The 1940 Golf Team

Led by its top three players – Bill Goldthorp ’40, former captain Monte Norcross, Jr. ’40 and captain Jim Thompson ’41 – the 1940 golf team was arguably the finest in Peddie history.

With Jim Clark ’42, Don Kling ’41 and Bill Winant ’41 also on the roster, the squad was undefeated and untied – recording three ‘whitewash’ 9-0 victories in the Spring of 1940 – and then capping their championship season by winning the most important contest in secondary school golf, the Eastern Interscholastic Tournament at Greenwich, Connecticut. This accomplishment – matched only by Peddie’s 1935 team – conferred bragging rights as virtual national prep champions.

The team’s members had deep roots in the sport’s past, and several were to have lifetime impact on its future. Bill Goldthorp’s father, J. Wesley Goldthorp, built the golf course that today is Woodcrest Country Club in South Jersey – site of the second annual PGA Invitation Open in 1936 and a true family affair in which Bill and his siblings grew up actively involved in day-to-day operations, all five becoming excellent golfers in the process. And Monte Norcross’ dad, Montayne Norcross, Sr., had been proprietor of the Hightstown Golf Range and Sports Center. Both Jim Clark and Monte Norcross went on to noted careers as golf professionals – Jim at California’s Indian Creek Country Club, whose course he designed in 1967, and Monte at the Metuchen Country Club in New Jersey as well as at the Rutgers University Golf Course.

Today, on the occasion of their class’s 70th Peddie Reunion, the 1940 Golf Team claims its rightful place in the Peddie Sports Hall of Fame. Their induction is an honor that is long overdue, but one that could not be more richly deserved or proudly accorded.