G Golf and money, an eternal topic. Many believe that the racket-swinging sport is only for the rich. This has been repeatedly contradicted and disproven at this point. Yet golf can make you very rich: male professionals earn millions in prize money, and at the US Open last weekend alone the winner J.J. Spaun raked in almost 5 million dollars. You can even become outrageously rich with golf: if you let yourself be bought for hundreds of millions by the Saudi LIV Tour.
The situation is different for women. Their prize money is roughly three-quarters lower; a few hundred thousand are always within reach. It was even different for women in the past. Golf, if there was a lack of a generous husband by their side, was the only chance as an athlete to earn money at all, in order to rise to world-class status as an all-rounder while simultaneously competing in strict amateur disciplines.
The best example is Ella Didrikson from Texas, born in 1911. At the 1932 U.S. Track and Field Championships she competed in eight events within three hours and won six times. For the Olympics in the same year in Los Angeles she had qualified in all five women’s individual events. It was annoying for her that the rules allowed participation in only three.
She won the javelin, in world-record time over 80 metres hurdles and shared the high jump victory at 1.66 metres with Jean Shiley — until a jury decided to award Didrikson only second place because of her dive-roll technique headfirst. The two women found the men’s arbitrariness stupid, melted down their medals, and now had as a trophy a silver-gold alloy.
Officials were wary of the physically versatile all-rounder Didrikson, who also impressed as a boxer, equestrian, fencer, and tennis player. Then this woman even played on the Brooklyn Dodgers’ men’s baseball team, where due to her hitting power and in homage to the legend Babe Ruth she earned the nickname Babe.
Getting Started in Golf
From then on she was known as Babe Didrikson. She was also active in basketball, bowling, shooting and speed skating. Catching was missing. As a substitute she married professional catcher George. And then there was golf as well; prize money existed from the early 1930s. So off she went. Didrikson won the US Open three times.
A similar story of how to train as a movement talent into the lucrative golf summit is Althea Gibson from South Carolina. She won in the 1950s as the first Black female tennis player multiple French Open, US Open and Wimbledon titles. With her doubles titles she reached eleven Grand Slam wins. Prize money in tennis began only in 1968. Here too golf served as salvation. Thus Gibson earned dollars as the first Black professional golfer on the Ladies’ Tour. Her motto: “If I see something that speaks to me, then I do it.” Not an easy life: because of racial discrimination she was occasionally expelled from hotels or had to change in her car because she could not enter locker rooms.
Back to Babe Didrikson: She is regarded as the most versatile athlete in history together with the Briton Charlotte Dod. Dod had won Wimbledon at age 15 in the late 19th century (to this day the youngest winner), played in the field hockey national team, won Olympic silver in archery in 1908, and won the British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship. Less admirable: During a train ride of the U.S. national team, Didrikson poured ice water over two Black teammates as protest against the first-time inclusion of Black athletes in the national squad.
There was no rebuke for Babe. Worse still: the two victims were replaced by white female athletes. Golf’s money thus made the sport richer and perhaps corrupted character already in earlier times of racism.
