From Fields to Fairways

The first history of Minnesota’s celebrated golf clubs and courses, including rarely seen photographs and long-lost details about the game’s most famous architects

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From retreats for the middle class to playgrounds for the rich, golf clubs have been sources of recreation, fellowship, and business for Minnesotans for more than a century. Minnesota’s courses have hosted some of the sport's most dramatic tournaments and legendary players—including Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods—and its clubs have been deeply involved in the development and popularizing of golf throughout North America.

From Fields to Fairways is the first book to thoroughly explore the history, architecture, and joie de vivre of Minnesota golf clubs, bringing to life the personalities who founded and shaped the clubs and courses, including forgotten details of how the greatest courses were built. Rick Shefchik highlights the best-known golf architects and the clubs they designed, such as Donald Ross (Woodhill, Interlachen, Northland), A. W. Tillinghast (Golden Valley, Rochester), William Watson (Minikahda, White Bear Yacht Club), and Seth Raynor (Somerset, Midland Hills, Minnesota Valley). He also traces the evolution of the state’s public courses, which provided affordable playing grounds for the middle class as well as African Americans, who were not allowed to join private clubs. Another chapter focuses on the creation of private clubs by Jewish golfers, who were likewise once excluded from Minnesota’s elite golf clubs.

Featuring more than two hundred photos from newspapers, clubs, museums, and private collections—many of which have never before been seen by the public—From Fields to Fairways will be the book of record on Minnesota’s illustrious golf history for fans and players of all handicaps.