Babe Zaharias

Hometown

Port Arthur

Texas

Year Inducted

1974

Inducted Category

Competitor

Birthdate

Jun 26,1911

Date Deceased

Sep 27,1956

Major Championships: 10

Western Open: 1940, 1944, 1945, 1950
Titleholders Championship: 1947, 1950, 1952
U.S. Women’s Open: 1948, 1950, 1954

Additional LPGA Tour Wins: 31

1947: Tampa Open
1948: All American Open, World Championship
1949: World Championship, Eastern Open
1950: Pebble Beach Weathervane, Cleveland Weathervane, All-American Open, World Championship, 144-hole Weathervane
1951: Ponte Vedra Beach Womens Open, Tampa Womens Open, Lakewood Weathervane, Richmond Womens Open, Valley Open, Meridian Hills Weathervane, All-American Open, World Championship, Texas Womens Open
1952: Miami Weathervane, Bakersfield Open (tied with Marlene Hagge, Betty Jameson and Betsy Rawls), Fresno Open, Womens Texas Open
1953: Sarasota Open, Babe Zaharias Open
1954: Serbin Open, Sarasota Open, Damon Runyan Cancer Fund Tournament, All-American Open
1955: Tampa Open, Peach Blossom Classic

Awards & Honors:

Golf

Vare Trophy: 1954
LPGA leading money winner: 1950, 1951
William D. Richardson Award (Golf Writers Association of America): 1954
Ben Hogan Award (Golf Writers Association of America): 1954
Bob Jones Award (USGA): 1957
PGA of America Hall of Fame: 1977
Texas Golf Hall of Fame: 1978
Golfer of the Decade by GOLF Magazine for 1948-57: 1988
The Memorial Tournament Honoree: 1991
LPGA’s top-50 players and teachers: 2000
Southern California Golf Association Hall of Fame: 2009
Presidential Medal of Freedom: 2021

Sports

Gold medal in 1932 Olympics in 80-Meter Hurdles (set new world record)
Gold medal in 1932 Olympics in Javelin (set new world record)
Silver medal in 1932 Olympics in High Jump (later credited with first-place tie)
Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year: 1931, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1950, 1954
Texas Sports Hall of Fame: 1954
Florida Sports Hall of Fame: 1964
Associated Press Woman Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century
National Women’s Hall of Fame: 1976
International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame: 1980
Associated Press Top Woman Athlete of the Century: 1999
Sports Illustrated’s Individual Female Athlete of the Century: 1999
Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame: 2008
No. 10 on 50 greatest North American athletes of the past 100 years for ESPN’s SportsCentury (the only female athlete in the top 10)
Olympic Hall of Fame

Olympic gold medal winner in track and field. All-American basketball player in college. Champion golfer. If there was a Jim Thorpe among women athletes, it was Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias. As a professional golfer, she won 31 tournaments, including three U.S. Women’s Opens, and helped found the Ladies Professional Golf Association. “Babe changed the game of golf for women,” said Patty Berg.

Didrikson didn’t even take up golf seriously until she was 21. She was introduced to the game by Grantland Rice in Los Angeles during the 1932 Olympics. Somewhere in between winning gold medals in the javelin and hurdles – she might have won the high jump, too, had she not been disqualified – Didrikson joined Rice and three other sportswriters for a round of golf at Brentwood Country Club. According to Rice, the Babe shot 91 that day and regularly hit drives measuring 250 yards.

The following year, while she was touring the country with the House of David baseball team, Didrikson traveled back to Los Angeles and took golf lessons from pro Stan Kertes at Brentwood. Two years later, she won the Texas Women’s Amateur Championship with an eagle on the 34th hole. The United States Golf Association ruled the following day that as a professional athlete Didrikson could no longer compete in amateur events.

“Golf is a game of coordination, rhythm and grace; women have these to a high degree.”

This led Didrikson to go on exhibition tours and to celebrity pro-ams. In 1938, during a tournament in California, she was paired with a professional wrestler named George Zaharias. They married later that year, and with Zaharias supporting his wife and managing her career, the Babe applied for amateur reinstatement. The USGA granted her wish in 1943, and immediately after World War II Zaharias went on a tear that included the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1946 and the British Women’s Amateur in 1947. Published reports had her winning 16 consecutive tournaments, and this led her to turn professional, sign with sports promoter Fred Corcoran and, along with Berg, help form the LPGA Tour. As a professional, Zaharias was just as dominant, winning 31 of the 128 events in which she played from 1948-1953. Asked what the secret of her success was, Zaharias would usually answer with her favorite expression. “Aw,” she’d say, “I just loosen my girdle and take a whack at it.”

Fact

Babe Zaharias was an all-sport star in high school, excelling in tennis, swimming, baseball, basketball and volleyball.

Zaharias’ last seven wins, including the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open, came after she was diagnosed with cancer and had a colostomy. The U.S. Women’s Open victory, by 12 strokes over Betty Hicks at Salem (Massachusetts) Country Club, was one of the five victories that year. The pain returned in 1955, and although she won twice that year, it wasn’t long before Babe Zaharias was gone. She died September 27, 1956, at the age of 45. Berg called her “the most physically talented woman I’ve ever seen,” and that statement applied not only to golf, but to the rest of the sports Babe Didrikson Zaharias mastered. These included bowling, tennis and, if card games count, those too. In her autobiography, This Life I’ve Led, Zaharias wrote, “All my life, I’ve had the urge to do things better than anyone else.” She may have been the greatest woman athlete in history.

Babe Zaharias was originally inducted through the LPGA category.