The Dunfermline lads who took Golf to America

Fire station Creative Connection explained

In this article we will look at how two Dunfermline gentlemen were responsible for the creating the first golf course in USA and how this provided some of the inspiration behind Fire Station Creative’s Director and curator Ian Moir’s incredible painting ‘Game of Kings’.

We see Ian explain the subject matter in some detail in his short video as he travels across the Forth to see his painting hang in The National Gallery, Edinburgh.

bJohn Reid and Robert Lockhart both brought up in Dunfermline and both emigrated to The United States. Lockhart was involved in the linen industry and often returned home on business as Scotland with places like Dundee and his old home town being world leaders in the textile industry.

It was on one of his trips that Lockhart bought some clubs from Old Tom Morris’s golf shop in St Andrews and took them back to New York with him.

It was at this stage that Reid became involved when he borrowed the clubs from Lockhart and took some American friends to a cow field in Yonkers, New York and with a few hastily created holes, they proceeded to play what is generally regarded as the first ever round of gold in America.

The date was 22nd February 1888 and on November 14th of that same year the first golf club in USA was created and Reid (forever known as the Father of American Golf) was made President. It was named The St Andrews Golf Club and still exists, albeit in a new venue at Hastings-on-Hudson since 1897.

John Reid was also mythologised for being responsible for the the golfing ritual of the ‘19th hole’ when his playing companions and him celebrated the completion of their round with a few libations underneath an old Apple Tree and were forever known thereafter as ‘The Apple Tree Gang’.

Ian’s painting also goes much further back in history as it depicts former kings playing around Dunfermline. It was King James IV of Scotland who granted royal approval in 1502, 386 years before arguably America’s biggest sporting import.

I hope you enjoy the short video.