📍8 The Links, St Andrews KY16 9JB, UK
1865 – 1908“I was born in St Andrews in June 1821, the son of a weaver, and I grew up playing golf on the links with a cut-down club and a wine cork. At fourteen I was apprenticed to Allan Robertson, the finest golfer and ball-maker of his day, making feathery balls by hand in his workshop. In 1851 I went west to Prestwick in Ayrshire to lay out its new course and serve as its keeper of the green, and there I helped to start the Open Championship in 1860, which I won four times. In 1865 the Royal and Ancient Golf Club brought me home to St Andrews as its keeper of the green, and I spent the rest of my life tending the Old Course: widening the fairways, building new greens, and inventing the practice of top-dressing the turf with sand. From 1866 I ran my shop and lived here at the Links, right beside the eighteenth green, making clubs and balls, giving lessons and looking out on the course every day. Golfers from all over the world came through my door. My son, Young Tom, won the Open four times in a row, and we were the proudest father and son in golf; I lost him, and his young wife, far too soon. I designed or redesigned courses all over Britain and Ireland, including Muirfield, Carnoustie and Royal County Down, and I played in every Open until I was seventy-five. The eighteenth green of the Old Course is named after me, and my shop at the Links still trades under my name.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today