“The sand is with Tom the cure for all links diseases," proclaimed Golf Illustrated in an article about Old Tom Morris in 1875. His experiments with sand began at Prestwick, forty years earlier when the 10th hole was in bad shape, “To save it from putting damage he shifted it a bit, and by accident some sand fell on part of the putting green….In the spring Tom happened to ‘study’ this relieved ground: and he observed that the grass was showing beautiful light green shoots through the sprinkled sand when no resuscitation was noticeable elsewhere. The thought, happily, struck him that the sand was the cause of this growth. Accordingly, he took his big red handkerchief and filled it repeatedly from an adjoining bunker, and strewed the sand over the putting ground. The recovery was magical, and from that day to this Tom has held onto the marvelous recuperative powers of ‘saund’ in natural coast greens. Tom holds to ‘saund’ with a tenacity quite foreign to his usual nature.” (From Golf Illustrated (U.K.), November 4, 1898, p.175)
To read more on Tom, see Dr J.G. MacPherson's reminiscences of Tom