Bid to provide golf icon a headstone

He was the 19th Century professional golfer from St Andrews who won the Open Championship three times – yet died destitute in the Thornton Poorhouse before being buried in an unmarked grave.

Now award-winning author and golf historian Roger McStravick has secured permission for a headstone to be placed at Jamie Anderson’s burial site in St Andrews Cathedral.

Roger, who wrote about Jamie in his recent book St Andrews In the Footsteps of Old Tom Morris, has been liaising with Historic Scotland to have a stone raised.

Having received “very generous” support from local golf clubs, he is now approaching private individuals in a bid to raise £8,000 via www. justgiving.com/crowd funding/jamieanderson

Born in 1842, and a peer of Old Tom and Young Tommy Morris, who also lie in St Andrews Cathedral, Jamie was brought up at Auld Daw’s house at 43 North Street, St Andrews, and was a prominent member of the St Andrews Golf Club and the Rose Golf Club.

The father of 11, who won the Open Championship in 1877, 1878 and 1879, had a small headstone made when his son David died aged eight months in 1863.

However, while Jamie, who died in 1905, his wife Janet, his sister Elspeth and father Auld Daw were all buried in the same lair some years later, no other headstone was ever added.

It is a story Roger found difficult to write about in his book without feeling a “heartfelt sense of profound loss, sadness and simply frustration at a life stolen from one so gifted”.

Jamie Anderson.