The Scots who shaped golf (at home and abroad)

Old Tom Morris

1821-1908

Thomas Mitchell Morris was born in St Andrews in 1821. 

The son of a weaver, he was educated at Madras College in his hometown but was destined to make his living in golf. Local legend has it that, from the age of ten, he would drive nails into wine bottle corks and hit these makeshift balls around the streets of the town using a homemade club. 

At the age of 14, he was formally hired as an apprentice by Allan Robertson. They went their separate ways in 1851 when Robertson caught Morris using a new ‘guttie’ golf ball that was threatening his previously all-conquering featherie ball. 

Morris was fired on the spot but was soon hired by the recently-established Prestwick Golf Club in Ayrshire. He designed, laid out and maintained the course, whilst also running his own golf equipment business and teaching local players. 

He was influential in the creation of The Open, and hit the very first shot in the championship in 1860. He returned to St Andrews as the greenkeeper and professional in 1865, where he restored the dilapidated course to its former glory, reducing it 22 holes to 18 in the process. 

His greenkeeping innovations included the introduction of top-dressing greens with sand and he was the first to use a push mower to cut greens. All of which is to say nothing of his prolific work as a golf course designer. Muirfield, Machrihanish, the Jubilee Course at St Andrews, Balcomie Links at Crail, Moray, Bridge of Allan, Askernish… he made them all.

His final 18-hole design was the Killermont Course at Glasgow Golf Club, which opened in 1904, just four years before his death. 

Shortly before his 87th birthday, he had a fatal fall down a flight of stairs in the clubhouse of the New Golf Club in St Andrews. He is buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s Cathedral and, every year, thousands of golfers from around the world pay it a visit to pay their respects to the ‘Grandfather of Golf’.

James Braid

1870-1950

Along with his English contemporaries Harry Vardon and JH Taylor, Earlsferry-born Braid was one of the ‘Great Triumvirate’ who dominated golf in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

After beginning his career as a clubmaker, he switched to being a professional golfer in 1896 and overcame debilitating putting problems to win The Open on five occasions, as well as four British PGA Matchplay Championships and the 1910 French Open. His victory in the 1906 Open was the last successful defence of the title by a European for more than a century, until Padraig Harrington emulated him in 2008. 

In 1912, Braid scaled back his playing, which coincided with a scaling-up of his golf course design business. He either devised from scratch or redesigned over 200 courses, including the King’s Course at Gleneagles and the iconic Championship Course at Carnoustie. 

Widely regarded as the inventor of the dogleg, Braid famously disliked travelling and so never actually set eyes on many of his courses, including two 18-hole layouts for the Singapore Island Country Club in Asia, which he laid out using topographic maps. 

He died in 1950, shortly after completing the design for Stranraer Golf Course in Dumfries & Galloway.

Why not explore and celebrate Braid’s legacy by following the James Braid Trail around Scotland? A six-day adventure that goes from Irvine in Ayrshire to Nairn in the Highlands, it incorporates some of the great man’s most famous layouts, including the East and West courses at Dalmahoy near Edinburgh, and Lundin Links in the East Neuk of Fife. Click here to find out more.