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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?"