The Ridgewood Country Club

Kathy Whitworth - 1981 LPGA Coca-Cola Classic Champion The Ladies Pro Tour came to Ridgewood on May 15 to 17, 1981, for the LPGA Coca Cola Classic, a $125,000 tournament that had been played at New Jersey clubs since 1976. At Ridgewood, 111 of the leading women professionals competed, including Nancy Lopez, JoAnne Carner, Sally Little, Beth Daniel, and Pat Bradley. Ridgewood’s Barbara Jones was one of three amateurs selected to play.

The Classic was contested over the Center-East course, which was set up to play at 6,151 yards and a par of 73. Before the tournament, the LPGA made three requests of the club concerning how the course would be set up. They wanted the rough cut at 1.5 inches, the greens slower than for normal member play, and new front tees. The club granted just the first of these requests, and the championship was played from the front of the regular tees.

After the first two days of the tournament, with play occasionally disrupted by rain and wind, it took a score of 152 to make the cut to the final seventy-five players. The lead at that point was shared by Alice Ritzman and Pat Meyers, the latter having established a new course record for women at Ridgewood with a second-round 65.

Details of the first two days' play follows, as reported by Gordon White in the New York Times:

Shelley Hamlin, Barbara Moxness, and Janet Coles have among them nearly 20 years of experience on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour, and only two victories.

But today they were in a class with Kathy Whitworth, who has 80 victories in 21 years, as the four tied for the first-round lead of the 54-hole Coca-Cola Classic after shooting 69s.

First it was Miss Coles who shot a four-under-par round on the Ridgewood Country Club course. Then Miss Hamlin birdied four holes in a row on the back nine to tie her, and Mrs. Moxness and Miss Whitworth followed quickly.

It was difficult to decide which one of the four was the most excited. Miss Whitworth was far from blasé. She has been playing well lately, and she is within reach of becoming the first female golfer to reach $1 million in earnings.

– May 16, 1981

Pat Meyers, who has only one victory in 117 tournaments in her six years on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour, shot an eight-under-par 65 today to earn a share of the lead in the second round of the Coca-Cola tournament.

Alice RitzmanThe round was a woman’s record for the Ridgewood Country Club course, which is staging this event for the first time. It put Miss Meyers into a tie for the lead with Alice Ritzman at 138, eight under par for 36 holes.
The Ridgewood course is 6,151 yards long and cuts through huge oak trees. Forced to come out of those trees twice during her round because of errant tee shots, Miss Meyers finished strongly with five birdies within six holes on her back nine.

“I think the scores are low because of the superb greens,” Miss Ritzman said. “They are smooth and true. The putts are tricky. There is nothing easy. But if you read the line correctly, and then stroke the ball on that proper line, the ball will go in.”

– May 17, 1981

On Sunday, Ritzman opened with a 34 on Center to extend her lead to five strokes. But she faltered coming home, taking her only three-putt on the final green, missing by 2 inches an 8-footer that would have won her the tournament outright, and with it her first career victory. Taking advantage of the situation was forty-one-year-old Kathy Whitworth, who came from seven strokes back with eleven holes to play, parlaying a back nine of 32 (with just eleven putts) into a tie with Ritzman. Whitworth’s scores, round by round, were 69-72-70=211; Ritzman’s were 71-67-73=211.

In the sudden death playoff that ensued, both players carded routine pars at 1 East. But at the second hole, Ritzman pulled her shot left of the green, while Whitworth placed hers nine feet past the cup. After Ritzman chipped through the green and missed coming back, Whitworth’s birdie putt came with little pressure.

The New York Times carried the following report:

Kathy WhitworthAt the second sudden-death hole, a downhill 150-yard par 3, Miss Whitworth hit a No. 8 iron nine feet back of the pin. Miss Ritzman pulled a 7-iron shot off to the left of the green, chipped across to the far fringe, and missed her first putt coming back. Miss Whitworth, needing to get down in two putts to win, dropped her first for the victory.

Miss Whitworth started the day three shots behind Miss Ritzman, and looked as if she might play herself out of the tournament with her first tee shot. She yanked that drive so deeply into the left woods that she had an unplayable lie and returned to the tee to hit off again. She did well to take bogie 5.

Following an erratic front nine that included three birdies and three bogies, Miss Whitworth made her move with excellent trouble shots on the back nine. She got three birdies, including one at No. 15 and another at No. 17, using her Baffler, a recently developed wood cut at about a 6-wood angle. It is used primarily to hit long shots to get out of deep grass.

She hit her tee shot with the club at the 185-yard 15th to 10 feet from the hole, and sank the birdie putt. On the par-4 17th she drove into the deep right rough, so she used the club again for a 180-yard shot that put her a foot and a half from the cup, and she posted another birdie.

“I felt the pressure all day long,” Miss Ritzman said. “But I felt good at the tee of the first playoff hole. On the second playoff hole, I think I should have hit an 8-iron; I hit an 8-iron there earlier in the day, and I put the ball about where Kathy did in the playoff. But then I tried to hit a little punched 7-iron, and came over the top of it.”

– May 18, 1981

The victory added $18,750 to Whitworth’s bankroll, pushing her closer to the $1 million mark. Later that summer, she became the first woman player to break that barrier. Her win at Ridgewood was the eighty-first of her career, leaving her one behind the then all-time leader, Mickey Wright. Eventually, Whitworth would establish a new record – for men and women – with eighty-eight tournament wins.

On April 30, 2007, the LPGA’s Legends Tour visited Ridgewood Country Club for the one-day Duane Reade Charity Classic. The event brought back to RCC for the first time many of the competitors in the Coca Cola Classic. Kathy Whitworth was present, and called that tournament “One I remember the most, a major milestone in my career.” The Coca Cola Classic marked the first time she had been in contention in over two years.