You’ve got an early afternoon tee time on the Old Course in St. Andrews and you couldn’t be happier. You’re making your way through town, trudging onto North Street and then turning at the Dunvegan — perhaps the world’s most famous golf pub — onto a road called Golf Place. It’s a fitting name.
There’s golf shops on the left and a rental called Golf House on the right. In front of you is the R&A Clubhouse, one of the most famous in the entire sport, and sprawling out before it is the course itself. The 18th green is just steps from the 1st tee. But there are four and a half hours of your future between them, which you’ve been thinking about for … days? Weeks? Months? Forever?
But now there’s a new step in your pre-round journey. Before nervously jumping out onto the 1st tee, golfers should make a new stop on that walk, just across the road and behind the R&A clubhouse. They should visit the newest statue in town, unveiled this week — a tribute to Old Tom Morris, the man who established golf as we know it.
The Old Tom statue is the brainchild of a few Fife locals who looked around and didn’t see enough of an obvious ode to the preeminent father of the game. A group of nine, led by Ronald Sandford (a friend and golf lifer), has been working for years to put the man on display in the town that now is best known for the sport he helped foster. Sandford came across an Old Tom statue at a course in Ireland and made it his personal quest to deliver a bronzed replica of Old Tom to the doorstep of his greatest piece of work.
The statue was unveiled Wednesday morning in St. Andrews in a public ceremony that was attended by dozens, including Bill Murray, a competitor in this week’s Dunhill Links Championship. Funded by private donations and local charities, the statue looks backward up the 18th hole, where Old Tom once carried sand from the nearby beach to create the mounds that befuddle golfers and deflect their tee shots today. He stands with one knee slightly bent, one hand in his pocket and the other holding a golf club. At his feet is an inscription marking the years of his four Open Championship victories. His great-great granddaughter, Sheila Walker, who still lives above The Old Course Shop and watches golfers finish their rounds, was also on-hand at the ceremony.
Add it to the list of things that make golf different from other sports. The statue of James Naismith, the inventor of basketball? It sits outside the National Basketball Hall of Fame, which is a good place for it. But no one is traveling thousands of miles to play pickup hoops in Springfield, Mass. There are busts of tennis greats at the Aussie Open courts in Melbourne and similar sculptures on the grounds at Wimbledon. But did any of them basically invent the sport in its most modern form? No. Plus, you and I can’t go play three sets at Wimbledon. But you can get a tee time at the Old Course. And you can pay tribute to Old Tom before you do.
