became best known. Shortly thereafter, she was denied amateur status, and so, in January 1938, she competed in the Los Angeles Open, a PGA (Professional Golfers' Association) tournament. No other woman competed against men in this tournament until Annika Sörenstam, Suzy Whaley, Michelle Wie and Brittany Lincicome almost six decades later. She shot 81 and 84, and missed the cut. In the tournament, she was teamed with George Zaharias. They were married eleven months later, and settled in Tampa, Florida, on the premises of a golf course that they purchased in 1951. Didrikson became America's first female golf celebrity and the leading player of the 1940s and early 1950s. In order to regain amateur status in the sport, she could compete in no other sports for three years. She gained back her amateur status in 1942. In 1945, she had participated in three more PGA Tour events, missing the second cut of the first of them, and making the cut of the other two; as of 2018, she remains the only woman to have achieved this. Zaharias won the 1946 U.S. Women's Amateur and the 1947 British Ladies Amateur – the first American to do so – and three Women's Western Opens. Having formally turned professional in 1947, Didrikson dominated the Women's Professional Golf Association and later the Ladies Professional Golf Association. She was a founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, in 1950. Serious illness ended her career in the mid-1950s. Zaharias won a tournament named after her, the Babe Zaharias Open of her hometown of Beaumont, Texas. She won the 1947 Titleholders Championship and the 1948 U.S. Women's Open for her fourth and fifth major championships. She won 17 straight women's amateur victories, a feat never equaled by anyone. By 1950, she had won every golf title available. Totaling both her amateur and professional victories, Zaharias won a total of 82 golf tournaments. Charles McGrath of The New York Times wrote of Zaharias, "Except perhaps for Arnold Palmer, no golfer has ever been more beloved by the gallery." Golf awards While Zaharias missed the cut in the 1938 PGA Tour event, later, as she became more experienced, she made the cut in every PGA Tour event she entered. In January 1945, Zaharias played in three PGA tournaments. She shot 76–76 to qualify for the Los Angeles Open. She then shot 76–81 to make the two-day cut in