By Gerry McMullan

It’s fair to say when any golfer discusses the home of world golf, they immediately think of St Andrews in Scotland. How many Americans would love to play golf in this holy grail of the ancient game, take a walk along the natural links courses and be challenged by the most fearsome unforgiving bunkers and thick rough golf has to offer?
The hearts of many American golfers and tourists alike beat faster with emotion seeing for the first time the magnificent Royal & Ancient Club House standing majestically alongside the famous 18th green. Cast your mind back to the 2005 Open Championship and the highly charged emotional moment when Jack Nicklaus stood on the famous little Swilken Bridge for the last time in an Open Championship, taking in the adulation of the many thousands of people lining the 18th fairway who were there to say goodbye to one of the most exciting golfers the world has ever known. St Andrews and the Old Course are certainly the most revered places of this ancient game and the Mecca for millions of golfing pilgrims throughout the world.
I now have to pose the question: Is St Andrews really the only town in the Kingdom of Fife that holds such mystique or is there another special place that deserves a visit by American golfers and tourists here to the Kingdom of Fife? The answer is simple. There certainly is another city in the heart of Fife that not only has a place in American golfing history, it also happens to be the Sister City of Sarasota, Florida.
If St Andrews is Mecca for golfers, then Dunfermline (the ancient capital of Scotland) is truly Camelot. This great city, once famous for its Damask Linen, is situated just a few miles north of Edinburgh across the mighty River Forth and just happens to be the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, founder of the great American steel empire.
As the ancient capital, Dunfermline is the final resting place of Scotland’s many kings and queens....most notably King Robert the Bruce. It may also be of historical interest to know one of Dunfermline’s sons is responsible for re-naming the city of Pittsburgh back in 1758. This was the name given to the area where the rivers of the Monongahela and the Allegheny meet to form the mighty Ohio by General, John Forbes. He along with his aide, a rather young Colonel, George Washington, stood side by side as their troops marched into Aliquippa to take formal possession after a bloody battle that saw the French army well and truly defeated. It was Forbes who also introduced Washington to his future wife, a widow named Martha Dandridge Custis whom he later married in 1759. This Scottish town of Dunfermline has certainly played its part in American history – Forbes, Carnegie, Pittsburgh and even a connection with America’s first President, George Washington.
Can there be anything else this ancient capital has given America? The answer once more is yes. It is recorded in American Golfing history that two Dunfermline men, John Reid (often described as “the father of American golf”) and Robert Lockhart formed the St Andrew’s Golf Club in Yonkers, New York in 1888 which established the modern game of golf in the USA.
On a return visit to Scotland in 1887, Lockhart bought some hickory shafted golf clubs and balls from Old Tom Morris’s golf shop in St Andrews. Little did he or John Reid ever imagine that this purchase of clubs and the laying out of a small golf course in Yonkers would see the development of a sport in their new country that would produce some of the greatest American golfers the world has ever known. If it was not for these two fanatical Dunfermline golfers who emigrated to America for a better life, one can only wonder if we would ever have seen the genius of Bobby Jones, Hagen, Snead, Palmer, Trevino, Watson, Tiger Woods and of course the Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus and many others. I would hasten to add without fear of contradiction, that not a single day goes by without these names being mentioned on some golf course or 19th hole somewhere in the world.
Anyone thinking of a vacation to Scotland in this particular year for Scotland’s Homecoming Celebrations or for next year’s “Open Championship,” I would seriously advise you to take a few days out of your itinerary to pay a visit to Dunfermline. No tour of Scotland would be complete without a visit to the city’s magnificent Benedictine Abbey, Palace Ruins, the Grave of King Robert the Bruce, Andrew Carnegie’s Birthplace Museum (newly refurbished) and our wonderful golf courses.
Before emigrating to the new world for a better life, Robert Lockhart helped in the founding of the Dunfermline Golf Club and today this historic club known as Pitfirrane Golf Club, set in outstanding countryside with a historic club house dating back over 600 years, is a magical gem not to be missed. Together with Pitreavie Golf Club, designed Dr. Alister MacKenzie of Augusta National fame, Dunfermline can stand proud of its special American connections.
Although I mentioned previously that Dunfermline and Sarasota are linked through the Sister Cities Association, there is yet one more special link. Rebuilt and situated close to the John Ringling Museum exactly as it was here in Dunfermline many years ago, Sarasota is the proud owner of the Dunfermline Opera House, now well-established as the mainstage at the Asolo Repertory Theatre. All these links are so special to both our cities and the hand of friendship and a warm Scottish welcome awaits any American who pays a visit to Dunfermline.
There will be no better time to visit the original magic Kingdom of Fife, when in 2010 the Open Championship Golf tournament is played upon on the hallowed Old Course in St Andrews. Fife, it has to be said, is truly a golfer’s paradise.
May I also suggest and recommend prior to any visit to the Kingdom to take on some of the most trying courses in the world, that you may like to read the mystical books by Michael Murphy, Golf in the Kingdom, published in 1972 by Penguin and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, published in 1997 by Broadway Books. Both books certainly add to the mystery of the ancient game and at the same time will paint a wonderful misty historic atmosphere which can only enhance any visit to the Kingdom of Fife
The combined unique elements of culture, history, sport, outstanding countryside and dramatic coastline, Fife and Dunfermline have much to offer tourists from all over the world and a special hand of friendship will always be extended to our American friends and Sarasota family.