This lightweight carry bag bears the name of the Legendary Babe Didrickson. I suspect that it was a gift or prize at a Babe Didrickson golf charity event. It has never been used.
No athlete excelled at more sports and games than Didrikson. She was an
all-American basketball player, a two-time Olympic track and field gold
medalist (won 2 gold medals and 1 silver medal at the 1932 Summer Olympics) and a golf champion who won 82 tournaments, including 10 majors and an
astonishing 14 events in a row. One of the 13 founding members of the LPGA,
Didrikson became the first woman to play against men in a PGA Tour
event and the first American to win the British Women’s Amateur
Championship. She was also an outstanding baseball, softball, tennis and
billiards player, diver and bowler. All of this before she died from cancer at age 45.
From a June 25, 2011 article in the NY times:
"Perhaps
Didrikson’s most spectacular athletic achievement occurred at the
amateur track and field championships in Evanston, Ill., on July 16,
1932. She was the lone representative of Employers Casualty Insurance
Company of Dallas, competing against company teams of 12, 15, even 22
women. When Didrikson was introduced, she ran onto the field by herself,
her arms waving wildly. The crowd gasped at the audacity of this
“one-woman track team” (a phrase Didrikson coined).
"Over
the course of three hours on a sweltering track, she sprinted from
event to event, with barely enough time to catch her breath. She
finished first in five events: broad jump, shot-put, javelin, 80-meter
hurdles and the baseball throw. She tied for first in a sixth event, the
high jump. In qualifying for three Olympic events, she amassed a total
of 30 team points for Employers Casualty. The second-place team, the
Illinois Women’s Athletic Club, scored 22 points — with 22 athletes.
"Within five months of her Olympic success, Didrikson, needing a job
during the Depression, performed vaudeville on Chicago’s Palace Theater
stage, then played baseball riding a donkey around the basepaths with
the barnstorming House of David team in small towns and villages across
the country.
"It
was not until Didrikson took up golf that she began to transform her
image and personality. She embraced golf in part to try to conform,
somewhat, to America’s expectations of how a female athlete should look
and act in the 1930s. She bought a new wardrobe and applied lipstick.
Some writers still ridiculed her looks. (“I know I’m not pretty, but I
try to be graceful,” she said.) And in December 1938, she married George
Zaharias, a professional wrestler. He helped sell her makeover to the
news media and to the public.
"Golf
was the toughest game for Didrikson, but she mastered it by practicing
for 10 hours a day until her hands were bloodied and blistered. From
1946 to 1947, she won 14 consecutive tournaments, including the British
Women’s Amateur Championship in Gullane, Scotland....
"Didrikson
received a diagnosis of rectal cancer in April 1953. Doctors told
reporters she would never play professional golf again. She tried to
give her clubs to a friend, but soon she vowed publicly that she would
come back to play tournament golf and win.
"Fifteen
months after a colostomy, she won the United States Women’s Open at
Salem Country Club in Peabody, Mass., by an amazing 12 strokes.
Afterward, she shared her victory with her doctors and the thousands of
cancer patients who had written to her and rooted for her.
"Didrikson
became a tireless crusader against cancer. She spoke openly about her
illness in an era when public figures preferred to keep theirs a secret.
"Twenty-six
months after her triumph at Salem Country Club, she was dead. On the
morning she died in a Galveston, Tex., hospital, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower began his news conference in Washington with this salute:
“She was a woman who, in her athletic career, certainly won the
admiration of every person in the United States, all sports people all
over the world, and in her gallant fight against cancer, she put up one
of the kind of fights that inspire us all.”