A StAndrews Man

Born in 1842, Jamie was brought up at Auld Daw’s house at 43 North Street and was a prominent member of The StAndrews Club and the Rose . He married his wife Janet Armit (1841-1917) who came from Auctermuchty in Dunshelt on 30 August 1861. They lived at 105 North Street and had 11 children over 19 years: Jane (1861- 1951), David (1863-1863), Margaret (1864- 1940), Mary (b1866), Elizabeth (1868-1937), James (1870-1944), William Armit (b1871), David (1874-1939), Janet Clement (b1876), Helen Strachan Dow who was known as Nellie (b1878) and John Murdoch (b1880). David died, aged 8 months, in 1863. Jamie arranged for a small headstone, which was placed about 15 feet from ’s obelisk in the StAndrews cemetery. Janet worked as a servant in the It is hard to write Jamie’s story without feeling household of Mrs Jane McIntosh, 15 Bell Street. a heartfelt sense of profound loss, sadness and The large family seems to be a family trait simple frustration at a life stolen from one so as his brother David (1847-1912) in the 1891 gifted. He was born with a truly rare talent for valuation roll had nine children living with him. Champion Golfer golf. To this day, Jamie still remarkably figures In 1901, a further daughter-in-law and grandson Jamie featured regularly in matches in the in most golf magazines’ Top 100 Golfers. squeezed into the house at 5a Ellice Place, making town with all the well-known names from The a grand total of 13 inhabitants. Jamie had it all, including fame, money and Royal and Ancient Golf Club of StAndrews such a solid business in StAndrews. He would go from When Forgan set up his own business in 1856 as Captain Leslie Balfour, H S C Everard and golf challenger to the dominant Tommy Morris when Philp died, he took on Jamie as his very writer Horace G Hutchinson. and Davie Strath, to the very top of the golfing first apprentice. Jamie did well learning the craft During one game with Hutchinson at world when Tommy died. of club making and stayed with Forgan through Westward Ho!, Hutchinson played a long iron his formative years and returned when his own Sadly from such great heights, his life would shot, that finished six inches from the hole. business and work opportunities dwindled. descend to the very lowest depths that would “Ah – that’s the sort that saves a lot of trouble,” see him arrested in StAndrews for being drunk said Jamie, who then encouraged Hutchinson and incapable, die in the Dysart Combination to come to StAndrews as his type of play would Poorhouse on the east of the village of Thornton, do well on the hard running StAndrews .13 about 20 miles from StAndrews, and also the Hutchinson took his advice and later became final ignominy – buried in an unmarked grave the second English Captain of the R&A, the in StAndrews cemetery. first being Onesipherous Tyndall Bruce in 1838. However, most historians and writers to date It is said that it was the competitiveness have told the story of Jamie as a drunkard who between Jamie, Tommy, Bob Kirk and Davie lost everything to drink. The truth may be a little Strath that pushed each of them, including less dramatic and a tad all too human. Tommy, towards greatness.

Jamie Anderson (above) Horace G Hutchinson (above) Simply one of the greatest golfers to play the game. After driving in as new Captain of the R&A in 1908, Jamie had this headstone (right) made when his son rewards the successful David died. In the same lair some years later, Jamie, with a gold sovereign for the recovery of his ball. his wife Janet, his sister Elspeth and father Auld Daw were all buried but no other headstone was ever added.

