The Press Room
Everything a writer, editor, producer or host needs to tell the Fairway Friends story, in one place. Quote any of it freely. If you need something that is not here, ask and we will send it the same day.
Write to the ClubhouseThe story, in ninety words
Once Upon a Golf Swing began with a real Titleist Pro V1. F.C. Salas wrote his phone number on it in red marker, played a round at his home course in Belmont, New Hampshire, and lost the ball. On August 9, 2025, his phone buzzed. A golfer named Evan, visiting Cape Breton Highlands Links in Nova Scotia, was holding the ball on the green. He had just parred a hole with it. The ball had crossed an international border in a stranger’s pocket, and a children’s book was born.
The story, at length
On a Saturday morning in August 2025, F.C. Salas got a text from a number he did not recognize. The message included a photograph of a golf ball, held up against the green of an unfamiliar course. It read: “I just parred 10 with your ball. Do you want it back?”
Months earlier, Salas had written his phone number on a Titleist Pro V1 in red marker, played a round at Lakeview Golf Club in Belmont, New Hampshire, and lost the ball somewhere on the course. He assumed it was gone the way every lost ball is gone.
The sender was Evan, a golfer from outside Toronto who was playing Cape Breton Highlands Links in Nova Scotia. The ball had traveled hundreds of miles in someone’s pocket, crossed an international border, and ended up on the tenth tee in Cape Breton. Evan parred the hole with it, then on the twelfth, he lost it again.
Their exchange was full of disbelief and laughter. It ended with Evan writing that someone else was going to play it now, and it would travel again. The ball was out there somewhere, still moving.
What stayed with Salas was a simple question: If one small golf ball could quietly travel so far, what stories might it carry along the way? What places might it see, what lessons might it learn, and who might it meet? Those questions became the spark for Once Upon a Golf Swing, a story about adventure, discovery, friendship, and the lessons we gather as we make our way through the world. The Fairway Friends motto is three beats in Latin: Perditus, inventus, cresco. Lost, found, I grow.
Why this book exists in the space it does
The children’s golf category is still mostly alphabet books, board books for toddlers, and instruction.
That is the gap. Not that children’s golf books do not exist, but that a narrative adventure for ages 3 to 6, with a returning cast, an original song and an audiobook, has never been built.
Fairway Friends Adventures is a series, not a title. Each book takes the cast to a different course, and the world extends past the page into audio, music, a read-along and a members’ clubhouse.
Quick facts
The cast
Ace, Daisy, Sandman, Splash, Speedy and Rangey. Each one is written as an exemplar with a real weakness, which is the part children remember and the part adults notice. How that works is set out on our philosophy page.
The people
F.C. Salas, author
F.C. Salas picked up his first golf club at the age of four and has played courses around the world since. He writes the Fairway Friends Adventures. He holds Venezuelan and French dual citizenship. He is a Cirrus SR22 pilot and a partner in the family’s New Hampshire real estate practice.
Cristina C. Cortes, illustrator and art director
Cristina C. Cortes is Venezuelan born and a naturalized United States citizen. She holds a film and photography degree from Wesleyan University and previously co-produced a children’s television pilot. She directs the illustration, the music and the audiobook. She is also a Cirrus SR22 pilot.
They are a family team, both adults, both co-founders of Swankeeper Publishing LLC. Every creative decision in this world is theirs.
Four angles, all of them true
- The ball that crossed a border. A lost Titleist Pro V1, a stranger in Nova Scotia, and a text message that started a book.
- A category nobody has built in. The leading children’s golf book is 27 years old and the narrative lane is still open.
- A family team who built a publishing house. Both adults, both partners, on the side of a working real estate practice in New Hampshire.
- Two pilots, one Wesleyan film degree, and a Venezuelan American story. For the outlets where that angle earns its place.
What we can send you
- High resolution cover art, front and back
- Selected interior spreads for press use
- A review copy, digital or physical
- An audio clip of the original theme song, “Swing Away”
- An audiobook sample
- The origin story as a designed visual
- Interviews with either creator
On our use of AI
Every Fairway Friends story begins with people. The concept, the ideas and the inspiration are human born, and F.C. Salas and Cristina C. Cortes are the credited human creators who direct every creative decision.
AI is used as a production tool. It speeds up proofreading and the making of the formats the story travels in, including the ebook, the read-along and listen-along editions, the song and the illustration work. It helps the books reach readers sooner. It does not decide what the stories are.
We disclose this whenever we are asked, we never hide it, and we do not enter programs that prohibit AI assisted work.
Press contact: clubhouse@fairwayfriendsadventures.com