1/07/1938 - Didrikson plays in PGA tournament
Today in Sports History: January 7th
Mildred "Babe" Didrikson, an Olympic track-and-field star who also competed in billiards and basketball, plays in the 1938 Los Angeles Open -- becoming the first woman to play in a men's PGA tour event. The gregarious Didrikson shot a 165 over the first two days and missed the cut; she did, however, fall in love with the man she was paired with, wrestler George Zaharias, and the two would later marry.
''With my 84 in the first round, there was no chance that I'd qualify for the final 36 holes,'' she said in her autobiography This Life I've Led, ''but I was looking forward to that second round. I already had the feeling that this George Zaharias was my kind of guy, and it turned out that he was thinking I was his kind of girl.''
Babe would play in further PGA events and in 1945, she made the cut in multiple tour events. It wasn't until 2003, in Annika Sorenstam, that a another woman would play in a men's golf tournament.
1/07/1990 - The Rams beat the Giants in OT
Willie “Flipper” Anderson catches the game-winning touchdown in an NFL playoff game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New York Giants.
To read more about this story, click here for an in-depth Inhistoric article:
Further reading:
World was different when Zacharias played PGA events [New York Times]
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