70 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF Jamie was no wallflower either. He more than held his own but Tommy Morris was a rare talent and at his best, if that was ever achieved, was in a different category altogether to everyone, winning the Open in 1868, 1869, 1870 and 1872. There was no Open in 1871, as Tommy then owned the Championship Belt outright. By 1872, organisers at Prestwick had created the , which Tommy won at his first attempt, true to form. Jamie’s best Open finish at Prestwick from 1866 to 1870 was sixth in 1869. This was when Old Tom, Willie Park and Tommy dominated the game, winning 10 out of the first 11 Opens between them. In 1873, when the Open came to StAndrews for the first time, Jamie was runner-up to of Rose Lane, StAndrews, who had cut grooves into the face of his irons the night before play to help control the ball spin. After Tommy died in 1875, Jamie won the Open in 1877, 1878 and 1879. He did not play Having played two shots already on the 9th, in 1880 as there had been very little prior notice called the Burn Hole, Jamie stood over his ball North Street fisherfolk due to the organisers’ pre-occupation with the and eyed the flag 150 yards away. He knew Jamie spent his early boyhood days at 43 North Street and would have been all too familiar with the fisherfolk April General Election, but romantic legend he had to get it onto the green at the very least. working outside the house. tells us that Jamie did not wish to do anything There was no room for error. to diminish the precious memory of Tommy. One can imagine the crowds edging closer He had died only 5 years previously and the to Jamie, as he took a swipe. It was on line. The His heart must have been pounding. town was still heartbroken. ball landed safely on the green. As the spectators With his hickory club in hand, Jamie smacked started to move, Jamie watched as the ball the ball. He caught it well. The ball flew over The Best Ever Finish to an Open rolled purposefully forward towards the pin and the pin to the slope behind the green. The ball suddenly, it was gone. The ball had fallen into stopped where it landed. As Jamie, the little Of his three Open wins, the 1878 stands the hole. A three on that hole was unheard of. girl and the crowd stared at the ball, it began out as being one of the most exceptional finishes On the 10th, Jamie had a solid four. This to move. It was rolling, meandering towards to an Open Championship, even to this day. left him needing to finish the last two holes the pin. It couldn’t. It did. The ball dropped Played over three rounds on the 12-hole in less than nine strokes to win. for a hole-in-one. The crowd erupted! Prestwick course, Jof Morris, Tom’s son, was On the Short Hole 11th, the 3, he was Amidst all the cheers, legend says Jamie already in the Prestwick clubhouse with a about to play when a girl watching with her turned and lifted his hat to the little girl and respectable 161 total. Jamie was still out on the father noticed that Jamie was playing his ball said,“Thank you miss. I am greatly obliged!” course with four holes left to play. If Jamie could from ahead of the and mentioned this quietly On the final hole, a good 5 saw him retain come home in less than 17 strokes, he would win. to her father.14 In 1878, this meant instant his Open title with 157 total. It was a simply That is no easy task with the hard rubber gutta disqualification if the ball was struck from this outstanding finish. ball and rough weather-beaten . position. Jamie overheard this, lifted his ball Jof had played the last two holes alone in and placed it behind the tee. 15 shots, ending with a 9 and a 6.

CHAPTER 3 | THE LINKS ROAD 71 Jamie seemed to have nerves of steel. Although Unfortunately, this was true. All the same, That young lad was . “I followed not long off the tee, he was incredibly consistent, he was the first to emulate Tommy’s three Open him like a little dog gazing with admiration at even under the greatest of pressure. As Andra wins in a row and the first to win the Open on everything he did, touching his clubs and repeating Kirkaldy recalled in his own book Fifty Years in three different courses. to my friends some of the wonderful things that StAndrews, ‘Nothing could put Jamie up or down. he said in ordinary conversation,” said Braid. He had a grand head on his shoulders and a big A Great Influence He was talking shortly after his own second heart in his breast.’ 15 Open win in 1905, a mere few weeks before He was playing with Andra Kirkaldy in the One of the greatest stories about Jamie was Jamie’s death. last round of the Open in 1879 in StAndrews, told by a man from Elie. This man, in 1905, for We all have our childhood golf heroes, with Jamie holding a slender one shot lead at the Golf Illustrated related a tale of how he followed, but for James Braid, the 5-times Open winner, final hole. with a crowd, the great Jamie Anderson playing it was Jamie Anderson. Jamie had a 30-yard shot to the pin for his a match on the Elie course in 1879. third shot and put it to 2 inches. Andra missed He was in awe of the reigning Open a 4-foot putt and took 5. “Better luck next time,” Champion, who was also at this time deemed said Jamie kindly. “You have time on your side, to be the best player in the world. Jamie took James Braid off Andra. Three Championships runnin’ will have some time out with the young lad and watched During the 1905 Open Championship at StAndrews, to do for me. I hardly expect to add any more.” 16 him swing and hit a few balls. Jamie, in turn, James Braid eyes up his tee shot at the short 11th hole. taught him a few shots and said that if he stuck at golf, he too could be an Open Champion.

