A Retrospective: Important Dates in New Jersey Golf - January Edition

As part of the celebration of the NJSGA's 125th Anniversary, we will spotlight some of the NJSGA's most fascinating people, events, and courses. Enjoy these important dates in New Jersey golf history, compiled monthly by Kevin Casey, author of Remarkable Stories of New Jersey Golf.

Here is a look at notable January dates:

January 21, 1940 – Jack Nicklaus, winner of 18 major championships, was born in Columbus, Ohio. In a span of 25 years, from 1962 (age 22) to 1986 (age 46), Nicklaus won 18 professional majors, more than any other golfer.

Two of those victories were at U. S. Opens held at Springfield’s Baltusrol Golf Club’s Lower Course in 1967 then again in 1980. Nicklaus’s victory in ’67 (his second U.S. Open of four total titles) came with a record 275 (-5) over runner-up Arnold Palmer (-1). Nicklaus’s 1980 national championship again yielded an Open record, 272 (-8) by two shots over Isao Aoki. Nicklaus later described the fans in his second win at Baltusrol as providing "by far, the most emotional and warmest reaction to any of my wins in my own country.”

January 29, 1910 – Charlotte Glutting, one of New Jersey’s most accomplished women golfers, was born in Newark. Playing out of Rock Spring Club in West Orange, she was the first golfer to win the NJSGA Women’s Amateur Championship four times (1931, ’32, ’34, and ’35) and, along with fellow Jersey legend Maureen Orcutt, formed a dynamic golfing duo that garnered the Garden State national prominence.

Glutting represented the U.S. in three Curtis Cups (1934, ’36, and ’38), capturing the decisive point of the 1934 event in the biennial U.S. vs Great Britain competition. In addition, she captured numerous prestigious championships, including the 1934 North and South Women’s Amateur and the 1933 and 1937 Eastern Amateur. In 1935, Glutting reached the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur.

Glutting became a member of the inaugural NJSGA Hall of Fame in 2018.

January 1 and 2, 1898 – The first golf tournament in America created exclusively for professionals was held in Lakewood, NJ. This event remains THE first tournament created to draw attention to commerce and financed by business interests. Two local golf resorts wanted to tout Lakewood as a great destination for mid-winter golf and, BTW, fill some local hotel rooms and restaurants. In that pre-automobile period as golf was just starting in America, rails provided the only rapid access to places like Lakewood and Atlantic City for city-dwellers seeking sweet-smelling golf course air, even in the dead of winter.

The tournament was contested at the Ocean County Hunt & Golf Club in mid-30-degree temperatures, under light snow, over frozen ground and with a gallery of about 100 spectators each day. A field of 17 pros fought over the total purse of $150, won by North Berwick, Scotland, native Val Fitzjohn with a score of 190.

In attracting some of America’s best professionals to Lakewood, this frigid event established a sponsorship prototype that soon found life in places further down the train line – like Pinehurst, North Carolina, Hot Springs, Virginia, and Miami, Florida.

This little New Jersey tournament serves as a seminal moment for today’s heavily commercial professional golf tours, worth billions of dollars – albeit usually played today in balmier weather.