Young Tom Morris
Scottish professional golfer (1851-1875)
Thomas Morris (20 April 1851 – 25 December 1875), better known as Young Tom Morris, was a Scottish professional golfer. He is considered one of the pioneers of professional golf, and was the first young prodigy in golf history. He won four consecutive titles in the Open Championship, and did this by the age of 21.
Morris was born in St Andrews, the "Home of Golf", and died there on Christmas Day, 1875, aged 24. His father, Old Tom Morris, was the greenkeeper and professional of the St Andrews Links, and himself won four of the first eight Open Championships. Young Tom's first Open Championship win – in 1868 at age 17 – made him the youngest major champion, a record which still stands.
Early life and education
For many years it was thought on the basis of a baptismal certificate that Morris was born on 10 May 1851, but in 2006 his birth certificate was discovered in Edinburgh. Morris moved with his family as an infant from St Andrews to Prestwick, where his father took a new position as the golf professional and greenkeeper.
Morris studied at Ayr Academy up to his early teens. The Morris family was becoming more prosperous, and hence able to afford the expensive private school fees, in the range of £15 per year.
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This entry incorporates text from “Young Tom Morris” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.