72 ST ANDREWS IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF OLD TOM MORRIS The Slow Slide

In 1880, from Musselburgh won the first of his three Opens in a row. Jamie came second in 1881 and third in 1882 but a sign of how things had started to go wrong is the fact that the Anderson shops in StAndrews in 1882 are gone. In August that year, Jamie took a post as professional at the newly-opened Ardeer Golf Club in Ayrshire. We have no record of how the business with his father was closed but in 1884 Daw’s property next door to Old Tom was transferred to the Trustees of the StAndrews Working Mens’ Coffee House. It was known locally as the StAndrews Coffee House. The best physical description we have of Jamie is by Horace G Hutchinson in his book Fifty Years of Golf where he describes Jamie as, ‘short, rather round-about with sloping shoulders like a champagne bottle, yet a terrible golfer and a thrice Champion’.17 Although we see the pictures of the proud Jamie as a thin, young Champion with his medals, as the years went by his figure expanded to a more rotund figure of a man. For a man who was on top of the golfing world, he only made two more Open appearances in his life. He played in 1884 and finally in 1888, when he was back living in his old house at 105b North Street in StAndrews and working again for Forgan. Jamie had another attempt at running a golf business when he opened James Anderson & Son in 1893 but this quickly became the Golf Company and then Kilrymont Golf Company. The people involved in this business venture were all ex-employees of Forgan who may have shared some of Forgan’s skills making clubs but none of his acute business prowess. In 1893, Jamie’s clubs were advertised in the World’s Fair in Chicago. In the valuation rolls of the time he and his wife are noted as living with his brother David at 5a Ellice Place. The Claret Jug (top) Jamie Anderson’s three consecutive wins of the Open illustrate his dominance of the game. With Tommy Morris gone in 1875, Jamie was the best golfer in the world. Not even Davie Strath could beat him. They were the triumvirate of their era. North Street in the 1870s (right) When Davie died in 1879, Jamie was suddenly the last man standing. He has often cut a forlorn figure in biographies of his In this part of North Street, young Jamie and later life and perhaps it was the loss of his friends that drove Jamie further and further into trouble. For many years, two of his pals would play their own form of street golf, the triumvirate lay in rest in unmarked graves. For Davie, thanks to historian Dr David Malcolm and Noel Terry, that has been close to the family home at 43 North Street. addressed. In time, hopefully, there will be a headstone for the hugely gifted champion Jamie Anderson.

CHAPTER 3 | THE LINKS ROAD 73 In the valuation rolls, Kilrymont Golf In the Victorian era, such drunken behaviour It appears throughout that the family were Company is operating from 1894 through would have been very humiliating for his family still close and, in 1901, Jamie was back living to 1896 on the ground floor of 12 The Links, and society would almost definitely have deemed in StAndrews, albeit in a lodging house. There in a property owned by George Murray, the it almost necessary that they cut any ties with him, are no records for Dysart Combination Poorhouse, postmaster. This is The StRule Club today, with lest they too be tarnished, but they never did. so we cannot say for sure if Jamie was there for Jamie and then Old Tom after him using the What we do know is that Jamie ran up debts, fell prolongued periods from 1899 to 1905 or merely ground floor of the premises, occupied today on hard times, got very ill and had to go into the occasionally due to ill health. We do know that by the Club Administrator and golf members. Dysart Combination Poorhouse in Thornton. life in the poorhouse was in no way an easy option 20 The shop was then accessed from a door to the We also know from Malcolm and Crabtree to take. left of what is now the front window of the Club. in their biography of Tom Morris, that it was Jof When Auld Daw died, it was Jamie who Morris who leant Jamie money and when Jamie reported his father’s death. Jamie, the champion, The Final Straw went into the poorhouse in August 1899, that certainly was not ostracised from the family. whatever possessions he had, he gave to Jof in 18 There is very little on record for the last settlement of his debt. A Sad Farewell years of Jamie’s life. We do know that his sons Jamie’s sons, father and brother were all went to work for Forgan briefly. His son David doing relatively well in 1899 and mostly living Jamie outlived all his golfing friends who died headed off to work in Andrew Forgan’s Glasgow in StAndrews. Jamie was certainly not averse to young. Tommy died in 1875, followed by Davie shop and would eventually settle in London as living with his brother David, who had allowed Strath in 1879. When Bob Kirk Jnr died in 1886, a professional to various clubs. Another son, him to live in Ellice Place during the times when arguably his greatest rivals, friends and golfing James, made two working visits to the US but Jamie was arrested. peers were all gone. From the noise and on course would eventually return to StAndrews and form It is impossible to say one way or the other, banter of the four great players, to the silence left Anderson & Blyth at 8 Golf Place, where the but it appears on paper that the family tended to when they had gone, can only have left a gaping StAndrews Golf Company is based today. look after their own and Jamie’s going into the hole in Jamie’s life. James, who was known as Jimmie, died at poorhouse could have been more about his poor Jamie died on 16 August 1905 in the 31 North Castle Street on 9 June 1944. health that his wife and family could not manage Thornton Poorhouse of cerebral apoplexy, which Jamie is in the StAndrews Police Register than anything else. is today known as a stroke. A few days later, on for Criminals in 1892 for breach of the peace and The poorhouse in those days was equally for Saturday 19 August, a very short notice was placed in 1894 and 1896 for being drunk and incapable. people with poor health as it was for debtors.19 in the obituary section of the StAndrews Citizen. It would be quite wrong to automatically assume ‘James Anderson. Ex-Champion golfer. Funeral StAndrews Links that Jamie was following in his grandfather’s on Saturday at 1.30pm from Old Station. Friends, With a burgeoning tourism industry and luxury hotels, wastrel footsteps. please accept this (the only) intimation.’ StAndrews in the late 1800s became a fashionable Victorian town. With the addition of the Bruce Embankment, on what was once beach, children now play on the grass.

