We locals have had the good fortune to watch some great golfers win headline-making championships on our best North Shore courses. Players like Paul Harney, Amy Alcott, Donna Caponi, Hollis Stacy, Bruce Fleisher and Kenny Perry stand out in recent memory.
But with all due respect, none of them rank as high in the context of historical importance with what transpired locally 70 years ago this summer.
For it was in 1954 that America’s greatest female athlete, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, plagued with cancer and wearing a colostomy bag, came to Salem Country Club and registered her greatest golfing triumph: winning her third United States Women’s Open by a breathtaking 12 shots.
“The Babe”, as she was known, would be dead two years later at 45, a victim of colon cancer. But what she accomplished at on the renowned Peabody course during the first Eisenhower administration remains to this day one of the most outstanding singular achievements in golf annals.
The Texan’s 72-hole score of three-over-par 291, keyed by rounds on the 36-hole final day of 73 and 75, earned her a stunning 12-stroke victory and immortality in the record books of American golf.
Whenever The Golf Network or U.S. Women’s Open television coverage makes note of the most significant championships played on American soil, Zaharias’s success at Salem is always recognized.
The United States Golf Association paid tribute to Zaharias’s triumph at Salem CC when it presented an exhibit at the USGA Museum in Far Hills, N.J. in 2004 entitled “Let Me Play Again,” a rare honor focusing on what she accomplished 50 years earlier.
Now, with the 100th anniversary of the famous Donald Ross-designed layout coming in 2026, Salem Country Club seems assured to remain on the map of American golf history, tied forever with Zaharias’s remarkable achievement as she battled cancer.
This author, with the support of a Salem Country Club membership group, produced in 2014 the book Sensation at Salem: The Legendary Babe Zaharias’s Historic 1954 U.S. Open Victory, to mark the 60th anniversary of her emotional win.
Oliver Cook, a 56-year Salem CC member, former club president, club liaison to the USGA and general chairman for three of the six USGA championships hosted by Salem, attended the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open.
“I was 15 when I got to see part of the final day with my mother, two sisters and my aunt,” Cook, now 85, recalled. “That was my first time at Salem. I couldn’t believe how beautiful the place was, but I was there to watch The Babe and her playing partner, Mickey Wright, still an amateur, play their morning round.
“Babe had a powerful swing for a lady of the time,” Cook added. “Mickey’s swing was strong, but more graceful. Little did I know at the time how historic that day was, with the greatness of Babe and the future greatness of Mickey in our midst.”
Arthur McCarthy, a Salem CC caddy up until 1953 and, like Cook, a long-time Salem member, observed Zaharias for nine holes that week, in his case during a practice round.
“Babe was so athletic with such a fluid swing,” McCarthy recalled like it was yesterday. “She always had a big smile. She walked and played with confidence. She had the look of a champion and proved it on the golf course one more time that week.”
And in the process, Zaharias secured Salem Country Club’s place in American golf history.