Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Medal record
Babe Zaharias
Women's Athletics
Competitor for  United States
Olympic Games
Gold	1932 Los Angeles	80 m hurdles
Gold	1932 Los Angeles	Javelin throw
Silver	1932 Los Angeles	High jump

Babe Zaharias
Personal information
Full name	Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias
Nickname	Babe
Born	June 26, 1911(1911-06-26) Port Arthur, Texas, USA
Died	September 27, 1956 (aged 45) Galveston, Texas, USA
Nationality	United States
Career
Turned professional	1947
Retired	1956
Former tour(s)	LPGA Tour (joined 1947)
Professional wins	82
Number of wins by tour
LPGA Tour	41
Other	41
Best results in LPGA Major Championships (Wins: 10)
Western Open	Won 1940, 1944, 1945, 1950
Titleholders C'ship	Won 1947, 1950, 1952
U.S. Women's Open	Won 1948, 1950, 1954
Achievements and awards
World Golf Hall of Fame	1951 (member page)

Mildred Ella ("Babe") Didrikson Zaharias (June 26, 1911 – September 27, 1956) was an American athlete named by the Guinness Book of Records, along with Lottie Dod, as the most versatile female competitor. She achieved outstanding success in golf, basketball, and track and field.

Life history

Mildred Ella Didrikson was the sixth of seven children born in the coastal oil city of Port Arthur in southeastern Texas. Her mother, Hannah, and her father, Ole, were immigrants from Norway. Three of her seven siblings were born in Norway, and the other three were born in Port Arthur. She later changed the spelling of her surname from Didriksen to Didrikson.^[1] Didrikson moved to Beaumont when she was four years of age. The family resided at 850 Doucette. She always claimed to have acquired the nickname "Babe" (after Babe Ruth) upon hitting five home runs in a childhood baseball game, but she was called "Baby" as a toddler.

Though best known for her athletic gifts, Didrikson had many talents and was a competitor in even the most domestic of occupations: sewing. An excellent seamstress, she made many of the clothes she wore, including her golfing outfits. She won the sewing championship at the 1931 State Fair of Texas in Dallas. In 1929, Didrikson graduated from Beaumont High School but did not attend college. She was a singer and a harmonica player. She recorded several songs on the Mercury Records label. Her biggest seller was "I Felt a Little Teardrop" with "Detour" on the flip side.^{[citation needed]}

Already famous as Babe Didrikson, she married George Zaharias (1908–1984), a professional wrestler, in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 23, 1938. Thereafter, she was largely known as Babe Zaharias. The couple met while playing golf. George Zaharias, a Greek American, was a native of Pueblo, Colorado. Called the "Crying Greek from Cripple Creek," Zaharias also did some part-time acting. The Zahariases had no children and were rebuffed by authorities when they sought to adopt.

Babe Zaharias Park is located in Beaumont adjacent to her museum.

Athletic achievements

Didrikson gained world fame in track and field and All-American status in basketball. She played organized baseball and softball and was an expert diver, roller-skater and bowler. She won two gold medals and one silver medal for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.^[2]

AAU champion

Didrikson's first job after high school was a secretary, for the Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas, though she was employed so that she could play basketball as an amateur on the company's "industrial team", the Golden Cyclones, in competition governed by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). Despite leading the team to an AAU Basketball Championship in 1931, Didrikson first achieved wider attention as a track and field athlete.

Representing her company in the 1932 AAU Championships, she competed in eight out of ten events, winning five outright, and tying for first in a sixth. In the process, she set five world records in the javelin throw, 80-meter hurdles, high jump and baseball throw in a single afternoon. Didrikson's performances were enough to win the team championship, despite her being the only member of her team.

Post-Olympics

In the following years, she performed on the vaudeville circuit, travelled with teams like Babe Didrikson's All-Americans basketball team and the bearded House of David (commune) team. Didrikson was also a competitive pocket billiards (pool) player, though not a champion. She was noted in the January 1933 press for playing (and badly losing) a multi-day straight pool match in New York City against famed female cueist Ruth McGinnis.^[3]

Golf

By 1935, she began to play golf, a latecomer to the sport by which she would become the most famous. Shortly thereafter, despite the brevity of her experience, she was denied amateur status, and so in January 1938, she competed in the Los Angeles Open, a men's PGA (Professional Golfers' Association) tournament, a feat no other woman would even try until Annika Sörenstam, Suzy Whaley, and Michelle Wie almost six decades later. She shot 81 strokes and 84 strokes, and she missed the cut. In the tournament, she was teamed with George Zaharias. They were married eleven months later, and lived in Tampa on the premises of a golf course that they purchased in 1951.

