Quote:
|
Originally Posted by badcompany
I've always felt that Julie Krone is the greatest female athlete of all-time, as she is the only one who is considered one of the best even compared to men.
|
she is good, but you gotta look this lady up for "Best of all time"
Babe Zaharias
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.[3]
[edit] AAU champion
Didrikson's first job after high school was nominally as a secretary, for the Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas. In fact, she was employed as a ruse so that she could play basketball on one of the "industrial teams", the Golden Cyclones, i competitions organized 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 for 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.
1932 Olympics
Since the AAU Championships were the de facto US Olympic Trials, Didrikson qualified for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
By the rules then in effect, as a female athlete, she was limited to entering up to three events, and she chose the javelin throw, the 80 meter hurdles and the high jump. She nearly won all three events: she won gold medals in the javelin (143 feet, 4 inches) and hurdles (11.7 seconds). She cleared the same height (5foot 5inches) as her teammate Jean Shiley in the high jump (with whom she had tied in the AAU Championship). The judges, however, disapproved of her jumping style (jumping over headfirst) in the final tie breaker jump, and they declared Shiley the Olympic champion. After the Games, Shiley and Didrikson split their two medals - the gold one and the silver one.
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.[4]
[edit] Golf
By 1935, she picked up the sport of 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 (scoring too badly to continue in the tournament). 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."[5]
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.[6]
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. 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). Babe Zaharias now stands third to Crocker and Sherri Steinhauer). 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.
