AT their first sight of Mildred Didrikson Zaharias on the golf course, spectators often react like sideshow gawkers; they are first filled with awe, then with doubt, then with wonder. Obviously, they feel, no woman should be able to hit a golf ball so far (her longest drive: 315 yards).

But in 20 years of competition, this 5 ft6 in. phenomenon with grey-green eyes, slightly bowed legs and squared shoulders has accomplished feats which for sheer diversity have seldom been equaled by any athlete, male or female. She broke two world records at the 1932 Olympics, was twice selected All-America basketball forward, has pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals (in an exhibition game), and has toured the country giving billiard exhibitions. Anything that requires muscular coordination is her meat. She has excelled at tennis, swimming, diving, bowling, shot-putting, lacrosse, fencing and polo. She can type 86 words a minute and has been heard to say of her husband, George Zaharias, a 300-lb. ex-wrestler: "Yep, I threw him last night with a flying mare."

Today, going on 40, the Babe has forsaken all forms of sport except golf. She is star and chief drawing card of the women's professional golf troupe which last fortnight began its ten-month barnstorming tour in Tampa.

Babe stalks the fairway with a conscious sense of theater. She flips king-size cigarettes into the air and catches them nonchalantly in her mouth, then lights her match with her fingernail. Her hawkish, sun-toughened face is frozen for the most part in a thin-lipped mask, but she knows when to let go a wisecrack. When one of her tremendous drives sails out of bounds, she turns to the crowd and explains, "I hit it straight but it went crooked."

If she sinks a long putt, she is apt to fall to her knees and praise Allah; when she misses a short one, she may exclaim, "I feel like nuts & bolts rattling together." On a hot day, she once gathered a circle of women around her on the golf course while she shed her petticoat; another time she startled the gallery with a highland fling. She once insisted on being paid her tournament money in one-dollar bills ("It makes me feel richer"). She operates like a woman whose life is a constant campaign to astound people.

FOR ten months a year she plays in tournaments, has earned more than $100,000 a year from them, exhibitions, endorsements, etc. She lives on her own golf course just off Route 41, near Tampa. A sign saying "Home of Babe and George Zaharias" advertises its presence to all who wish to play there for a greens fee of $2. She and George bought the course two years ago and set up housekeeping in a pink stucco, remodeled caddy house just off the practice putting green. Babe takes her housewifely chores as seriously as her golf. She designed the modern, push-button kitchen which, like the dining room is painted a violent yellow. "Kinda loud," Babe admits offhandedly, "but you get used to it."

The only door inside the house is to the bedroom where George sleeps in a double bed and Babe in a single bed. She hates doors: "They clutter up the place." Scattered around the living room, bedroom and bathroom is a vast collection of tarnished trophies and medals, which, if melted down, would almost equal the combined weights of Babe and her hefty husband. "I've been meaning to put them under glass," Babe says.

Babe Didrikson was the sixth of seven children born to Ole Didrikson, a Norwegian ship's carpenter who sailed 19 times around the Horn before settling down in Port Arthur, Texas. A scrawny youngster, she rebelled against femininity; women were "sissies who wore girdles, bras and that junk." Instead of wasting time with dolls, Mildred Ella Didrikson exercised on a backyard weight-lifting machine built of broomsticks and her mother's flatirons. She beat boys at mumblety-peg, whizzed past them in foot races and razzle-dazzled them in basketball. Still in her teens, she burst into the headlines as the hit of the 1932 Olympic Games, winning the javelin throw and the 80-meter hurdles. She disdained lipstick, plastered her hair back, talked out of the side of her mouth with a thick Texas drawl and riveted reporters with such remarks as: "Are you the guy who took pictures of my feet in Jersey?"

WHEN she decided to concentrate on golf, she tightened up her game by driving as many as 1,000 golf balls a day and playing until her hands were so sore they had to be taped. She developed an aggressive, dramatic style, hitting down sharply and crisply on her iron shots like a man and averaging 240 yards off the tee. If a woman rival uses a six iron for a shot, Babe will likely as not use an eight out of sheer vanity. Once, when a man chivalrously offered her the honor in teeing off, she withered him with, "Naw, you better hit first cause it'll be the last time you get the honor--and you'd better bust a good one if you don't want to be outdrove 20 yards by a gal."

One day in 1938, George Zaharias, who had met Babe a year before when they were both playing in a golf tournament, looked into her eyes and said, "We get married on Friday or we're through." They got married on Friday.

Babe tried to stop bragging and boasting. She made George give up wrestling. She began giving herself home permanents ("I just follow the directions on the box"). With housewifely zest, she pitched into making curtains and raising flowers. But even in the garden there was competition. "I know I can't make my flowers grow any faster," she said, "but I want them to be the prettiest and the healthiest."^ In line with her determination to be a "grownup married woman and not a 14-year-old javelin thrower," she concentrated on golf hoping that some of its gentler graces would rub off on her. Some did.

As the best player and biggest draw in women's golf, Babe stopped wearing a chip on her shoulder. Instead of greeting all rivals with, "Yep, I'm gonna beat you," she began encouraging the younger girls on the circuit and established a working friendship with the older ones. When George is not traveling the circuit with her, she often rooms with Patty Berg, who has been her chief adversary for years.

Her mind seems almost as wiry as her body. "There isn't a crossword puzzle I can't finish in half an hour," Babe admits modestly. She likes to play gin rummy but is too good at it to get many opponents. The once lonely, homely tomboy is now a social success; she is an extremely graceful ballroom dancer and the life of almost any party, doing imitations of herself as a child singing I Get the Blues When It Rains, or hauling out a harmonica and rocking into a hillbilly air. Babe once banked $3,500 for taking her harmonica on the stage for seven days. She quit because she felt cooped up and "had to get out and see the sky again."

JUST before the semifinals of the Women's Western Open in 1945, Babe was notified that her mother had suddenly died. In no doubt of what her mother would have wanted her to do, she went ahead with the tournament, minus her usual routine of high jinks and wisecracks, and won it to become the first three-time titleholder. Last summer, for the first time in five years, Babe failed to be top-money winner on the women's pro circuit. She dropped quietly out of sight to be operated on for a hernia. During convalescence, her weight went up from 140 to 162 pounds, but she rushed back into action and won the second tournament she played in. As she has often said: "I don't see any use playing the game if you don't win--do you?"

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