The truth about most golf movies is that the less they are about golf, the larger the potential audience for the film. Just as golf does not attract all athletes, professional or recreational, golf movies will not attract all moviegoers.

In fact, you have a much better chance of making money with a movie where 12 cars blow up in the first 10 minutes or if someone is living on Mars or pretty much anything is done through animation.

That’s the challenge for the newest movie using golf as a back drop, “Tommy’s Honour,” and yes, that is the British spelling in the title of the film. Can the film, which has merit enough to have earned a showing in the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January and which is now in wide release, attract film goers who might not know anything about the story or the game of golf?

For anyone with some knowledge of golf history, the names Old Tom Morris and his son Young Tom are almost mythical. But the father and son were very real characters. Old Tom was a great player, winning The Open Championship four times, overseeing the fabled St. Andrews course as greenskeeper and turning the making of clubs and balls into a profession. He is, as the film notes, often considered the father of golf.

Young Tom was wilder, but perhaps the best player in the world, admittedly when golf’s world was relatively small. He went on to win four Open Championships himself, but the career was cut short by the tragic circumstances that make up the heart of the screenplay by Pamela Marin and Kevin Cook (no, I won't spoil the ending for you if you don't already know the story).

Still, how do you make a golf movie, even a movie about some of the most important people in the history of the game, into something that non-golfers will want to see? That’s tough, and whether this movie can accomplish that feat is anyone’s guess. But it’s a solid try, and one that at least merits consideration from a wider audience.

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Golf is the vehicle in the film, but not a vehicle for praising or promoting the game. “Tommy’s Honour” is really a film about clashes between generations and a class war and love when many around the world find the love unacceptable.

The film is beautifully shot in Scotland and does a pretty good job of staying true to golf. It should, since the director, Jason Connery, is Scottish himself. Complaints that the main characters might not have the greatest swings in the world kind of fall flat, since we have no film of how people in the 1870s truly swatted at a ball with the clubs of the time. The cast consists of what for most American film goers are unknowns with the exception of Sam Neal, who plays the captain of the St. Andrews club and an obstacle for those like the Morris family who need to learn their place, Neal’s character believes.

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Perhaps the film doesn’t quite need to be 1 hour and 52 minutes, but the approximately 50 people who saw the 3:50 p.m. showing Saturday at the Palm Desert 10 Cinemas certainly seemed to enjoy the entire film. Most of the crowd did look like golfers, to be honest.

For a golfer or someone interested in the history of the game, “Tommy’s Honour” is a strong film. For non-golfers, the film plays as a nice and very watchable family drama and what seems like an accurate period piece of golf and Scotland in the 1870s.

Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer. He can be reached at (760) 778-4633 or larry.bohannan@desertsun.com.