Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
ving as many as a thousand balls a day, taking lessons for
four or five hours, and playing until her hands bled. This
hard work paid off: between 1946 and 1947, she won
seventeen of eighteen golf tournaments, and in 1947, Zaharias
became the first American woman to win the prestigious
British Ladies’ Amateur Championship, held at
Gullane, Scotland. In August of that year she decided to
return to professional status, and entered the professional
golf circuit, which she reigned over for the next six
years. She played with celebrities, including Katharine
Hepburn and Cary Grant, as well as with noted athletes
of the era. She also signed a lifetime contract with Wilson
Sporting Goods to represent their equipment.
In 1950, Zaharias and twelve other women, including
famed golfers Louise Suggs and Patty Berg, co-founded
the Ladies Professional Golf Association. They found
corporate sponsors in order to hold more professional
tournaments and offer larger cash prizes to winners. Zaharias
quickly became the star player of the LPGA, winning
more tournaments and taking home more prize
money than any other golfer; her success brought publicity
and credibility to the young organization.
Meets Her Toughest Competitor
In 1950, Zaharias and her husband bought the Tampa
Golf and Country Club and moved into the large converted
clubhouse there. However, they seldom saw each
other, as he traveled widely and was rarely home. In that
same year, Zaharias met youthful golfer Betty Dodd.
The two quickly became inseparable, and Dodd moved
in with Zaharias and her husband, living with both of
them until Zaharias’ death. Although neither Zaharias
nor Dodd ever openly acknowledged that they had a lesbian
relationship, according to a writer in Gay and Lesbian
Biography, “it was common knowledge that they
were primary partners,” and the two had a strong emotional
bond. Dodd later told Johnson and Williamson, “I
had such admiration for this fabulous person. I never
wanted to be away from her even when she was dying of
cancer. I loved her. I would’ve done anything for her.”
By the end of the golf season in 1952, Zaharias was
feeling extremely fatigued, and eventually went to the
doctor to find out why. In April of 1953 she was diagnosed
with colon cancer, and although her doctors warned
her that she might never compete again, she proved them
wrong. In her autobiography, she wrote, “All my life I’d
been competing to win. I came to realize that in its way,
this cancer was the toughest competition I’d faced yet.”
She eventually underwent surgery for the colon cancer.
By this time Dodd had become her full-time caregiver,
and told Johnson and Williamson that George Zaharias
“couldn’t afford to be [jealous] anymore. Because he
wouldn’t do anything for Babe. . . he needed me.”
Six months after her surgery, she returned to competition,
placing sixth in the United States in 1953. In 1954
she tied as winner of the U.S. Women’s Open, despite
Babe Zaharias Dies; Athlete Had Cancer
Zaharias
Mrs. Mildred (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias, famed woman athlete, died
of cancer in John Sealy Hospital here this morning. She was 42 years old.
Mrs. Zaharias had been under treatment since 1953, when the malignant
condition was discovered after she had won a golf tournament. The
tournament was one named for her—the Babe Zaharias Open of Beaumont,
Tex., where she was reared.
Mrs. Zaharias had fought valiantly against cancer for the last several
months. She remained confident almost to the end that she would get well.
Her final weeks were relatively free of pain, although the malignancy was
general. Physicians here had performed a cordotomy—a severing of certain
nerves—to relieve her of pain.
A funeral service is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at the Bethlehem
Lutheran Church in Beaumont.
Source: New York Times, September 28, 1956.
the fact that she had to play while wearing a colostomy
bag. Because of her performance, she won the Ben Hogan
Comeback Award for that year. In that same year, she
established the Babe Zaharias Fund to benefit cancer
treatment centers and clinics.
“I Just Wanted to See a Golf Course One
More Time”
In 1955, however, the cancer returned, and the
woman who won so many other competitions eventually
lost the battle with her toughest foe. Shortly before she
died, however, she showed her deep love of golf during
a visit to friends in Fort Worth, Texas. One night she
asked her friends to drive her to Colonial Country Club.
At the club, she walked alone in the dark to one of the
greens, where she bent down, ran her hands over the
ground, and kissed the grass. “I just wanted to see a golf
course one more time,” she said, according to an article
by Don Wade on the Golf Society Web site.
Zaharias died a few months later, on September 27,
1956, at the age of 45. President Dwight Eisenhower,
moved by her death, began his press conference that day
with a tribute to her achievements. She is buried in
Beaumont, Texas; the epitaph on her gravestone in Forest
Lawn Cemetery reads “Babe Didrikson Zaharias,
1911-1956, World’s Greatest Woman Athlete.”
Zaharias’s life was portrayed in a made-for-television
movie on the CBS network in 1975. Starring Susan
Clark as Zaharias and Alex Karras as George Zaharias,
the movie was directed by Buzz Kulik.
Zaharias left a lasting legacy in sports, a result of her
lifelong challenge to stereotypes about the roles and abilities
of women. She had a lucrative career in areas traditionally
held open only to men, and refused to conform
to ideas about “ladylike” clothing, mannerisms, and
speech. At a time when, as Nick Seitz wrote in Golf Digest,
“young women were expected to be home minding
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