74 ST ANDREWS IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF OLD TOM MORRIS In other words, there would be no large funeral where people could celebrate their Champion. When Tom and Tommy passed away, the shops in town were closed and the streets Jamie Anderson were filled with mourners. There was to be When he lived at 9 The Links, he won the Open three times in a row. A true giant of the game no such fanfare for Jamie. There would certainly and not forgotten in StAndrews. be nothing other than the most meagre and perfunctory of funerals. What we do know is that his body was placed H S C Everard often told the story that in the same lair as his parents and his young son Jamie had told him that he had played 90 holes David. The solitary small 14˝ headstone says, without hitting a shot exactly how he intended ERECTED BY J ANDERSON it to be played. OF HIS SON DAVID Horace G Hutchinson, when talking about WHO DIED 30TH SEPT 1863 AGED 1 YEAR Jamie’s play, said ‘He never put anything like his full power into the shot but he was so desperately Jamie and Daw’s names were not added to accurate. Quite certainly, if that and that only the small headstone and are still not to this day. was golf, it was not golf that I played.’22 Jamie’s wife Janet lived for a further 12 years. There is a lovely note in the 2010 softback She moved to live with her daughter, Helen version of the Malcolm and Crabtree book on Waters, at 137 Morrison Street, Edinburgh and Old Tom Morris about a coachman of the town’s died of colon cancer on 22 January 1917. She was For interest, in the following week’s edition, four-in-hand at who remembered brought back to StAndrews and buried alongside there is a report of the match between the Scots a great professional tournament coming to her husband in the same lair. Jamie’s sister Elspeth, James Braid and versus the English Carnoustie. “I remember us lining up at the station who lived with Daw all her life and never married, and J H Taylor in StAndrews. to looking for Tommy Morris, David Strath and was buried there too in 1910. It reports that 7,000 spectators turned up for the match and that at the very beginning, the Jimmy Anderson, as if we were to welcome three Reverend R A Hall, Chairman of the Green kings.” 23 They were indeed Kings. What the Papers Said Committee, called for three cheers for Old Tom, It is to the Open of 1878 that we should which Tom recognised by doffing his cap. look when we reflect upon Jamie and not his There was a proud biography in the StAndrews The Scots won. slow demise. Citizen on 19 August 1905 that relished Jamie’s achievements on the links. This is not the norm Life in StAndrews had quickly moved on. If you are visiting StAndrews, do pay a visit for a man if he had been ostracised. He clearly to the cemetery. Jamie is buried in Section E, was not. It also said tellingly that Jamie, for a The Real Jamie Anderson Row 14, Lair 4 (see page 240). If you enter by considerable time, had not been in good health. the front gates, opposite Dean’s Court, and walk straight ahead for about 150 yards, through the When it came to golfing, Jamie had achieved To get a true measure of Jamie the man, cathedral until you reach the right-hand spire. more than any other Anderson. He was simply, we can only go by what his contemporaries Turn immediately right and walk towards the in his prime in the late 1870s, the best golfer in said about him. grand obelisk for Allan Robertson. Just before you the world. Once when Jamie was asked, “Hoo is reach the path, you will see little David Anderson’s that Jamie you play so well with your iron?” Jamie “Jamie Anderson was the great tombstone about 15 feet away from Allan’s, whose jokingly replied, “Oh, it saves a lot of putting.” gutta-ball golfer who won the is on the other side of the path. Jamie is there, He was a rare talent. three Championships in successive unrecognised alongside Auld Daw. In the same paper, there was a passing If you find the grave, in homage of the great mention of the ‘illustrious’ Jamie Anderson in years on three different courses win of 1878, please do doff your cap and say a report on the James Braid story that was in the “Thank you sir. I am greatly obliged,” to one latest edition of Golf Illustrated. There was also and never turned a hair in doing of the most gifted golfers to have graced the game a poem to Willie Park and a note of a new golfing so, or showed signs of being puffed – an all too human, big-hearted, 3-times Open record by Johnnie Allan, but nothing more about Champion, Jamie Anderson. the Champion. up afterwards.” Andra Kirkaldy 21

CHAPTER 3 | THE LINKS ROAD 75