Old Tom At 200 (And Almost Two Weeks): A Great Read, The Scottish Golf Podcast And Other Coverage
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2021 was supposed to celebrate Old Tom Morris’s 200th birthday and then get followed by an Open in St Andrews. Well, it didn’t work out that way but he did turn 200 and there were some enjoyable efforts to commemorate the great man. Then he had the audacity to be born the week of the U.S. Open!
So belatedly because some of us were distracted by a major, some of the Old Tom coverage that caught my eye.
At TheOpen.com, they posted a wonderful collaboration by author Roger McStravick, the British Golf Museum’s Hannah Fleming, and with bits from The Colossus of Golf by David Malcolm and Peter E. Crabtree, TheOpen.com featured a fantastic long-but-not-excessively so read of Old Tom Morris’ life and legacy. Just a sampling from his role in The Open:
Indeed, Morris and Park helped grow The Open in stature from what was initially a slight inconvenience to some members in 1860, to already by 1867 becoming a fixture in not only the Scottish sporting calendar, but in the English calendar too, where the event was covered heavily in the gambling press.
“There were eight players in The 1st Open,” Roger McStravick said. “They were squeezed in between other members in their meeting, and they were quite annoyed about this band of rabble. These lower than low squeezing in among the gentleman golfers, it was such an inconvenience. The players didn’t take practice swings, they just got onto the first tee and got away, anybody who took a practice swing was just posing. So they just got away with a minimum of fuss.”
Prestwick unveiled a new plaque in his honor:
I spoke to the Scottish Golf Podcast’s Ru Macdonald about the great Prestwick and it’s role in Old Tom’s life and the newfound appreciation for the links.
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