The Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh is known for its Seth Raynor golf course. With Raynor’s guiding hand, the layout crafted onto this meadow in the eponymous section of the Burgh stands unique among the region’s golf courses. While nearby Oakmont can lay claim to being the only Henry Fownes golf course design, Fox Chapel can stake its own claim as Raynor’s best. That is heady company, given the likes of Camargo in Cincinnati, Blue Mound in Wisconsin, and Fishers Island in the waters between New York and Connecticut.
Over the course of the year 2020, Tom Marzolf of Fazio Design lived and worked these fairways, helping course superintendent Jason Hurwitz and a build team rediscover and recreate what Raynor laid down. By rediscover, the assemblage confirmed original putting surface sizes, fairway corridors, and bunker placements. Some of the latter had been lost, and many of the former had shrunk just a bit. By recreate, the bevy dreamed how Raynor and Banks would have placed bunkers and tees in an era of increased technological influence. What they turned out to the membership in the spring of 2021, was a restored and renewed Fox Chapel, one that brags of Raynor’s brilliance and sets the stage for the next 50 years.
Seth Raynor built the course in the early 1920s. Unlike other courses, we had evidence of what it looked like immediately after it was built, including great photos from 1925 when it opened, as well as aerial photos from the ‘30s and more. We could see changes that happened over time.
“[A.W.] Tillinghast was on property in the ‘30s, as part of the work he did for the PGA of America during The Depression, and evidently there was an attempt to remove some of Raynor’s design. You can see in aerials taken in 1938 Raynor features being eliminated and “Winged Foot-type” fingers going into Raynor’s hard-edged bunkers. Other geometric forms were rounded out, even mowing lines changed. For example, on the par-4, dogleg-right 13th hole, Tilly sharpened the dogleg and moved the green to the right, eliminating a classic Raynor double-plateau surface. The 16th hole was a “Bottle”; then the Bottle design was gone and Winged Foot-type bunkers were added.”
“Were some of the bolder features too hard to play? We don’t know, but we felt our job was to make members aware of the changes.” – Tom Marzolf, Fazio Design
Seth Raynor was the right-hand man of Charles Blair Macdonald, the blustery father of American golf. Raynor was contracted to build a nine-hole course at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, and it was there that he met one of the school’s employees, Charles Banks. Banks had served as both English instructor and development officer at the prep school and became enthralled with Raynor’s approach to design. After the school’s course opened in 1924, Banks abandoned his career at Hotchkiss and joined forces with Raynor. Banks would earn the nickname “Steam Shovel,” for purportedly losing a steam shovel in a bog at the Whippoorwill course in New York. When Raynor passed in 1926, two years after their meeting, Banks finished a number of Raynor’s courses.
For those not in the know, Macdonald and Raynor were purveyors of the “template” school of golf course architecture. During travels to Scotland and England, Macdonald had identified holes that he considered to be the finest examples of strategic golf course architecture. They bore names like Redan, Road, Biarritz, Punch Bowl, Hog’s Back, Eden, Maiden, and others. Many of these holes are found, in one form or fashion, at Fox Chapel. In fact, it is something of a scavenger hunt among template fans to determine which course or club has the finest, the most unique, the most authentic mimeo of the original. Macdonald’s magnum opus, the National Golf Links of America, sits in the Hamptons of Long Island, and is a treasure trove of templates.
In addition to the aforementioned, it should be noted that Raynor was a civil engineer, a man remarkably inclined toward geometry. As Mr. Marzolf notes, the following is a fine assessment of what the restoration committee set out to achieve
“Geometry, bisecting lines of play, straight mowing lines, bands of the fairway that go right up to a geometrically shaped bunker and then turn. The use of template holes, like his mentor C.B. Macdonald, repeating the size of bunkers. We’re trying to make this the strictest adhering to Raynor principles possible. It is not an interpretation, it’s truly putting Raynor back on the ground.”
Over the intervening decades, the Fox Chapel Club hosted a number of elite events but fell a bit of a victim to the architectural flavors of the different times. Trees grew up and green surfaces shrunk. Deep rough became a method of protecting par, rather than the firm and fast conditions championed by Raynor and other, golden-age architects. In 2014, the club retained the Fazio design firm to develop a master plan for the golf course. Tom Marzolf was charged with leading a return to Raynor principles. Over the next seven years, the club and the Fazio firm moved in the direction of restoring as much of Seth Raynor’s design to the grounds but kept an eye on the future.
Many bunkers were simply no longer in play, thanks to the gains of technology over the years. Some bunkers were moved farther down the fairway, keeping the Raynor essence but allowing the holes to challenge the top players of today and tomorrow. Greens were restored to their original sizes, and lost features were recaptured. The greatest (but not the last) reclamation took place on the 16th hole. In 2005, when this writer visited the club for a high school tournament, the antipenultimate hole was known as Raynor’s Prize Dogleg, although there was little leg to the dog. Marzolf and the club determined that this was Raynor’s Bottle hole, and worked diligently to restore that trace to the hole.
With new equipment, we needed to modernize the course, to address the effects of new clubs and balls. We had to have a course that fits the yardage that the best players hit the ball. So, we took Raynor’s concepts and moved them.
“For example, originally bunkers were 185 to 225 yards off the tee: In many cases, we eliminated those bunkers and added new ones in the 285- to 325-yard range from the back tees and on the same side of the fairway. Deleting old bunkers also meant smoothing the grades where they used to be, eliminating any evidence, and reworking all the fairway lines. Building new bunkers meant locating and staking them out, projecting them into the fairways, and making them the focal points that control club selection off the tee.” – Tom Marzolf
One might have expected that 2019-2020 would have been lost to the pandemic, but that was not the case. Mr. Marzolf moved to Pittsburgh to supervise the final steps in the restoration of Raynor’s western Pennsylvania gem. Under the guidance of superintendent Jason Hurwitz, the reclamation was complete. In June of 2021, the Fox Chapel Golf Club revealed its wonderful golf course to the public.
What about our “but not the last” notation, two paragraphs above? It turns out that the 13th hole, which extends to the southernmost point of the property, was once the site of a remarkable, double plateau green. It remains the sole feature to not be returned to the fabled layout. It’s on the minds of more than one member and fan, and it would be a spectacular addition to an already challenging hole. We can dream, can’t we?
FOOTNOTE: It is suggested by membership that Banks did work with Raynor at Fox Chapel. Two bunkers in particular bear his style: the bunker that guards the front right portion of the 15th green and another on the eighth hole. The relationship of the bunker floors to the green heights intimate the work of a man who would impart his own technique to the digging of sand pits. It’s impossible to move from speculation to fact, so we’ll leave it at that. Banks would continue Raynor’s work after his passing, but would ultimately succumb to ill health himself, dying at age 49 in 1931.
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For more on Seth Raynor, read this piece by Raynor Society executive director Anthony Pioppi.
For more on Charles Henry Banks, read this excellent piece by Anthony Pioppi.
Photos courtesy of this writer.
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19th Hole2 weeks ago
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Steve Hjortness
Jul 28, 2021 at 5:47 pm
Great article. I love to read about the history of golf and the people involved with it.