Free Tommy's Honor by Kevin Cook Page A

ground into the cup. Tom Peter recalled the shot in his Reminiscences : “I said, ‘My man, Allan, you never had a nearer squeak in your life.’ ‘Man,’ he said, ‘I had to do it. You see I put Tom in the bunker.’” The professionals’ code also called for champions to accept any legitimate challenge, but there was leeway in this area that Allan pushed to the limit.
    Allan claimed never to have lost in single combat—despite his “wee coatie” match with Tom and other losses he considered unofficial. As the decade progressed he defended his “perfect” record with Jesuitical zeal. Singles mattered more after Willie Dunn moved south to be greenkeeper at Blackheath, near London, where he earned ten shillings a week—about £25 per year—for serving Englishmen like the peevish Lord Starmont, who broke two sets of clubs over his knee during his first round of golf and pronounced himself satisfied with the day’s exercise. Dunn’s departure left Scotland to Allan Robertson and Tom Morris, only one of whom could be the country’s King of Clubs—a title the east-coast newspapers gave to Allan. The king’s crown would be hard to dislodge. On one visit to St. Andrews, Tom played his old boss and beat him. Allan called it a casual, unofficial match, though bets had been laid and paid. The west-coast Ayr Observer , loyal to Tom, crowed, “The palm of victory, which has so long reposed in quiescence in the somber shade of St. Rule, is gracefully waving in the westering breezes.” But the Fifeshire Journal defended the rule of St. Rule’s, the tallest cathedral tower in St. Andrews, by sniffing, “Who would have conceived aught so preposterous as that insignificant match should be seized and a claim to the championship constructed upon it by anyone conversant with the usages of golf?” Or, more simply put: Frontiersman, go hang.
    The newspaper war escalated, with the Observer denouncing the Journal ’s “treasonable discourses” and claiming, “Tom is ‘the King of Scotland,’ and reflects the highest credit on Prestwick.” To which the Journal shot back: “The Prestwick colony is in open revolt against the lord liege of golfers—the ‘bona fide’ king of clubs—Allan.”
    The problem was that no one had found a way to identify the best golfer. Most clubs held annual and semiannual tournaments, but the cracks were not allowed to play; instead they caddied for the gentlemen. The cracks had their challenge matches, which made for much amusing betting among the gentlemen but could not crown a true King of Clubs for two reasons. First, there was no way to say which of many matches was the match, the big one. Second, a ranking based on challenge matches could be stymied by a king who would not risk his crown.
    “I prefer having Tom as a partner,” said Allan, royally coy.
    Fairlie and Eglinton urged Tom to issue a loud, once-and-for-all challenge, but Tom would not shame Allan into playing him. Still he let his patrons know that if they arranged a £100 match, he would show up. But Allan declined repeated offers and Tom let the matter drop, leaving the nascent sport of professional golf in uneasy equilibrium, tippingly balanced between east and west, Robertson and Morris, a balance that would hold until a new player barged onstage to send everything ass-over-teapot.
    His name was Willie Park. The son of a farmer who scraped up a living by pushing a plow for a Musselburgh landowner, Willie grew up with seven brothers and sisters in a cottage on the high road that passed the links just east of Edinburgh. As a gaunt, hungry lad Willie caddied for members of the Musselburgh Golf Club. He learned to play the game on summer evenings after the gentlemen went into the clubhouse for dinner and drinks. He started out with one club, a hooked stick he’d whittled down from a tree root. Thanks in part to a handy source of calories—a baker who played the local boys for pies—the caddie with the whittled stick