The definitive account of golf's founding father and son, Old and Young Tom Morris. For the first time, the two will be portrayed as men of flesh and blood -- heroic, but also ambitious, loving but sometimes confused and angry. Two men from one household, with ambitions that made them devoted partners as well as ardent foes.
Tommy's Honour is a compelling story of the two Tom Morrises, father and son, both supremely talented golfers but utterly different, constituting a record–breaking golfing dynasty that has never been known before or since.
Father, Old Tom Morris, grew up a stone's throw away from golf's ancestral home at St Andrews, a whisky–fuelled caddie, a wonderful 19th century character who became an Open Champion three times before running the R&A, the most important operation in the game. Then is even more amazing son, Young Tom, arguably an even more prodigious talent than his father, a golfing genius, the Tiger Woods of his era, who at 17 became the youngest player, to this day, to win the Open. And then goes on to win it four times in a row, an unprecedented achievement.
There followed the extraordinary scenario of father and son fighting it out at the last hole of the Open Championship to clinch golf's greatest prize – something that has never happened before in golf or in any sport.
So on the one hand, you have the story of one of the most influential figures in the history of golf, a pioneer in the birth of the modern game and of Scottish and Open Championship golf.
On the other hand – and this is the real appeal of this book – you have an extraordinary father–and–son story, of passion, the height of human endeavour, their compelling rivalry on and off the course, unparalleled achievement in the history of Open golf, and then a tragic ending when Young Tom, with the golf world at his feet, dies of a broken heart, aged 24, and his father lives on for another 20 years in deep remorse.
