ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND | Minutes before 7 o’clock Sunday morning, Andrew Thomson walked onto the 18th green of the Old Course here. He wore a blazer, white trousers, slightly scuffed brown shoes and a navy blue tie bearing the crest that indicated he was a member of the R&A. In his right hand he carried a small plastic phial, the significance of which will become clear in a moment. He peered out at life over the top of spectacles that sat not entirely securely on the end of his nose.
In about 12 hours, the green, the most famous in golf, the one of which Old Tom Morris was the keeper nearly 150 years ago, would be the centrepiece of the trophy ceremony for the 150th Open and a player would step forward to receive the Claret Jug and be referred to as “the champion golfer of 2022.” Now, though, there were fewer people around the green than noisy seagulls overhead, squawking noisily and circling menacingly for any scraps.
Andrew Thomson bears a surname as famous in golf as Dunlop or Morris. Peter, his father, was Australian and had been champion golfer at Royal Birkdale in 1954 and 1965, at St. Andrews in 1955, at Royal Liverpool in 1956 and at Royal Lytham and St. Annes in 1958. Only Harry Vardon has won more Opens. Peter Thomson was cerebral and thoughtful and these combined with a rare golfing intelligence and a simple swing to bring him huge success. Thomson made the myriad movements of a golf swing seem no more complicated than a simple swish at a dandelion. “Whenever I asked Dad how to hit it, he would say, “Just copy me,” Andrew Thomson said. Peter Thomson’s forebears were Scottish, his progeny Australian and every few years he liked to drive around his home country to reacquaint himself with its rhythms and rhymes and rituals.
There was a purpose to what was happening on the 18th green Saturday morning. Andrew Thomson had a task, and to make sure he fulfilled it he telephoned his mother, Mary, who was at her daughter’s farm an hour or so north of Melbourne, so she could watch him fulfil it.
It was odd that in a room replete with golfing history, oil portraits, legendary names on lockers, no one knew the historic provenance of this tattered bag of old clubs slumped against a wall.
Let’s pause here for a moment and go back in time to midmorning on Saturday when Thomson was to be found in a deep leather chair in the Big Room of the R&A’s clubhouse, a coffee cup perched in one hand. Members similarly dressed were bustling around. The level of chatter was high. In his quiet voice, Andrew Thomson was explaining what he had been doing on this trip from Japan, where he lives, to Britain. He was sprinkling the ashes of his father on the greens of each of the venues where his father had won the Open. He already had done so at Birkdale, Hoylake and Royal Lytham the week before. Now it was to be the turn of the Old Course.
To add to the authenticity, he had a pencil bag containing some of his father’s clubs with him, a persimmon-headed driver and some irons, all of which carried the name Peter Thomson. In fact, as he spoke, the clubs were leaning against a wall of the Big Room, and it was odd that in a room replete with golfing history, oil portraits, legendary names on lockers, no one knew the historic provenance of this tattered bag of old clubs slumped against a wall.
Suddenly, Thomson reached into the left pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small polythene bag circled by an old rubber band. “Here they are,” he said. “Dad’s remains.” This may have been the most incongruous sight in a room full of incongruous sights. In his left hand, on the little finger of which he wears a signet ring his father had bought in an arcade in London in the 1950s, Andrew Thomson was holding the remains of a man with whom I had played golf, talked golf, argued golf. I had stayed with him at his and Mary’s house in the Mornington Peninsula and learned that in the family he was called Tui, which was aborigine for “chief.”
Before the 2005 Open, I interviewed him at the house he was renting on Hope Street in St. Andrews, and, typical of the quizzical, intelligent man that he was, he shot me a question. “Do you have any idea how many bunkers there are on the Old Course?” I got the answer wrong, as he suspected I would, just as I had gotten wrong some wrinkle about a mid-20th century member of Britain’s royal family in that morning’s Times of London. Peter Thomson pointed out my mistake there, too.
What exactly is the protocol when, in a room crowded with people chattering about golf, about Boris Johnson, soon no longer to be prime minister, Brexit and COVID, you are staring at a small plastic bag containing the ashes of a man you called a friend? No one had taught me what to do or say in such a situation. Do you touch it with reverence before returning it to its owner? If you recoil slightly, are you committing a faux pas? Do you say, “Hello, old friend,” and give it a tap just as you might do to the coffin of a friend as you pass it at a funeral? Or do you keep your mouth shut?
Fortunately Andrew Thomson solved the quandary. He put his father’s remains in his pocket and we adjourned until morning, a grey day with a hint of rain in the air. There on the 18th green, watched by Tony Rule, the captain of Royal Melbourne Golf Club, who was holding a telephone so that Mary Thomson could see what was going on, and Sandy Reid, director of greenkeeping for St. Andrews Links Trust, Thomson walked slowly along the edge of the famous green, sprinkling his father’s ashes from a plastic phial.
He looked as though he were sprinkling water on the lettuces in his garden. Specks of light-coloured dust wafted to the ground, leaving a distinctive trail. Andrew Thomson was muttering quietly to himself as he did so, though he would not reveal what he was saying. One hopes it was, “Thanks, Dad. Mum made me promise to do this, and now I have.”
Farewell, Peter Thomson. Your play rose above the efforts of others, just as your ashes are as dust beneath the feet of others.
Top: Andrew Thomson sprinkles some of the ashes of his father, Peter Thomson, on the 18th green at St. Andrews, following a similar tribute at the other three courses where Peter Thomson won the Open. Tony Rule, the captain of the Royal Melbourne Golf Club, videos the event on his phone so Peter Thomson's mother, Mary, can watch.
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