CLIFTON, NEW JERSEY | Not only did she get it airborne, she felt so good about the way she hit it that she almost walked down the fairway to continue the round. Nancy Lopez was introduced on the first tee at Upper Montclair Country Club at 7 a.m. Thursday, the first time she had set foot on the place in a couple of decades, although the memories of this part of the country are as fresh as the blooming Jersey Thimbleweed.
“I remember every shot,” Lopez said of Upper Montclair. And why wouldn’t she? In 1979, her second year on tour, Lopez won the 13th of her 48 career events at this Tillinghast-designed gem located a dozen miles from Manhattan and a lob wedge from the New Jersey Turnpike. That event was the LPGA Coca-Cola Classic, which Lopez won in a five-way playoff that included Hollis Stacy and 44-year-old semi-retired Mickey Wright.
“I don’t know why Mickey played,” Lopez said when recalling the event. “She rarely played by then and it was the other side of the country from where she lived (in San Diego). I don’t think many people (in the gallery) recognized her. But I certainly knew. I was kind of starstruck to be honest. In fact, I’m going to walk out to the seventh hole, which was the 16th when we played (the nines were reversed this year for the Cognizant Founders Cup) because that’s where Mickey and I both made birdie in the playoff to advance one more hole. Everybody else made par.”
Wright wore sneakers to play that year, long before the days of soft-uppers and spikeless golf shoes. And after the loss, she walked alone to the parking lot without a soul asking for her autograph.
“That was really the last time Mickey had a chance to win,” Lopez said. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“It’s a good golf course. Tight and the greens could be tough. I loved it.” – Nancy Lopez
Memories like that are what the Founders Cup is all about. Lopez’s presence on the first tee this year was ceremonial. She hit the opening tee shot then pointed to the cloudless sky and said, “That one’s for you, Shirley,” referring to the late LPGA founder Shirley Spork, who passed away on April 12.
It was a full-circle experience for Lopez. Just as she recalled her experiences playing alongside Wright in 1979, players such as 17-year-old Bella Scananpicco, a member of the Jersey Shore LPGA*USGA Girls Golf program who also hit a ceremonial tee shot on Thursday morning, will never forget standing beside Lopez.
“It’s a good golf course,” Lopez said, recalling her rounds at Upper Montclair. “Tight and the greens could be tough. I loved it.”
That’s the general consensus from today’s players, most of whom are seeing Upper Montclair for the first time, even though the Sybase Classic was played here for three years in the mid-2000s.
“I love this course,” said two-time Founders defending champion and Rolex Rankings No.1 Jin Young Ko. “The fairways and greens are perfect.”
Ko has the distinction of being the first two-time defending champion of a non-major championship with a chance to three-peat on three different golf courses. She won in 2019 in Phoenix at the old venue, a forgettable track next to a J.W. Marriott. Then Cognizant came in as a title sponsor and the quality of the venues skyrocketed. Last year (the tournament wasn’t played in 2020), Ko won at Mountain Ridge, a Donald Ross masterpiece a few minutes south in East Caldwell, New Jersey. Now the LPGA Tour is back at Upper Montclair for at least three years. It’s a venue that hosted the PGA Tour’s Thunderbird Classic in the 1960s – won by Gene Littler, Arnold Palmer, and Mason Rudolph among others. Lorena Ochoa and Pat Bradley also won LPGA Tour events on this Tilly layout. And for 10 years the PGA Tour Champions had an event here won by such notables as Raymond Floyd, George Archer, Bob Murphy, Bruce Crampton and Lee Trevino (twice).
You’re seeing a lot of this on the LPGA Tour these days, a strategy that is the opposite of the trend in the men’s game. While the PGA Tour continues to host events on a ubiquitous and forgettable slew of TPC courses, the LPGA Tour and its partners have realized that the venue can be as compelling a draw as the athletes. For decades the LPGA Tour went to courses that would have them – some good, and some that couldn’t garner a $20 green fee. Now the tour is heading to Congressional, Baltusrol, Merion, Pebble Beach and many others with rich histories in both the men’s and women’s game. Sponsors are thrilled because they can sell entertainment packages to these venues, even if their clients couldn’t pick out Jessica Korda from Jennifer Kupcho and couldn’t pronounce Tavatanakit on a bet. But who doesn’t want to see the best players in the women’s game play Nos. 6, 7, and 8 at Pebble Beach? Who doesn’t want to see what Nelly Korda hits from the Hogan 1-iron spot on 18 at Merion?
Sponsors and tour officials get the draw. And players love it.
“This is a great course,” New Jersey native Marina Alex said of Upper Montclair. “It is traditional for courses for New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, the Northeast — tree-lined, tight fairways, some elevated greens sloping back to front. If you have a lot of movement on your golf ball, it might lend you into getting into some trouble.
“There are some angles off the tee where you need to place yourself in the right or left side of the fairways to have a better approach because they do have some overhanging tree limbs. It’s pretty subtle but it’s also a cool element to this golf course. You can hit a nice drive, but then you might be slightly blocked out by a tree and have to work away from the pin or the middle of the green, so positioning yourself is important off the tee.
“I mean, that’s very much a skill set, I feel, that is good for most LPGA players. They’re so accurate off the tee. I think that it really is a great course for us to play.”
It’s also a great place for fans to watch and draw some historical comparisons. How will the woman teeing off this week score relative to what Arnie shot in 1967? Will Bianca Pagdananan hit it as far as Jack Nicklaus did here in 1966? How will this experience compare to the decade of the seniors that came through?
Those are the questions the LPGA Tour wants asked. And the ones the players out here can’t wait to answer.