Babe went on to become America's first female golf celebrity and the leading player of the 1940s and early 1950s. After gaining back her amateur status in 1942, she won the 1946-47 United States Women's Amateur Golf Championships, as well as the 1947 British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship – the first American to do so – and three Western Open victories. Having formally turned professional in 1947, she dominated the Women's Professional Golf Association and later the Ladies Professional Golf Association, of which she was a founding member. Serious illness ended her career in the mid-1950s.

Zaharias even won a tournament named after her, the Babe Zaharias Open of Beaumont, Texas. She won the 1947 Titleholders Championship and the 1948 U.S. Women's Open for her fourth and fifth major championships. She won 17 straight women's amateur victories, a feat never equaled by anyone, including Tiger Woods. By 1950, she had won every golf title available. Totaling both her amateur and professional victories, Zaharias won a total of 82 golf tournaments.

Charles McGrath of The New York Times wrote of Zaharias, "Except perhaps for Arnold Palmer, no golfer has ever been more beloved by the gallery".^[4]

Against the men

While Zaharias missed the cut in a PGA tour event during her first year of tournament golf, later as she became more experienced she made the cut in every PGA tour event she entered. In 1945, Zaharias played in three PGA tournaments. She shot 76-81 to make the two-day cut at the Los Angeles Open (missed the three-day cut after a 79), making her the first (and currently only) woman in history to make the cut in a regular PGA tour event. She continued her cut streak at the Phoenix Open, where she shot 77-72-75-80 finishing in 33rd place. At the Tucson Open she shot 307 and finished tied for 42nd. Unlike other female golfers competing in men's events, she got into the Phoenix and Tucson opens through 36-hole qualifiers, as opposed to a sponsor's exemption.^[5]

Last years

Zaharias had her greatest year in 1950 when she completed the Grand Slam of the three women's majors of the day, the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship, and the Western Open, in addition to leading the money list. That year, she became the fastest LPGA golfer to ever reach 10 wins, doing so in one year and 20 days, a record still standing. She was the leading money-winner again in 1951, and in 1952 took another major with a Titleholders victory, but illness prevented her from playing a full schedule in 1952-53. However, this did not stop her from also becoming the fastest player to reach 20 wins (two years and four months).

Babe Didrickson Zaharias was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1953, and even after undergoing cancer surgery, she made a comeback in 1954. She took the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average, her only win of that trophy, and her 10th and final major with a U.S. Women's Open championship, one month after the cancer surgery. With this win, she became the second-oldest woman to ever win a major LPGA championship tournament (behind Fay Crocker). Babe Zaharias now stands third to Crocker and Sherri Steinhauer. These wins made her the fastest player to reach 30 wins (five years and 22 days)^[5]. In addition to continuing tournament play, she also served as the president of the LPGA from 1952 to 1955.^[6]

Her colon cancer recurred in 1955, and that limited her schedule to eight golfing events that season, but she managed two wins, which stand as her final ones in competitive golf. The cancer was a fatal one, and Babe Zaharias died at the John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas. At the time of her death, at age forty-five, she was still in the front ranks of female golfers. She and her husband had established the Babe Zaharias Fund to support cancer clinics.^[7] "The Babe" is buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Beaumont.

Cultural impact

The Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum in Beaumont is also the chamber of commerce welcoming center.

Zaharias broke the accepted models of femininity in her time, including the accepted models of female athleticism. Although just 5'5" tall, she was physically strong and socially straightforward about her strength. Although a sports hero to many, she was also derided for her "manliness".^[1] She died 10 years before the Second Wave of feminism altered the social landscape of the United States and made women athletes, such as Billie Jean King, more acceptable.

Zaharias has a museum dedicated to her, and a golf course that she owned was given landmark status.^{[citation needed]} Beaumont, Texas is home to the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Park and Museum.

