Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
She was actually speaking the truth [that she was the
greatest]. And some people probably didn’t like it at that
time because it was coming from a woman.”
A skilled self-promoter, Zaharias often changed her
birth date, making herself appear younger than she was.
This deception was intended to make her seem even
more of a star than she already was—for example, on
her application for the 1932 Olympics, she wrote that
she was born in 1914. As Susan E. Cayleff noted in
Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias,
“If a twenty-year-old excelling at the Olympics in 1932
was heralded, then an eighteen-year-old—or better yet a
seventeen-year-old—might be worshipped!” Her gravestone
and her baptismal certificate corroborate the earlier
1911 date.
In the early 1930s, Zaharias also began playing golf.
By her eleventh game, in 1932, she drove the ball 260
yards from the first tee and played the second set of nine
holes with a score of 43. She entered her first tournament
in 1934, and won the qualifying round with a score of 77.
At the Texas State Women’s Championship in April of
1935, she carded a birdie on the par-5 31st hole and won
the tournament two-up. In 1935, she was making
$15,000 a year from endorsements and golf matches.
Gender Backlash
Despite her success, or because of it, a backlash
against her swelled up in the press and in popular opinion,
fueled by her refusal to fit typical stereotypes of
womanhood. According to William O. Johnson and
Nancy P. Williamson in Whatta Gal: The Babe Didrikson
Story, she was “seen by many reporters and members of
the public as a freak . . . an aberration . . . a living putdown
to all things feminine.” Zaharias herself expressed
scorn for traditionally “feminine” clothing and mannerisms,
and according to a writer in Gay and Lesbian Biography,
once told a reporter that “she did not wear girdles,
bras, and the like because she was no ‘sissy.’”
The common male response to her was summed up
by Joe Williams, a contemporary reporter for the New
York World-Telegram. According to Larry Schwartz in
ESPN.com, Williams commented, “It would be much
better if she and all her ilk stayed at home, got themselves
prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.”
Schwartz also noted that contemporary sportswriter
Paul Gallico, who lost a golf match to Zaharias and
Grantland Rice in 1932, called Zaharias a “muscle moll”
in one Vanity Fair article, and commented in another
Vanity Fair article that she was neither male nor female,
and wrote dismissively that she was a lesbian. And according
to Cayleff, it was not unusual for her to be accosted
in the locker room by other female athletes who
demanded to know whether she was a man or a woman.
In addition to her androgynous personal style, Zaharias
defied gender stereotypes of women’s need to be
Awards and Accomplishments
Zaharias
1930-32 All-American Basketball Player
1931 Gold medals in long jump, baseball throw, and 80-meter
hurdles, National AAU meet
1932 Overall winner, Texas AAU meet
1932 Overall winner, national AAU meet in Evanston, Illinois; she
enters eight events and wins gold medals in six; sets world
records in the high jump, 80-meter hurdles, javelin, and
baseball throw
1932 Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year
1932 Gold medal, javelin throw; gold medal, 80-meter hurdles;
silver medal, high jump, 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games
1945 U.S. Women’s Amateur
1945-46 Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year
1946 Wins Women’s Trans-Mississippi Amateur
1947 Wins Women’s North and South Amateur
1947 Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year
1947 Wins British Women’s Amateur Championship
1948 Wins All-American Open, World Championships, and U.S.
Women’s Open
1948-51 Leading money-winner on the LPGA tour
1950 Wins U.S. Women’s Open
1950 Associated Press Female Athlete of the Half Century
1951 Wins All-American Open, World Championship, Ponte Verda
Open, Tampa Open, Fresno Open, and Texas Open
1951 LPGA Hall of Fame
1953 Wins first event of Babe Zaharias Open
1954 Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year
1954 Wins U.S. Women’s Open and Tam O’Shanter All-American
1954 Vare Trophy
1954 Texas Sports Hall of Fame
1974 World Golf Hall of Fame
1976 National Women’s Hall of Fame
1980 Women’s Sports Foundation Hall of Fame
2000 Sports Illustrated Female Athlete of the 20th Century
2001 National Women’s Baseball Hall of Fame
financially dependent on men by remaining single, supporting
herself, and earning a great deal of money
through endorsements, stunts, and appearances. Her
Employer’s Casualty contract alone paid her three times
as much as the average American man of her time
made, and six times as much as the average American
woman earned.
In time, Zaharias grew tired of defending her personal
style and choices to reporters and curious fans,
and made some concessions to conformity, wearing
more frilly clothing than she had in the past, telling reporters
that she was looking for a husband, and occasionally
saying that perhaps women’s participation in
sports should be limited. According to a writer in Gay
and Lesbian Biography, she also made up stories
about past boyfriends for the press, and uncharacteristically
advised women athletes, “Get toughened up by
playing boys’ games, but don’t get tough.” Golf promoter
Bertha Bowen encouraged her new “feminine”
style, and took her to Neiman-Marcus to buy new
clothes, taught her how to put on makeup, and even—
but only once, and only under pressure from the Texas
Women’s Golf Association—got her to play golf while
wearing a girdle.
1827