June 26, 1911 – Birth of Mildred Ella (“Babe”) Didrikson Zaharias

Mildred Ella (“Babe”) Didrikson Zaharias was one of the greatest female athletes in memory. She achieved outstanding success in golf, baseball, basketball, diving, bowling, and track and field. She won two gold medals and one silver medal for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics (breaking her own world records in both the javelin and the 80-meter hurdles).

But wait: there’s more! She was also an excellent seamstress, making many of the clothes she wore, and even won the sewing championship at the 1931 State Fair of Texas in Dallas. She was also 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.

By 1935, she picked up the sport of golf, a latecomer to the sport in 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 almost six decades later. She missed the cut (scoring too badly to continue in the tournament), but gained a husband. 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.

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. 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.

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).

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. 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.