Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Penny Zavichas, a niece of Babe Zaharias, packs a life full of stories — and lessons — into her new book
By Gary Baines – 2/24/2025
Penny Zavichas has always had a ball when it comes to the game of golf.
For instance, when the Colorado Golf Hall of Famer was growing up in Pueblo, it wasn’t unusual for her aunt, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and her uncle, George Zaharias, to pay a visit as it was George’s hometown and much of his family lived there. As you might imagine, Zavichas has memorable stories about Babe, who the Associated Press named the Woman Athlete of the Half-Century in 1950.
“The funniest one is when I was still in junior high, the class went out for an end-of-the-year picnic at city park in Pueblo,” Zavichas recounted in a recent interview with Colorado Golf Journal. “They had a driving range out there. A friend of mine and I, we got away from the group and we saw this driving range and nobody was around. We picked up a bunch of golf balls. I don’t know how we got in there because it was all fenced in. She and I carried them back in our T-shirts — wrapped up full of golf balls — back on the bus.
“Then I walked a couple of miles back to the farmhouse. (Babe) was sitting on the porch and I said, ‘Look what I’ve got. I’ve got these balls.’ ‘Where did you get them?’ (Babe said). She looked at them and they had ‘RANGE’ imprinted on them, She says, ‘Hop in the car and show me where you got those balls.’ Off we went in this convertible, top down of course. I showed her. She said ‘These balls belong to these people even though they’re not here. These are their balls. We’re going to throw them over the fence back onto the range.’ That was a lot of fun, throwing those balls.”
Fast forward a quarter-century or so, and there’s another story about golf balls. Zavichas and her business partner, Linda Craft, had started a traveling golf school for which they went all around the country to provide group instruction for women. The problem was that at times, the sites at which they did these schools didn’t always have range balls available for the group lessons.
“We had to start buying range balls,” Zavichas noted. “During our travels we’d stop at golf courses and buy culls. We traveled by car — first in Linda’s then mine, hauling all that stuff around.
“We saved up enough money to buy a little Chevy cargo van, which was named Mrs. Rumble where we would haul our balls. Karsten Solheim with Ping golf company, who loved the idea (of the traveling golf school), started providing us with golf balls. We’d have 20,000 balls rumbling down the road in Mrs. Rumble — strapped in the walls of the van.”
Zavichas has lived a life which has produced countless such stories — so many that she felt compelled to write a book about her life experiences, published last fall. Entitled “GOLF You wanted to do it!”, the 161-page, 41-chapter book is subtitled “The history of the first and only traveling Golf School for Ladies and the schools that followed. Also on the front cover is a photo of her famous aunt, Didrikson Zaharias, who “taught her the grip and courage”. Zaharias, by the way, has another strong connection to Colorado, having lived in Edgewater for a period during the 1940s.
While being the niece of one of the most famous female athletes of all time (gold medals in the javelin and 80-meter hurdles and a silver in the high jump in the 1932 Olympics, plus 41 LPGA Tour titles, including 10 majors, in golf) put Zavichas in a unique position, she’s very accomplished in her own right. The former LPGA Tour player is an LPGA Master Professional who in 2008 was inducted into the LPGA Professionals Hall of Fame, which honors “professional members for extraordinary membership service and leadership while contributing to the game of golf and the golf industry.” Zavichas was also inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Greater Pueblo Sports Association Hall of Fame in 2002.
This actually marks the third book Zavichas, a resident of Pueblo for 84 of her 86 years of life, has authored or co-authored. Between the late 1970s and early ’80s, she and Craft wrote two cookbooks which interspersed instructional golf tips and various golf stories. The recipes were provided by women who attended the Craft-Zavichas Schools.
Asked why she wanted to add a third took, Zavichas told Colorado Golf Journal, “People in my hometown — and even some of my relatives — don’t know what I was involved in with this traveling school. It was so unique. ‘I didn’t know you did all that’ (people say). I wanted to actually do a history of the world’s first and only traveling golf school. I thought, ‘If I don’t do it, who’s going to do it?’ Linda passed away in ’93. She’s not here to do it. I better get some stuff down. This book could have been like 1,000 pages. But I kept it short. I wanted to make sure there was some sort of history on our venture.”
Indeed, one of the interesting sections of the book comes in the appendix, which provided all the stops Zavichas and Craft made with their traveling golf school from 1973-80, then the fixed sites the two adopted from 1981 on to 2013, with Zavichas alone running things after Craft passed away. It should be noted during that latter stage that the two still took their school on the road occasionally — including to Maui in 1985, for instance.
Zavichas said the traveling school visited every state in the country aside from Alaska and North and South Dakota. Plus, they went to Nova Scotia (multiple times) and Newfoundland, and Zavichas to England and Scotland. Among the stops in Colorado were Pueblo and Pueblo West (of course), Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder and Granby.
