Trailblazing Women in N.J. Golf: Legendary Victories and Lasting Legacies
Photo: Carolyn Cudone and Tommy Harmon, circa 1956
By Kevin Casey
Despite its decidedly demure demeanor, women’s golf in New Jersey has some amazing stories to tell. Garden State golfers, events, and courses have combined to script some of our game’s most interesting and surprising stories.
Here are just four of those stories, in no particular order, to whet your appetite. Some you may recall, but don’t be surprised if you say to yourself, “I can’t believe I didn’t know that.”
Carolyn Cudone and the One and Only USGA “Fivepeat”
From 1968 through 1972, Montclair Golf Club’s Carolyn Cudone won five straight U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur titles, becoming the only golfer to win the same USGA event five consecutive times. In so doing, she out-Tigered Tiger Woods, who captured the 1991, ‘92, and ‘93 U.S. Junior Amateurs and the 1994, ‘95, and ‘96 U.S. Amateurs – but not the same event five times in a row.
Cudone’s body of golf honors includes six New Jersey Women’s Amateur Championships, five Women’s Metropolitan Golf Association Championships, two victorious stints on the Curtis Cup
(including one as nonplaying captain), and a T-9 in the 1961 U.S. Women’s Open held at Baltusrol Golf Club (behind winner Mickey Wright). In 1971, she was named Golf magazine’s Amateur of the Year. Cudone was inducted into the inaugural NJ Golf Hall of Fame in 2018.
Mickey Wright, Baltusrol and Perseverance at the 1961 U.S. Women’s Open
On a sunny July day in 1961, at New Jersey’s revered Baltusrol Golf Club, Californian Mickey Wright clinched the U.S. Women’s Open Golf Championship in a performance nothing short of legendary.
Wright’s victory was particularly significant as it marked her third U.S. Women’s Open title. She had previously won the championship in 1958 and ’59, but her triumph in 1961 validated her women’s professional tour dominance. Over the three-day, 72-hole event, Wright showcased a brilliant combination of technical prowess and mental fortitude. Starting with 72 and tied for the lead, she suffered problems on the greens on the way to a numbing second round 80.
Any 18-hole score starting with a snowman would have taken the air out of a lesser competitor. But Wright worked on her putting well into the night, then came back on Sunday morning’s third round with a 69, the championship’s lowest score. Finishing with a 72 in the afternoon, Wright totaled an impressive 293, six strokes ahead of her closest competitor, World Golf Hall of Famer Betsy Rawls.
Herbert Warren Wind, the era’s preeminent American golf writer, glowed, “No other woman has ever played a long, exacting course as magnificently as Miss Wright did that last day at Baltusrol.”
Considered by many as the finest woman golfer of all time, both Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson credit Wright for having had the best golf swing they’d ever seen. This vaunted swing propelled Wright to 82 LPGA Tour victories, including 13 major championships, cementing her special place in golf history. (Click here for a YouTube video of Wright's swing.)
Mickey Wright’s persevering performance should remain a beacon of inspiration and excellence for all golfers.
Maureen Orcutt: A Legacy of Excellence
Some people are not easily pegged. Englewood’s Maureen Orcutt was a champion golfer of national repute, a pioneering sports journalist, and an accomplished politician.
In her ninety-nine-year life and seven-decades-long tournament career, Orcutt won her first notable victory in the 1924 NJ Women’s Amateur Championship. Her last big win was the 1968 Women’s Metropolitan Golf Association Championship. In between, she notched titles at dozens of notable international, national, and regional/state-level tournament championships.
The lifelong White Beeches Golf & Country Club member competed in 65 USGA events, was a two-time U.S. Women’s Amateur runner-up (and three-time medalist), and a four-time Curtis Cupper. Orcutt won ten WMGA Championships (over a forty-two-year span) and captured two U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur Championships (1961 and ’68).
More than simply a fabulous golfer, Orcutt became, in 1937, just the second-ever female sports journalist at the New York Times, and over her career, covered women’s golf for the New York World and wrote a sports column for the New York Journal. A politician, she won the 1934 Democratic Party nomination for the New Jersey General Assembly.
As important, Orcutt was a stellar ambassador for golf – a quality individual, fierce competitor, and champion who inspired admiration and respect from multiple generations of golfers around the world.
Maureen Orcutt’s legacy is one of timeless excellence. She was inducted into the inaugural NJ Golf Hall of Fame in 2018.
Marion Hollins: A Bi-Coastal Force of Nature
What connects New Jersey’s Hollywood Golf Club, Georgia’s Augusta National Golf Club, and California’s Pebble Beach Golf Resort and Cypress Point Club? Marion Hollins, an East Coast socialite, national-level horsewoman and golfer who became a California developer, was the lynchpin that tied those four iconic venues together.
First thing you need to know: Hollins was a champion. She was a finalist in the 1913 U.S. Women’s Amateur. Hollins claimed the medalist position in the 1920 U.S. Women’s Amateur that eventually went to Alexis Sterling, the Atlantan’s third straight national championship. But in the 1921 Women’s Am at Hollywood Golf Club Hollins paid back Sterling in the Finals with a 5 and 4 victory.
As described by golf historian Mark Frost, Hollins became golf’s “Golden Girl” after her win in at Hollywood. She was often called the female counterpart to superstar amateur Bobby Jones, her frequent partner in exhibition matches.
Her New Jersey victory – not her last big win – allowed Hollins to address other pursuits, where she gained a seat at the table with some of the most influential people in golf, including Jones, Seth Raynor, and Alistair MacKenzie.
By now, Hollins had the name, tools, entre and ambition to make an impact on golf. An early supporter of women’s equal rights, in 1922 Hollins leapt into the development side of golf as the visionary and force behind Women’s National Golf Club on Long Island, an all-women’s private club.
Soon thereafter, Hollins travelled to Monterey’s Pebble Beach Resort, then a struggling, out-of-the-way destination with untapped potential. Its owner asked Hollins to help him develop the property. Captivated by the beauty and possibilities of the region, she dove in, dialing in her “A-list” connections and quickly producing results.
She spied unfinished property one mile north of Pebble Beach, once known as La Punta de Cypreses. Hollins described it to her boss “as the place to build the most glorious golf club on the planet.” Hollins was so sure she was right that, when the financially strapped boss balked at the idea, she bought the land herself and went to work on forming the Cypress Point Club.
Hollins hired legendary golf course architect Seth Raynor to create her vision. But when Rayner passed away unexpectedly in 1926, she hired an acquaintance, Dr. Alister MacKenzie, to finish his work. Critics quickly and widely described the result two years later as “the greatest golf course ever built in the United States.”
MacKenzie’s work at Cypress Point and another Hollins course development 50 miles away called Pasatiempo caught the attention of Bobby Jones. Soon to retire after completing his iconic Grand Slam in 1930, Jones was turning his attention to building a new course in Georgia called Augusta National Golf Club, and he soon tapped Dr. MacKenzie to make it happen.
Marion Hollins was the force of nature that brought players like Jones, architects like Raynor and MacKenzie and courses such as Hollywood, Cypress Point and Augusta National together in an exciting time in American golf.
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These four stories display New Jersey’s outsized influence on women’s golf in America, but they are just the vanguard.
For more information on New Jersey women’s golf and its collective effect on American golf, go to Remarkable Stories of New Jersey Golf, www.njgolfstories.com, or contact the author directly at kevincasey36@gmail.com.
