sand-hills, and you lofted over the intervening mountain of sand, and there was all the fascinating excitement, as you climbed to the top of it, of seeing how near to the hole your ball may have happened to roll.”
With so little acreage to work with, Tom had no choice but to let holes crisscross. That was a minor defect at a time when a dozen rounds might complete a day’s play. Still it could be unnerving to stroke a putt on the fifth green while someone’s second shot on the first hole zipped under your chin.
“Fore!”
“Bloody hell!”
While working on the course, Tom played it every day but the Sabbath. He was dead-set on knowing every inch, every shot his course could ruin or create. Often he played with his patron, Colonel Fairlie, who was as near to being Tom’s friend as a gentleman could be to a hireling. The gruff, clever Fairlie was forty-two, twelve years older than Tom, with a high forehead and a high, starched collar. Sporting a black, bristly mustache that curved down to meet his sidewhiskers over a clean-shaven chin, he had the look of a sea captain, scanning the horizon with squinted eyes, seeking his next challenge. Colonel James Ogilvie Fairlie came by his title by serving the Queen as an officer of the Ayrshire Yeomanry Cavalry, a reserve unit that marched in formation on the village green on holidays, striking fear into any seals or hungry Irishmen intent on attacking the coast. But while he was no warrior the Colonel was an accomplished sportsman, a cricketer who had played for the home side in Scotland-England matches and who now purchased racehorses as casually as Tom bought hiking boots. Fairlie had taken up golf late in life but had made the most of his frequent trips to St. Andrews from his home near Prestwick. With Tom’s help he became one of the best of the R&A’s gentleman players. He had never taken to the cocksure Allan Robertson, preferring Tom’s calm competence, and after bringing Tom west he was determined to see him succeed. Fairlie and Tom would sit on the grass near the twelfth green, watching golfers finish their rounds while Fairlie smoked a cigar. Soon Tom had a new gift from his benefactor: a lifelong habit. “The Colonel would often give me a cigar. Then one day, I well remember, he gave me a pipe,” Tom recalled, “and after that I was a smoker for life. I had never smoked at all when I was a boy, and I would not now advise boys to smoke, young boys at least. But if I did not smoke until I was well on in life, I think I have made up for it.”
Fairlie had a short, graceless swing, but he was strong enough to rise on his toes and hit the ball as far as Tom did. The two of them played crown-and-shilling matches, a shilling per hole and a crown on the round, with the Colonel getting strokes. Fairlie marched ahead with Tom following, carrying the clubs. After a morning round the Colonel sometimes hurried to Prestwick’s railway station for a trip to Ayr or Glasgow, returning in time for another round before dark. As he liked to say, the world was running faster these days, running on steam. The rails were changing everything from golf (a fellow could play at Prestwick and Musselburgh the same day) to food (fresh beef from Aberdeen!) to time itself. Until the 1840s every town and village had kept its own time, but railway schedules required them to synchronize their clocks. By 1855 all of England, Scotland, and Wales followed Greenwich Mean Time, or “railway time,” transmitted by telegraph in periodic updates from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Still there were some things the machine age could not change, like a nobleman’s power to stop a train with his bare hand. To Fairlie’s great amusement his friend the Earl of Eglinton, who owned half the region, had the right to flag down any train that passed through his lands. The Earl would walk out from Eglinton Castle to the railway, lift his hand and create an unscheduled stop on the Ayr-Glasgow line. He
With so little acreage to work with, Tom had no choice but to let holes crisscross. That was a minor defect at a time when a dozen rounds might complete a day’s play. Still it could be unnerving to stroke a putt on the fifth green while someone’s second shot on the first hole zipped under your chin.
“Fore!”
“Bloody hell!”
While working on the course, Tom played it every day but the Sabbath. He was dead-set on knowing every inch, every shot his course could ruin or create. Often he played with his patron, Colonel Fairlie, who was as near to being Tom’s friend as a gentleman could be to a hireling. The gruff, clever Fairlie was forty-two, twelve years older than Tom, with a high forehead and a high, starched collar. Sporting a black, bristly mustache that curved down to meet his sidewhiskers over a clean-shaven chin, he had the look of a sea captain, scanning the horizon with squinted eyes, seeking his next challenge. Colonel James Ogilvie Fairlie came by his title by serving the Queen as an officer of the Ayrshire Yeomanry Cavalry, a reserve unit that marched in formation on the village green on holidays, striking fear into any seals or hungry Irishmen intent on attacking the coast. But while he was no warrior the Colonel was an accomplished sportsman, a cricketer who had played for the home side in Scotland-England matches and who now purchased racehorses as casually as Tom bought hiking boots. Fairlie had taken up golf late in life but had made the most of his frequent trips to St. Andrews from his home near Prestwick. With Tom’s help he became one of the best of the R&A’s gentleman players. He had never taken to the cocksure Allan Robertson, preferring Tom’s calm competence, and after bringing Tom west he was determined to see him succeed. Fairlie and Tom would sit on the grass near the twelfth green, watching golfers finish their rounds while Fairlie smoked a cigar. Soon Tom had a new gift from his benefactor: a lifelong habit. “The Colonel would often give me a cigar. Then one day, I well remember, he gave me a pipe,” Tom recalled, “and after that I was a smoker for life. I had never smoked at all when I was a boy, and I would not now advise boys to smoke, young boys at least. But if I did not smoke until I was well on in life, I think I have made up for it.”
Fairlie had a short, graceless swing, but he was strong enough to rise on his toes and hit the ball as far as Tom did. The two of them played crown-and-shilling matches, a shilling per hole and a crown on the round, with the Colonel getting strokes. Fairlie marched ahead with Tom following, carrying the clubs. After a morning round the Colonel sometimes hurried to Prestwick’s railway station for a trip to Ayr or Glasgow, returning in time for another round before dark. As he liked to say, the world was running faster these days, running on steam. The rails were changing everything from golf (a fellow could play at Prestwick and Musselburgh the same day) to food (fresh beef from Aberdeen!) to time itself. Until the 1840s every town and village had kept its own time, but railway schedules required them to synchronize their clocks. By 1855 all of England, Scotland, and Wales followed Greenwich Mean Time, or “railway time,” transmitted by telegraph in periodic updates from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Still there were some things the machine age could not change, like a nobleman’s power to stop a train with his bare hand. To Fairlie’s great amusement his friend the Earl of Eglinton, who owned half the region, had the right to flag down any train that passed through his lands. The Earl would walk out from Eglinton Castle to the railway, lift his hand and create an unscheduled stop on the Ayr-Glasgow line. He
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