Tommy's Honor by Kevin Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

play stellar golf. Everyone knew that Jamie Dunn, Willie’s identical twin, was nearly his brother’s equal. The question mark was young Morris, who had never played in front of spectators and reporters.
    Allan liked to joke about the Dunns: “Keep your eye on ’em, or Willie might hit every shot.” The tall twins often dressed alike, but at Musselburgh they did their opponents and spectators a favor by wearing different ties, Willie’s blue and Jamie’s gray. They went on to play identically well, outdriving the St. Andrews duo, alternating shots with dead aim. To the cheers of their home-course supporters, the twins routed Allan and Tom. The day’s scheduled thirty-six holes ended after only twenty-four, the Dunns leading by thirteen holes with twelve to play. It was a bitter defeat for the St. Andreans. Matters worsened a week later at St. Andrews, where the ballyhooed showdown looked to be a bust, a mismatch. Allan kept missing putts—“funking,” it was called, which meant choking. Then, late in the day, the twins faltered. Tom led a rally over the last nine holes and he and Allan squeaked by with a victory on the Home Hole. Now the sides were dead even. Had the contest been scored by holes rather than courses, Tom and Allan would have been twelve holes behind, needing a miracle on the last day. As it was, all they needed was one good afternoon.
    On the morning of the final thirty-six holes, a special train carted crowds of so-called “golf-fanatics” to the quirky little North Berwick links below Berwick Law, a dead volcano. The squat, round-topped mountain had once spat fire but had been worn down through the millennia to a nub that schoolboys climbed. At its foot, crowds gathered near the first teeing-ground at the edge of a red sandstone town that had never seen anything like this.
    Rain fell in sheets that morning, sluicing into the weedy old quarry beside the first fairway. The torrent peaked just as dozens of Allan and Tom’s supporters were crossing the Forth on the Burntisland ferry. By the time they reached the course they were clammy and miserable and outnumbered ten to one by the Dunns’ supporters. One observer, Tom Peter, remembered a glum morning: “On meeting Allan I said I had come to see him win. He replied that he hoped so, but he had a dejected look.” The rain moved offshore, leaving clean sky and a breeze that blew several spectators’ hats down the fairway. Allan and Tom had the honor, which meant that Allan did. Before teeing off he took a moment to look around at the huge, still-growing crowd around him, a throng that stretched along the fairway almost to the green. There were more than a thousand people watching. So many faces, all silent for one long moment before he sent the ball on its way.
    Allan’s drive was straight, but short. Willie Dunn’s drive flew past it. Willie held his driver high on the follow-through, waving it forward as if to chase the ball farther. The Dunns’ backers cheered and shook their coal-stained fists. “I never saw a match where such vehement party spirit was displayed,” Tom Peter wrote in his memoir, Reminiscences of Golf . “So great was the keenness and anxiety to see whose ball had the best lie, that no sooner were the shots played than off the whole crowd ran, helter-skelter.” The Dunn twins’ power awed Peter: “They went sweeping over hazards which the St. Andrews men had to play short of.” With twenty-six holes played and eight to go, the Dunns were four holes ahead. Gamblers in the crowd raised their hands and shouted offers: Fifteen to one against Robertson and Morris. Twenty to one!
    Allan had been useless all day, hitting crooked drives and funking putts. Tom Peter heard a catcall from the crowd: “That wee body in the red jacket canno’ play golf!” That yell may have been the spur the proud Robertson needed. A minute later he sank his first putt of consequence in more than a week. He and Tom took that hole and the next