Born in St Andrews
Born in St Andrews
One small grey town on the Scottish coast. A game, and a watchmaker — both shaped by the same streets, generations apart.
In 1821, a boy named Tom Morris was born in the grey streets of St Andrews. He would go on to shape the Home of Golf itself — remaking the Old Course as we know it today and founding the game's first Championship. Nearly two centuries later, in the same town, Kartel was born. A different craft entirely — but the same belief that where a thing is made becomes part of what it is.
This is the town that shapes what comes from it. Here is the man who proved it.
Old Tom Morris — the maker of the Home of Golf
Born in St Andrews
Thomas Mitchell Morris is born in the town that would define his life — and that he would, in turn, help define.
The apprentice
In his mid-teens he takes a four-year apprenticeship, then five years as a journeyman under Allan Robertson of St Andrews — until, in 1848, a parting of ways over the new "gutty" ball ended the partnership on the spot.
Prestwick, and The Open
Tom moves to Prestwick as professional and keeper of the green, laying out and tending the course. There he helps found what becomes the Open Championship — winning it four times through the 1860s.
A shilling a course
His reputation made, Tom designs courses for a fee of just £1. He is thought to have created or reshaped more than a hundred — many still counted among the finest in the game.
Home to the Old Course
Tom returns to St Andrews and reworks the Old Course into the layout the world knows and loves — the course every golfer now crosses oceans to walk.
The R&A, for life
He officially retires, but the R&A keeps him on with a salaried consultancy for the rest of his days — a quiet honour for the town's most famous son.
The men he shaped
Those who learned under him — among them the Simpson brothers, C.B. Macdonald, A.W. Tillinghast and Donald Ross — carried golf-course design around the world, and inspire the architects still practising today.
The same streets that made the Home of Golf now make Kartel.
Old Tom spent his life proving that St Andrews shapes what comes from it. The links, the grey stone, the North Sea light — they made a golfer into the man who built the modern game.
A century and a half later, Kartel makes watches in those same streets. For ten years we've designed and built here, drawn from the same place and the same belief: that a thing carries something of where it was made. Old Tom shaped the course. We shape watches — so you can carry a piece of St Andrews wherever you go.
A tribute to the town we share. Kartel is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, the estate of Old Tom Morris or the R&A — only proud to have been born in the same place.
Carry St Andrews with you
Timepieces born in the Home of Golf — designed in Scotland, and shaped by the town that made Old Tom.