New Jersey Golf Hall of Fame Spotlight: Cindy Ferro
KENILWORTH, N.J . - When Cindy Ferro thinks back to how it all started, it isn’t trophies or titles that come to mind.
It’s wanting to be part of the action.
“My dad was an avid golfer,” she reflects. "I have an older brother who is four years older than I am. I was one of those tag-along sisters.”
If her brother was playing baseball, football, or golf, Cindy wanted in. She laughs remembering how she was probably a nuisance, but a talented one. Good enough that when she wasn’t there, his friends would ask, “Where’s Cindy?”
That instinct to show up, to compete, to belong would eventually carry her to three New Jersey Women’s Amateur titles, a national championship in college, an eight-year run on the LPGA Tour, and now, induction into the New Jersey Golf Hall of Fame.
But first, there were cut-down clubs and summer evenings.
Cindy grew up around Forest Hill Field Club, though children couldn’t play there until age 12. So her father improvised.
After dinner in the summer, he would load up Cindy and her siblings and head to Hendricks Field Golf Course, a municipal course where he had learned the game after returning from military service. For a couple of dollars, the kids could join and play a few holes before dark.
“We’d just walk as many holes as we could before it got dark,” she says. “That was really a lot of fun. A lot of time spent with my dad.”
Her father cut down clubs for her when she was five or six. She doesn’t describe a lightning-bolt moment when she fell in love with golf. Instead, it feels like something steadier, something woven into family.
That foundation would matter later.
Cindy first played the New Jersey Women’s Amateur at Montclair Golf Club as a teenager. She wasn’t yet in the championship flight. She was young, and looked up to so many of the women on the top of the leaderboard.
“I was just so in awe of all these names I knew,” she says. “And I remember thinking, ‘Wow. Maybe I could do that someday.’”
She did more than that.
Her first Women’s Amateur title came in 1972 at Haworth Country Club. Fresh out of high school, she found herself facing established players, including Charlotte DeCozen in the final, with much of the gallery pulling for the veteran.
“I was just a young kid,” Cindy says. “And somehow I managed to win.”
The memory still feels vivid. The others have blurred slightly with time. Ferro went on to win in 1975 at Green Acres Country Club, now Cobblestone Creek Country Club and in 1976 at Somerset Hills Country Club.
“The New Jersey State Women’s Amateur was a huge deal,” she says. “You just try to hit the best shots you can and hope it’s good enough. You never know when you’re going to break through.”
Three times, it was more than good enough.
Some of her proudest wins came at the Metropolitan Shore Tournament, contested at storied venues like Hollywood Golf Club, Deal Golf & Country Club and Rumson Country Club. It was there she regularly faced Judy Cooperstein, a fierce competitor who, Cindy says with a laugh, “scared the living daylights out of everybody.”
But those tournaments were also threaded with mentorship and community. She recalls Women's Met Area leader Bobby Doubilet encouraging young girls to stay in the game. Those early examples of leadership would come full circle decades later.
Golf, for Cindy, was always about people as much as performance.
If the Women’s Amateur defined her as an individual competitor, the WMGA father-daughter and brother-sister events defined her heart.
Her father, a three- or four-handicapper and an excellent putter, was her partner in multiple titles. One year, they tied for the championship, returned for an 18-hole playoff… and tied again.
“The fathers got together and said, ‘We’ve played enough golf. Let’s just see if they’ll let us be co-champions,’” she laughs.
They were.
Winning mattered. But what lingers most is the shared competition, the teamwork, and the quiet confidence her father instilled.
When she struggled with putting on tour, he’d tease her, “If only you could putt like me.”
She still wishes she could.
Cindy’s college path began at Ithaca College, where she enrolled for its physical education program. She was told there would be a golf team.
There wasn’t.
By mid-semester, and after enduring an upstate New York winter, she was scanning Golf Digest for schools with competitive programs. That search led her south to Furman University in South Carolina.
It changed everything.
At Furman, she joined a roster that would become legendary. Future LPGA stars Betsy King arrived her sophomore year, Beth Daniel the year after. Sherri Turner joined later. The Paladins finished third nationally, then fifth, and in Cindy’s senior year, won the national championship.
They did it despite cycling through three different coaches in three years.
That independence may have prepared her better than perfect structure ever could.
And as if college golf weren’t enough, Cindy also played basketball and, thanks to some arm-twisting from Betsy King, even field hockey. Incredibly, she made a regional “Deep South” team after just one season of learning the sport.
“I sat on the bench and said to the coach, ‘Don’t put me in,’” she says, laughing.
Cindy earned her LPGA Tour card in Chicago at Kemper Lakes, surviving a qualifier riddled with water hazards and pressure-packed par-3s. The next week, she teed it up in her first event at Meadow Brook.
“I thought, wow, this is cool.”
Her Tour career spanned nearly eight years. She describes herself honestly: a solid ball striker, medium length, not a great putter. She re-qualified more than once. It wasn’t glamorous or lucrative. But it was formative.
“I’m so fortunate I had the opportunity to do that,” she says. “I made lifelong friends. It was exciting to say you played on tour.”
In an era before global majors and international travel, the schedule was mostly domestic with 40-plus events a year across the United States. It was demanding, humbling, and unforgettable.
When a back injury in 1988 forced her to sideline, she had to think about what was next for her.
The answer came in the form of persistence. Her friend Ann Probert repeatedly insisted she’d make a great teacher. Eventually, Cindy relented and met with a club professional, Bob Ross, who offered her a position at Baltusrol.
“I didn’t know the first thing about teaching,” she admits.
But she sought advice from respected instructors like Peter Kostis, observed teaching schools, studied the craft, and found her rhythm. Where her former boss could “wing it,” Cindy preferred preparation. Structure. Thoughtfulness.
Cindy Ferro’s Hall of Fame induction is about far more than three Women’s Amateur trophies. It’s rooted in New Jersey. Family evenings at Hendricks Field in Belleville, in walking the fairways at Somerset Hills and Hollywood, in representing the Garden State on a national stage at Furman, and in carrying that Jersey grit through eight demanding years on tour before returning home with the humility to give back to the game as a teacher.
It is about longevity — and love of the game.
When she first stood at Montclair in the 1969 Women’s Amateur as a teenager, watching the championship flight, she wondered if she could ever be one of them.
She became one of the best.
Ferro will be inducted into the NJ Golf Hall of Fame on Wednesday, April 22 at Upper Montclair Country Club. To purchase tickets for the event, click here.
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