Fox Chapel

We’re often asked how we divide the work.

And we answer: we simply play to our strengths. With his artist’s eye and affinity for organization, Strawn transforms disparate pieces of text, photos, and graphics into the book you will eventually hold. And as a golf course designer himself and the former CEO of Robert Trent Jones II, as well as the writer of the first-ever book about the design and building of a single golf course—Driving the Green (1990)—John writes the architecture parts of our books. Sampson, the author of about twenty-five books, some of golf-themed them bestsellers, writes the rest.

At Fox Chapel, which seems to have cared about posterity from the moment it was created, we enjoyed a very smooth work process. Fox Chapel’s archives were far more complete than other clubs we’ve seen. They had members and employees of long standing who were able to communicate the club’s institutional memory. And Fox Chapel had such a high profile in the Pittsburgh community that there was no shortage of newspaper stories about its latest tournament, soiree, or wedding.

The reputation of the course’s designer, Seth Raynor, was enjoying a posthumous rehabilitation in the 21st century. Lifted from obscurity by a coterie of golf historians obsessed with extolling the excellence of the courses built in the 1920s, Raynor was firmly installed in the pantheon of what architecture aficionados call golf’s golden age.