Sunday, January 04, 2009

Golf History

My husband is an avid golfer. A couple of nights ago he asked me which women golfers I thought had won the grand slam. I made a couple of guesses but decided tonight to look it up. First of all I didn't even know what defined a grand slam so I started there. It turns out that the depending on the year it is winning two to four major tournaments in a given year. It turns out that no woman has ever won four majors in a given year but two women have won the grand slam by the rules of the year they won it in. The one I started reading about is Babe Didrikson Zaharias. She was accomplished in just about every sport - basketball, track, golf, baseball, tennis, swimming, diving, boxing, volleyball, handball, bowling, billiards, skating and cycling. She was an Olympic gold medalist in track and field and became best known for her remarkable golf career.

Today we are wowed by Tiger Woods but if Babe were alive today she would dominate the sport. She was perhaps the greatest athlete of all times and most people have never heard of her. What a great role model she could be for the young women of the world. If she had been a man would we still be talking about her?

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