An Auspicious Start at Morris County Golf Club

The country had emerged from World War II

as the premier superpower. General Dwight Eisenhower was elected by voters to the presidency in 1952, where he oversaw an economic boom. His vision and construction of the Interstate Highway System completely changed people’s ideas about what an automobile trip could mean, and many noticed that golf courses were suddenly not so far away. Eisenhower also carried on a public love affair with the game of golf, and people took notice.

In 1955 we were introduced by television to Arnold Palmer, followed shortly thereafter by Gary Player, Billy Casper, and in 1960, an amateur by the name of Jack Nicklaus. The table had been set by the greatest generation, and the game of golf was about to take off.

New Jersey was primed to participate.

During this period, we saw an astonishing diversity of excellent golfers, including some of the most interesting personalities in the game. We witnessed first hand the greatness of Nicklaus with his two U.S. Open triumphs at Baltusrol Golf Club as the Township of Montclair served as home base to two of the most important golf course architects of the era. We also experienced the value of team competitions, where golfers had an opportunity to compete for something bigger than themselves. Finally, New Jersey became an all-in partner with the USGA.

This was a good time to be a golfer in New Jersey.

(From left): Byron Nelson, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ben Hogan, and Clifford Roberts at Augusta National Golf Club, 1953

EXCELLENCE, DETERMINATION, AND GRIT

The Pilots When the Game Took Off

THE WAR WAS OVER, the GI Bill was fulfilling its promise, and the country was bursting with energy. The pieces were coming together for the game to explode, and it did.

While Arnold Palmer became the nation’s king of golf, New Jersey resident Babe Lichardus made the state’s courses of the 1950s and 1960s his personal fiefdom. From Atlantic City, Leo Fraser collaborated with Palmer, Nicklaus, and other touring professionals to tee up the future of what we know today as the PGA Tour. Garden Staters Carolyn Cudone, Michael Cestone, and Dot Porter became national champions. Immigrant businessman Nestor Macdonald put in motion a college caddie scholarship foundation that today has distributed $15 million to over three thousdand New Jersey student caddies.

All members of the NJSGA Hall of Fame, here’s just a little more about these exceptional contributors.

MICHAEL CESTONE

1904–1988

Playing out of Branch Brook (now Hendricks Field) Golf Course in Belleville, as well as Jumping Brook Golf Course, Crestmont Country Club, and Forsgate Country Club, Michael Cestone was one of the most successful amateur golfers in state history. When he won the 1960 U.S. Senior Amateur, he became only the second New Jersey-born player to win a USGA championship (the 1933 U.S. Amateur champion, George Dunlap, was the first).

His most significant local championships included the MGA’s Met Amateur (1941), the NJSGA Senior Amateur (1960 and 1963), the Met Senior Amateur (1960), and the Met Public Links (1937). Additionally, Cestone came in second at the NJSGA Open (1944, to PGA of America champion Vic Ghezzi), and tallied four runner-up finishes in the NJSGA Amateur (1938, ’43, ’44, and ’45).

He captured four NJSGA Four-Ball triumphs with four different partners (1935, ’37, ’38, and ’47) and six NJSGA Father and Son titles (with son Michael in 1949, ’50, ’56, and ’59, and with son Alan in 1953 and 1960). He won the NJSGA Caddie (1923) and the New Jersey Public Links (1938) championships and served as a member of six winning NJSGA Stoddard Trophy teams.

A postman by trade, it was typical for Cestone to play five rounds of golf every weekend, not to mention eighteen holes at Branch Brook on weekdays when he was finished with his mail route.

Cestone’s greatest year was 1960 when, at age fifty-six, the Upper Montclair resident won an unprecedented hat trick: the NJSGA Senior Amateur, the Met Senior Amateur, and the U.S. Senior Amateur.

Cestone is a member of the 2020 NJSGA Hall of Fame class of inductees.

CAROLYN CUDONE

1918–2009

From 1968 through 1972, Carolyn Cudone won five straight U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur titles, becoming the only golfer, male or female, to win five consecutive U.S. national golf titles. Cudone appeared to own the championship, not once finishing out of the top five in her ten appearances. Her five Women’s Senior Amateur championships exceed the total of any other golfer.

Playing primarily out of Montclair Golf Club, Cudone also won the NJSGA Women’s Championship in 1955, ’56, ’59, ’60, ’63, and ’65. As for the Women’s Metropolitan Golf Association, she won its Amateur Championship five times (1955, ’61, ’63, ’64, and ’65).

On a more national level, besides her success in the U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur, she captured the 1958 North and South Women’s Amateur Championship, the 1960 Women’s Eastern Amateur and competed in the 1956 Curtis Cup. In 1970, Cudone was asked to serve as non-playing Curtis Cup captain on the victorious American squad.

In 1961, at the age of forty-two, she finished T-9 as second low amateur in the

OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: New Jersey’s Michael Cestone (left), winner, and David Rose (runner-up) with the 1960 U.S. Senior Amateur trophy; Atlantic City Country Club portrait of Leo Fraser, president of the PGA of America from 1969-’70; winner Carolyn Cudone holds the trophy for the 1970 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur.

U.S. Women’s Open held at Baltusrol Golf Club. In 1970, Cudone was named Golf magazine’s Amateur of the Year.

Cudone retired to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she founded the Myrtle Beach Junior Golf Program in 1981 and led the organization for twenty-one years. Cudone was inducted into the inaugural NJSGA Hall of Fame in 2018.

LEO FRASER

1910–1986

Leo Fraser played an iconic role in professional golf in America. As president of the PGA when the organization was faced by the threat of fracture, Fraser engineered an agreement between the PGA’s touring pros and the organization’s rank-and-file club professionals. Without Fraser’s guidance, the PGA of America and the PGA Tour might not be the thriving organizations they are today.

