Old Tom Trails - Prestwick
BY MURRAY BOTHWELL
6 MINS READ
In 1851 at the age of 30, Tom Morris moved his family from St Andrews to Prestwick, a town of 700 inhabitants on the newly-opened railway line south of Glasgow. Having learned his craft of ball- and club-making under the watchful eye of Allan Robertson, he took up the position of Keeper of The Green for a new golf club formed by many of the same R&A members with whom he regularly played golf. Previously untouched, the links at Prestwick needed relatively little development and within 9 years was holding the very first Open Championship. Courses in these early days were not manicured and the techniques the golfers developed to overcome the natural contours of the links are still being practiced today.
Tom’s skill as a course designer was greatly sought after. He was the primary influencer in creating many of the game’s standards, such as the 18-hole course, the use of separate tee boxes and yardage markers, metal ringed holes to retain shape as well as sanding greens to encourage stability, drainage and additional growth the following year. He was the first to use a push mower to cut greens and also to widen fairways to accommodate increased levels of play. He was the first strategic designer of courses where hazards were placed to be navigated, not punish, and he was the first to actively manage those hazards too.
The natural contours of Prestwick’s marram-clad links presented features which both Tom and subsequent designers borrowed, a blueprint for course layouts in any golf course seen today – it is said that the 4th at Prestwick was the inspiration for the dog-leg design, following the bend of the Pow Burn.
During his time in Prestwick Tom also made golf balls, gave lessons to members, ran events and made hickory-shafted wooden golf clubs for sale to supplement his income. He had also enjoyed the company of fellow blue-collar golfers in St Andrews and felt the need to do so again in Prestwick in the time he had outside work. Along with 27 other players, Tom formed the Prestwick Mechanics Club in the Red Lion Hotel on the 3rd November 1851, only five months after the Prestwick Golf Club, and sought, and received, rights to play over the same links as the Prestwick members. The Red Lion still sits at the Cross in Prestwick, serving food and drink to today’s golfers and directly opposite where Tom and his family used to live.
By 1858 his Club had changed its name to Prestwick St Nicholas Golf Club, and it was as a member of St Nicholas that Tom won his first Open in 1861. He returned to St Andrews in 1865, an Honorary Member of Prestwick St Nicholas and subsequently went on to win the Open a total of four times.
Whilst at Prestwick, and increasingly upon his return to St Andrews, Tom was called upon to lay out around 60 new courses on wild, windswept stretches of dune and grass across the UK and Ireland. Such was his popularity he could only spend a short time at each new location passing on his recommendations as he walked the land, marking the tees out with sand and the greens with each of 18 gull feathers.
If you are playing Prestwick today, six of its original greens can be found within the current layout although some are now played in different directions. In its day Prestwick was celebrated as perhaps the best course known to golfers, and under Tom’s care the links became one of the champion courses of Great Britain. You can still experience Tom’s use of the “lofty sand-hills” in the original 12 holes, weaving the course between them, providing many blind shots that any player would find fascinating as they climbed to the top of a dune to see where their ball had rolled to. The increased number of players on the Prestwick links, and the way in which the original holes sometimes crossed each other to maximise the space bounded by the Pow Burn, saw the course extended to 18 holes with the purchase of new ground to the north.
The Open Championship was played solely at Prestwick for 12 years, a rotation of venues being introduced in 1872 until Prestwick was removed from the rota in 1925. This makes it second only to the St Andrews Old Course as the venue to host the most Open Championships. Tom’s “first” course is a testament to the skill he possessed and remains today ranked as one of Scotland’s, and the world’s, must-play links.