf course in his mind’s eye, as if from above, and imagined different ways to play each hole. He would leave the window open a few inches even on cold nights, to test his strength while he slept. The chill never woke him. He slept like a stone. When he woke he was alert right away but kept his eyes shut for a moment as he prayed, smelling salt air redolent of sand, mud and turf … the scent of the links.
By his sixteenth birthday, Tom Morris could have beaten most of the gentleman golfers. ‘Don’t let ’em know,’ Allan said. ‘They’ll find out soon enough.’ Tom caddied for many of the club members, and when his advice and encouragement helped his man win a bet, Tom might get more than the usual shilling at the end of the round. He might find a crown in his palm. One day it was a five-pound note! On that day he was wealthy. He could give half to his parents, buy a pair of warm socks, dine at the Golf Inn and still have enough to tithe to the church on Sunday morning.
In 1839, after four years of apprenticeship, Tom began his five-year term as a journeyman, living in rented rooms nearby but still working in Allan’s kitchen. He now stood two inches taller than Allan (though half a foot less than Lang Willie) and was ten to twenty yards longer off the tee. He could not help shaking his head at the get-ups his employer wore, including a different colour of waistcoat and cap for every day of the week. Sepia photos would preserve Allan Robertson in tasteful black and tan, but that dark cap was likely to be purple, matching his tie, while the waistcoat under his red jacket might be orange or lime green. Watching this peacock bustle to the first teeing-ground, Tom knew that plain brown tweed was right for him.
Allan’s red jacket might have seemed lacking in tact, too forward for a commoner, had he not been known and liked by the gentlemen. If his colourful clothes out-sparkled theirs, if his quoting of Homer or Shakespeare overreached, he knew his place. It was Allan who knelt to tee up his master’s ball. Scotland’s best golfer then waited at a respectful distance while the man topped his ball or sliced it into the whins.
When club members played matches, Allan, Tom, Lang Willie and the other caddies carried their clubs. Sometimes a club man hired a caddie to lug his clubs and be his partner against another member-caddie pair in foursomes – each two-man team playing a single ball, taking turns at hitting it. If the gentleman drove off the tee, the caddie hit the next shot, and so on. At the end of the round the caddie on the losing side got the usual fee, but the one who helped his man win could expect a bonus. Tom earned most of his money this way. If his team won he’d get silver in his palm and eat meat and potatoes that night at the Golf Inn, the Cross Keys or the Black Bull. If not, it was porridge in Allan’s kitchen.
Soon Tom was playing matches of a different kind. Two caddies would play two others for a small bet, or two caddies would team against a pair of club members, giving the gentlemen strokes. Tom found himself getting released from work to play as Allan’s partner. He relished those matches, not only for the golf, but also for the fun of seeing his boss in action. Allan was a born performer, fully in character from the moment he reached the teeing-ground, giving a little bow and doffing his cap to the gentlemen. Tom liked to watch him rehearse his swing as if he needed practice. Allan might make a clumsy practice swipe, digging up turf, then wince and say his back ached. That could be worth a stroke as the match was arranged.
Once the teams and strokes were set, Allan waited for any gentlemen in the group to hit. Then he stepped forward to tee up his own ball. He spat in his hands, rubbed them together. A quick waggle triggered his swing, the clubhead gliding in a perfect circle around his small, bullish frame. His clubs had quirky names – his flat-bladed bunker iron, a forerunner of the sand wedge, was called the Frying Pan; another club was the Doctor; another was Sir David Baird, named after the R&A medalist who gave it to him. He held them all high on the handle, a fingery grip that helped him flip the clubface open or closed at the last instant. No golfer had better touch, or more tricks.
Tom called Allan ‘the cunningest player’. It was a polite way of saying that he was a hustler. If an opponent had the honour in a singles match, Allan would mutter aloud about the wind, even if there was no wind. If Allan had the honour he might pretend to swing all-out, grunting for effect, but hold off a bit at impact so that his ball stopped just short of a bunker. The opponent, believing the trap was out of range, would drive straight into it – and end up smiling as Allan praised his Herculean power. When teamed with a weak club member in an alternate-shot foursomes match, Allan had other ways to work the angles: if his partner faced a long carry over a hazard, he would make the man swallow his pride and putt their ball to the hazard’s brink, making Allan’s next shot easier. Sometimes he told a partner to swing and miss on purpose. ‘Well done, sir,’ he’d say, then step up and hit the ball past all trouble to the flag.
As Allan’s journeyman, Tom was less than a junior partner but better than a cousin, having long since surpassed Lang Willie at work by being more efficient and much easier to wake up in the morning. It was the same on the links, where Lang Willie played but was so loosely strung together that his golf swing reminded Tom of a man falling down stairs. Lang Willie knew he was no golfer. He joked that when he swung, his elbows kept trying to switch places with his knees. Meanwhile, Tom kept improving. By the time he turned twenty, Tom was the second-best golfer in St Andrews. After years of getting strokes from Allan – nine strokes at first, then six, four and finally two – they played even. In 1842, when club members put up a few pounds to sponsor a tournament for the caddies (all caddies but Allan, barred because he was thought to be unbeatable), Tom took home the purse.
Allan Robertson became the town’s hero in 1843 when he beat Willie Dunn, the long-hitting champion from Musselburgh. The match was a novel idea: more than a week of single combat between the best players from
