Ed Roll Chronicles A Golf Life, Beginning In 1939
Pictured: Ed Roll and wife Lu, with Ed's scrapbook (see photo below)
Ed Roll, long-time member of the Echo Lake Country Club, has had one of the most enduring playing careers in the history of the state, and has the paperwork to prove it.
Roll, a two-time member of the New Jersey State Golf Association’s Stoddard Trophy team, played in six State Amateurs and nine State Opens, was a four-time club champion at three different courses, and as the event’s general chairman was intrinsically responsible for bringing the PGA Tour’s Dow Jones Open to Upper Montclair.
He also set a course record at Suburban, dined with Arnold Palmer, corresponded with Ben Hogan, played in seven Crump Cups at Pine Valley, helped found the golf team at Pingry School and played golf at Syracuse University. Also, the retired circulation sales director for Dow Jones & Company has played 205 courses throughout the United States and the Caribbean.
There’s plenty more that Roll, now 83, has documented in a scrapbook. Oh, it’s not just any scrapbook. This one is 10 inches high and includes hundreds of newspaper clippings – nearly 70 years worth - compiled by his mother and himself. He even has his first Galloping Hill Golf Course ID card from 1941 when Roll was just 12.
Through all those years, Roll only has a single hole-in-one to his credit. It was achieved on the 16th hole at Suburban when he was in high school.
“The greatest experience of all the golf in my life was the opportunity of competing with the best golfers of my era, guys like my friends, Chet Sanok and Billy Ziobro,” said Roll, who raised a family of four children with his wife of 60 years, Lu (Lucille), who he met while a student at Syracuse.
“It was really about the camaraderie and the experience of being out on the golf courses with great golfers,” Roll said.
Roll grew up in Union. His father, who worked for Singer Sewing machines in Elizabethport, took his nine-year-old son out to Galloping Hill to watch him play, until young Edgar immediately took a liking to the sport.
At age 14, Roll got his first job, one he kept through high school and college, at the Suburban Golf Club in Union, pulling weeds and cutting grass.
By his junior year at Pingry School, he and classmate Dave Baldwin formed a golf team, which went 4-2 in 1946. That year, Roll played in his first NJSGA event, the Junior Championship, and reached the second round.
The following year, 1947, Pingry went 8-0 and years later, the team was inducted into the Pingry Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008. In the summer of 1947, Roll participated in the NJPGO championship, and defeated the defending champion before losing to Fred Riccio in the final, 3 and 2.
He enrolled at Syracuse University that fall. While a member of the school’s freshman golf team, he was involved in an auto accident on April 28, 1948, which resulted in a 30-day hospital stay due to a fractured left arm and broken neck.
While some said he would never golf again, Roll was able to post a 3-1 record for the Syracuse freshman team the next spring. The ensuing summer, 1949, he set a new amateur competitive course record of 66 at Suburban, a record that would stand 20 years. He also competed in his first State Open at North Jersey and finished as the sixth low amateur.
That earned him a spot on the NJSGA Stoddard Cup team, for which he won two best-ball matches. Around this time, he had sent a letter to Ben Hogan’s wife, Valerie, relating how he had recovered from his auto accident and extending best wishes to Hogan, who was hospitalized from his auto accident. Hogan replied with a signed letter dated July 7, 1949, that Roll still cherishes.
He captained Syracuse’s team his senior year. In 1952, he was again part of the NJSGA team in the Stoddard Cup and won both of his individual matches and both best-ball matches as well. Despite Roll's perfect record, Long Island won the Trophy, however.
In 1952, Roll went to work for the Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Pa. The next year, he won his first club championship, at Castle Shannon Golf Club in Mount Lebanon, Pa.
In 1954, the Rolls moved to Charlotte, N.C., where Ed worked in the bottling industry. He maintained a 2-handicap and played area courses like Pinehurst. In 1958, he shot a 68 at the Monroe (N.C.) Country Club, a nine-hole layout designed by Donald Ross. He also attended The Masters nearly every year and recalls many times walking up to the gate and plunking down $5 for a daily ticket.
Two years later, he went to work for Dow Jones and the family moved to New Providence. Ed joined the Maplewood Country Club because it was on the train route from New York back to New Providence and he would stop off daily to hit balls. In 1961, it paid off when he won the club championship by 12 shots, including a round of 68.
He was transferred to Dow Jones’s headquarters in Princeton in 1964. That year, the family moved to Westfield and the Rolls joined Echo Lake. He continued to play in the NJSGA Amateur and Open events. In 1970, he was the point man in bringing the Dow Jones Open to Upper Montclair. During preparations for the tournament, he dined with Arnold Palmer and his wife, Winnie, and stayed in touch through the years with Palmer.
In the only year of the Dow Jones Open, Bobby Nichols won the title by one stroke, besting the likes of Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, U.S. Open champion Tony Jacklin, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Billy Casper and Orville Moody, who had set a course record of 64 on Friday. The New Jersey crowd of 16,000 on the final day appreciated the event, which ultimately lasted just one season.
In the 1970s, Roll continued to play well, his handicap ranging from 1 to 3, and he appeared in nine club championship finals at Echo Lake, twice winning, in 1973 and 1979.
During his 44 years at Echo Lake (1964-2008), Roll served on the Board of Trustees for six years and was Greens Chairman for three years. He was also on the long-range planning committee.
His list of favorite courses, in order: Greenbriar (all three), Los Angeles (North), Merion (East), Oak Hill (East), Olympic (Lake), Pebble Beach, Pinehurst No. 2, and Pine Valley.
“The biggest change in golf over the years has been with the golf equipment,” Roll stated. “They can hit the ball so far, it has made courses obsolete. But the competitive nature of the golf is still the same. Watching the intensity over the back nine at The Masters on Sunday is mind-boggling.”
--Mike Moretti