Contemporary impressions

It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.

– sportswriter Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram', ^[1]

Williams' remark typified the attitude of some toward women who did not fit the traditional ideals of femininity current in the first half of the 20th century. However, in the same time period, the Associated Press chose her as the "Female Athlete of the Year" six times for track & field and for golfing, and, in 1950, overwhelmingly voted for her as the "Greatest Female Athlete of the First Half of the Century".^[1] Aside from her impact on the women and girls of her time, she impressed seasoned sportswriters also:

She is beyond all belief until you see her perform...Then you finally understand that you are looking at the most flawless section of muscle harmony, of complete mental and physical coordination, the world of sport has ever seen.

– sportswriter Grantland Rice, quoted by ESPN, ^[1]

She was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Women's Golf in 1951. In 1957, she was given the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. She was one of six initial inductees into the LPGA Hall of Fame at its inception in 1977.

Modern-day

The Associated Press followed up its 1950 declaration fifty years later by voting Zaharias the Woman Athlete of the 20th Century in 1999. In 2000, Sports Illustrated magazine also named her second on its list of the Greatest Female Athletes of All Time, behind the heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee. She is also in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Zaharias is the highest ranked woman, at #10, on ESPN's list of the 50 top athletes of the 20th century. In 2000, she was ranked as the 17th greatest golfer, and the second-greatest woman player (after Mickey Wright) by Golf Digest magazine.^[8] Her exploits were referenced by the irreverent comedy program Family Guy, in which her name and deeds were used as part of an "extended" version to the theme of the television series Maude.^{[citation needed]} Zaharias was also mentioned on the Simpsons episode, "The Devil Wears Nada," as the costume Marge Simpson wears when she poses for a racy charity calendar.

She broke the mold of what a lady golfer was supposed to be. The ideal in the 20s and 30s was Joyce Wethered, a willowy Englishwoman with a picture-book swing that produced elegant shots but not especially long ones. Zaharias developed a grooved athletic swing reminiscent of Lee Trevino's, and she was so strong off the tee that a fellow Texan, the great golfer Byron Nelson, once said that he knew of only eight men who could outdrive her. "It's not enough just to swing at the ball," Babe said. "You've got to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it."

– journalist Charles McGrath, New York Times, ^[4]

Zaharias penned an autobiography This Life I've led. It is no longer in print but is available in many libraries.^[9]

In 1975, the film Babe, based on Zaharias' life, was released, with Susan Clark playing the lead role. Alex Karras played George Zaharias. Clark and Karras met while making the picture and later married.^[9]

Babe Zaharias Golf Course

In 1949, Zaharias purchased a golf course in the Forest Hills area of Tampa and lived nearby. After her death, the golf course was sold. It lay dormant as developers attempted to acquire the land for residential housing.

In 1974, the City of Tampa took over the golf course, renovated it, and reopened it, naming it the Babe Zaharias Golf Course. At some point afterward, it was accorded historical-landmark status.^[10]

In the media

In 2007, the lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage began work on Babe, a full-chorus, full-orchestra musical about Zaharias (who is thought by some to have been a lesbian or a bisexual).^[11]

In 2011, Little, Brown is scheduled to publish a biography of Zaharias, Wonder Girl, by author Don Van Natta, Jr..^[12]

LPGA Tour wins (41)

Major championships

Wins (10)

Other wins

This list is probably incomplete:

• 1947 North and South Women's Amateur Golf Championship, British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship

See also

• Golfers with most LPGA Tour wins
• Golfers with most LPGA major championship wins

Notes and references

Bibliography

• This Life I've Led: My Autobiography, by Babe Didrikson Zaharias, New York, 1955
• Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Susan Cayleff, 1996.
• Why Michael Couldn't Hit and Other Tales of the Neurology of Sports, by Harold L. Klawans, MD, 1996

External links

• Babe, a 1975 TV movie biography, at The Internet Movie Database
• Babe Didrikson Zaharias Photos held by the Library of Congress.
• Babe Didrikson Zaharias LPGA biography
• Babe Didrikson Zaharias biography at Golf.about.com
• Golf Stars Online - links to features and profiles