From the book, Golf for the People: Bethpage and the Black:
It is the month of May in the year 1688 and Thomas Powell stands in a field in the middle of Long Island. The place is called by the Indians “Rim of the Woods.” He is holding a long wooden club that ends in a large knob and on the ground in front of him lay a small sphere. Nearby stands Thomas Dongan the colonial governor and soon to-be-first Earl of Limerick. Next to him the Duke of York, the man responsible for introducing the game of golf to Britain, and who reportedly played “the first great golf match on the record books… on a public course in 1681” while paired with an Edinburgh shoemaker and who is here in the colonies as a reward for the creation of good will. Here where Mr. Powell was soon to purchase this land and, being the devout Quaker that he is, give it the biblical title of “house of figs,” the Hebrew name of Bethpage. Here the first round of golf in America was about to be played.
There are many legends about where golf was first played in America, and this is but one. That this be true is only proper considering what the future would hold for this same ground. The August and September 1935 issues of the Farmingdale Post of Farmingdale, New York, would report it this way, “…They chose an apt place for their game, for 250 years later what probably are the greatest courses in America were laid out on the same spot, and the Bethpage State Park came into being.”
Now this report of the first time golf was played, or better put, demonstrated in America has a significant problem as the Duke of York was actually the King of England in 1688 and the King didn't come here. Yet the newspaper accounts in the 1935 Farmingdale Post by the reporter clearly stated that he had found the actual documents which proved this.
What was the basis for this account? Where are these documents? Did it actually happen?