With Olympic golf looming—the women's leg of the competition starts this week—I decided to learn up on one of the best Olympian-golfer combo talents of all time: The legendary Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
For those unfamiliar with the brief basics of her career:
- She set four world records at the 1932 Olympic Games.
- She won gold medals in javelin and hurdles, and a silver medal in high jump.
- Zaharias took up golf three years later.
- She became a founder of the LPGA Tour.
- She went on to win 41 times, including 10 majors.
- She made the cut in two PGA Tour events.
How did Babe get so good at golf, so quickly? Her unfathomable athleticism obviously plays a massive role, but a great book called "Wonder Girl" by Don Van Natta shared some other clues which the rest of us may learn from:
1. Let it rip
From the moment Babe first picked up a golf club, she wanted to hit the ball far. And she did. Byron Nelson once estimated that fewer than 10 golfers on the planet could hit the ball longer than Babe. She'd routinely bash drives longer than 260 yards.
Babe struggled with accuracy in the early days—especially with her irons—but she knew that could be fixed later.
"A free-swinging Zaharias put power into women's golf. And shot value, too," Nick Seitz wrote for Golf Digest back in 2000. "'I just loosen my girdle and take a whack at it,' she liked to crack."
2. Look at the ball real hard
Babe had a smattering of teachers helping her with the basics from the very start. She initially used a 10-finger baseball grip, but later switched to an interlocking grip. She also instilled the basics of ball position, stance width, and posture early on.
But one of the biggest basics a legendary teaching pro at the time, Olin Dutra, told her?
"Keep your eye on the ball...look at the ball real hard, that's the most important thing."
3. Extend left arm
PGA of America
As she started developing her golf swing, Babe linked up with a golf instructor called Stan Kertes. Noticing her natural athletic talent, Kertes wasn't heavy-handed with any technical changes, but did suggest one important piece of advice, as "Wonder Girl" explains:
"He emphasized the importance of a firm left arm while swinging. The arm must remain straight throughout the swing, he explained, although it didn't have to be dead straight. 'If the left arm bends just a little, that's okay,' he told her."
This advice, as we've come to understand better in recent years, prevents the arms from collapsing, and promotes more stretch in golfers' upper body.
A few simple rules. Combine that with some generational athleticism and a few thousand golf balls a day, and you get Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
Check out more content about golf history in our Golf Digest Archive here.