Babe Didrikson Zaharias biography

Golf Champion

Didrikson began playing golf in 1931 or 1932. According to Gallico, in 1932, in her eleventh game of golf, she drove 260 yards from the first tee and played the second nine in 43. She herself stated that she entered her first golf tournament in the fall of 1934. Although she did not win, she captured the qualifying round with a 77. In April 1935, in the Texas State Women's Championship, she carded a birdie on the par-5 thirty-first hole,

to win the tournament two-up. In the summer of 1935 she was declared a professional because of an unauthorized endorsement. She accepted the decision and for several years traveled about the country giving golf exhibitions. She also appeared on the vaudeville circuit with a number of different acts. She was the only woman on the Babe Didrikson All-American basketball team and played a few games with the House of David baseball team. It was during these years that she pitched an inning for the St. Louis Cardinals in an exhibition game with the Philadelphia Athletics. She excelled at almost everything she tried: when only sixteen she won a prize for a dress that she had made, at the Texas State Fair; she could type eighty-six words a minute; she could throw a baseball from deep center field to home plate--once a throw of hers was measured at over 300 feet.

In January 1938, Didrikson met George Zaharias, a professional wrestler often billed as "The Crying Greek from Cripple Creek," at the Los Angeles Open. She was attracted to this hulk of a man who could drive a golf ball farther than she. On December 23, 1938, they were married. They had no children. Urged by her husband, she applied for reinstatement as an amateur golfer in 1941 and was reinstated in January 1943. Utilizing her tremendous powers of concentration, her almost unlimited self-confidence (She once wrote: "My main idea in any kind of competition always has been to go out there and cut loose with everything I've got. I've never been afraid to go up against anything. I've always had the confidence that I was capable of winning out."), and her patience, she began to take up golf seriously. She would drive as many as 1,000 balls a day, take lessons for five or six hours, and play until her hands were blistered and bleeding. In 1947, Zaharias became the first American woman to win the British Ladies' Amateur Championship, at Gullane, Scotland. On one hole she stroked a drive so far that a spectator whispered, "She must be Superman's sister." That August she announced that she was turning professional. For the next six years she dominated women's golf.

Legacy

Zaharias had a cancer operation in April 1953, and it was feared she would never be able to return to competition. Three and a half months later, though, she played in competition. The next year she won the United States Women's Open by twelve strokes. In 1955 she had a second cancer operation. She died in Galveston, Texas. In the last months of her life she and her husband established the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Fund to support cancer clinics and treatment centers.