During his term as president of the PGA of America in 1969-’70, Fraser helped bridge the gap between club professionals and touring pros over a long-running dispute that centered on distribution of the tour’s rapidly growing television revenue. As part of this reconciliation, Fraser hired Joseph Dey Jr., the highly respected former Executive Secretary of the USGA, as the first commissioner of the Tournament Players Division of the PGA, known today as the PGA Tour. The successful results of Fraser’s work are seen every week on television.

Locally, Fraser purchased one of New Jersey’s most storied golf venues, Atlantic City Country Club, which he managed from 1945 until his death in 1986. During his ownership, Fraser was instrumental in attracting three U.S. Women’s Opens (1948, ’65, and ’75) to Atlantic City. In addition, Fraser and the club hosted the 1967 U. S. Senior Women’s Amateur. In 1980, the first tournament of what would become the PGA Tour Champions (then known as the Senior PGA Tour) was held at Atlantic City.

For his impact on both New Jersey and national-level golf, Fraser was inducted into the NJSGA Hall of Fame in 2019.

MILTON “BABE” LICHARDUS

1926–2007

In a professional career that spanned more than fifty years, Babe Lichardus compiled one of the greatest playing records of any New Jersey club professional.

He won four NJSGA Open titles (1952, ’65, ’69, and ’71), the last at age forty-five. When Lichardus won in 1971 at Montclair Golf Club, he shot 72 in an 18-hole playoff to defeat Bob Benning of Plainfield Country Club by six shots. At the time, he became the first player to win four New Jersey Open championships. He was also the New Jersey Open runner-up on three occasions (1950, ’63, and ’68).

In addition to playing often on the PGA Tour with moderate success, Lichardus won five New Jersey PGA Section championships (1953, ’65, ’66, ’77, and ’78), two NJPGA Clambake titles (1966 and 1968), and numerous other events. In recognition of his spectacular record, Lichardus was named New Jersey PGA Player of the Decade for both the 1950s and the 1960s.

Babe Lichardus was inducted into the NJSGA Hall of Fame in 2019.

NESTOR J. MACDONALD

1895–1991

Nestor MacDonald was an original founder of the NJSGA Caddie Scholarship Foundation (CSF) and its chairman from 1957 to 1967. A member of the Rock Spring Club and Baltusrol Golf Club, MacDonald and his colleagues started the CSF in 1947. Since then, it has provided more than $15 million in college scholarships to more than three thousand New Jersey caddies.

MacDonald, a native Scotsman, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at the outbreak of World War I, became a fighter pilot in England and was shot down, surviving the crash, but suffering multiple injuries. He was later a recipient of the British Royal Order of Merit.

In 1920, he joined the firm Thomas & Betts, producers of electric connectors and accessories. Starting as a salesman, he rose to become the company’s president (1955), CEO (1960), and board chairman (1965).

MacDonald is remembered as one of the greatest benefactors in New Jersey golf history. Today a full four-year scholarship to Rutgers University is named in his honor.

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

DOROTHY GERMAIN “DOT” PORTER

1924–2012

Born in Philadelphia in 1924, Dot Porter lived the majority of her adult life in southern New Jersey, playing out of Riverton Country Club in Cinnaminson until her death. With five USGA national championships to her credit, Porter is tied for seventh-most wins among women in a rather exclusive club.

A truly national-level competitor, Porter won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1949 and four U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur titles (1977, ’80, ’81, and ’83). The thirty-four-year span between her first and last USGA championship is, by one year, the second-longest in USGA history for women, behind Anne Quast Sander.

A member of the victorious 1950 Curtis Cup team, she was captain of the alsosuccessful 1966 Curtis Cup squad. Porter was low amateur in the 1952 U.S. Women’s Open and hoisted the winner’s trophy at the Western Amateur (1943, ’44, and ’67) and the 1969 Eastern Amateur championships.

Porter won the 1964 NJSGA Women’s Amateur and the Pennsylvania Amateur (1946, ’52, and ’55) Championships. As yet another measure of her endurance, she captured the first of her three Women’s Golf Association of Pennsylvania Junior Championships in 1939, then won the last of her nine WGAP Amateur Championships fifty-three years later in 1992.

Porter was inducted into the NJSGA Hall of Fame in 2019.

WILLIAM “BILLY” ZIOBRO

1948–

Billy Ziobro’s amateur golf career reached its zenith at the tender age of twenty-one when he won both the NJSGA Amateur and Open in 1970. At the Amateur, Ziobro played the final 18 holes in 7 under par coming from 6 down to beat Jeff Alpert in the final match.

Playing out of Ash Brook Golf Course, he is the first player in NJSGA history to win its Amateur, Open, and Junior championships. Ziobro is one of only two golfers (the other being Charley Whitehead in 1942) to win the NJSGA Amateur and Open in the same year.

He won his first professional event, the Dodge Open, at Rockaway River Country Club in 1971. Ziobro has competed in five U.S. Opens, making two cuts, and played on the PGA Tour from 1972–1975, where he collected six top-ten finishes. He made the cut at The Players Championship and has played in the Senior PGA Championship. Ziobro has also won the New Jersey PGA Section Championship, two Dodge Opens, and the Vermont Open.

Ziobro went on to have a very successful club professional career, first in Massachusetts and later in New Jersey, where he developed a great reputation for developing young professionals. In 1998 he was tapped by Caesars Entertainment to manage its extensive golf properties, including Atlantic City Country Club.

Ziobro became a member of the NJSGA Hall of Fame in 2019.