Abby Connolly
As the weather gets warmer and we enter the summer, more and more people will be heading out onto golf courses to play in the sunshine.
There have been a lot of brilliant women golfers in America, but do you know the athlete that founded the Ladies Pro Golf Association?
It was Mildred, otherwise known as Babe, Didrikson Zaharias, and she was an astonishing Olympic athlete who achieved greatness throughout her career.
Born in Texas in 1911, Babe was one of seven children, and her parents were Norwegian immigrants. After her family moved to Beaumont, Texas, in 1915, she became interested in sports and began playing baseball in her neighborhood.
She earned her nickname, Babe, after hitting multiple home runs in baseball games, like the famous player Babe Ruth.
Babe excelled in many different sports as a kid and found a love for basketball. After high school, she worked for the Employers Casualty Company in Dallas, Texas, and played for their company basketball team, the Golden Cyclones.
After training very hard for a few years, Babe made the cut for the 1932 Olympics. She was only 21 years old and won a gold medal for the javelin throw and set a world record. The following day, she won another gold medal in track and field.
She was assumed to win more gold during the high jump but was given a silver medal instead. Overall, she won three medals and broke three records.
After her fantastic performance at the Olympics, Babe turned to golf. She was discriminated against for being a woman in the sport, but that didn’t stop her, and she wowed people with her tremendous talent. In 1938 she competed in the Los Angeles Open and met her husband, George Zaharias.
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