“We were all over the place. If someone wanted a school, we went,” Zavichas said, noting that the success of the school spread mainly by word of mouth early on. “We offered 1-, 2- or 3-day schools (typically in the date range from April to November). The 2-day schools were the most successful. We’d do a school on a Monday and Tuesday. We’d take off after the end of that second day, then do a school on a Thursday and Friday. Sometimes places didn’t have a driving range, so sometimes they’d close down the ninth or the 18th fairway (for us). The play that day would go around us. Unbelievable.”
Asked if they ever added up all the miles they drove in conducting these schools, Zavichas said they did, but she can’t recall the exact numbers.
“At first we started out in Linda’s car — which was called Geraldine; we named all the cars,” she said. “We packed in the stuff to do the school, the manual that we wrote, our clothing, our golf clubs.”
The cost for a two-day school, which would typically run from 9 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. each day?
$25.
“Can you believe it?” Zavichas said. “Twelve hours of instruction for that.
“Our idea at first wasn’t to make a lot of bucks, which we didn’t. We kept that price $25 for a two-day school for a couple of years. We were afraid to bump it up $5, which we did eventually. No one had done this before. We had no guideline, no business plan. We were flying by the seat of our pants basically.
“We loved to teach, first of all, and we knew we were helping the women golfers, not only with golf instruction but also making golf fun for them. Telling them about equipment — they knew nothing about that — and we didn’t sell clubs at the time. We were just helping them get the best out of golf and making them happy.”
Linda Craft (left) and Penny Zavichas during one of their golf schools back in the day. (Photo courtesy of Penny Zavichas)
Prior to teaming up for the traveling golf school, Zavichas and Craft worked as instructors for the Ben Sutton Golf School for Seniors in Florida. For her part, Zavichas had competed from 1966-73 — and a smattering of times thereafter — on the LPGA Tour, and she said to the best of her recollection her top result in such a tournament was 11th place. “There wasn’t any money out there,” she said. “I’d look at some of my old scores — 73-72-73 — and I’d win $50. It was awful.”
So how did the idea for a traveling golf school germinate?
“The idea was given to us by a woman student” at the Ben Sutton Golf School, said Zavichas, who was named the national LPGA Teacher of the Year in 1973. She said, “‘You know what, Penny? The ladies at my club in Harrisonburg, Va., we’d really love to have a school like this, but they can’t afford to come to Florida and spend a week. Could you and Linda come and do a golf school for us in Harrisonburg?’ That’s how it happened.”
Throughout the run of the traveling golf school, Zavichas and Craft focused almost exclusively on working with female golfers.
“When we started this venture in 1973, it had never been done before that you would pack up a car or van or truck and take out across the country and do golf schools specifically for women,” Zavichas said. “We didn’t think they were getting enough attention at that time in golf. They couldn’t even get the correct grip measurements. (Pros) would never measure the hand size or anything, which is pretty vital. We thought they were getting the short end of the stick. So we ventured out and did this.
“We wanted to gear it toward women. Nobody really wanted to teach them. Most of the guys that were teaching, they didn’t want to teach beginner women who couldn’t hit it 20 feet. So we took over that role.”
But in 1981 Zavichas and Craft took a different tack in a couple of regards. They decided to primarily teach for weeks on end at a single location — rather than constantly travel — and they started teaching men as well as women.
“(Some) women would say, ‘My husband or my boyfriend would like to come to this,’” Zavichas explained. “We had gotten very weary after eight years on the road — working for Ben Sutton for five or six months out of the year, the rest of the time you’re doing the golf schools on the road. So we said, ‘We’ve got to find a spot that will accommodate a weeklong golf school. We kind of mimicked Ben Sutton’s golf school. He was great to us. We went out and found a little spot in Scottsdale, Ariz. I think we scheduled five weeks at first. We weren’t sure we could fill rooms, which was one of the requirements. We needed lodging on site, food and beverage on site, golf school on site, and a driving range. We found that in Scottsdale (Country Club) and started the week schools.”
And, starting in 1981, the Craft-Zavichas School taught more men than women.
“That first week when we put the word out — we bought an ad in Golf Digest — we had more men signing up than women,” Zavichas said. “We had to quickly assemble a male teaching staff. We knew that even though the school was run by two broads, the guys would want to have a guy teacher. We got three guys that first year and the guy students outnumbered the women, big time. It became a co-ed golf school then.”
Once they started with the “destination” golf schools, Zavichas and Craft typically hosted 2-4 multi-week events annually. As noted, Craft passed away in 1993, but Zavichas carried on with the business through 2013. And starting in 1997, there were three-day events that combined schools and attendance at the U.S. Women’s Open or Solheim Cup.
Whether a traveling school or ones at fixed destination sites, the Craft-Zavichas Schools became highly respected. In fact, Zavichas remembers one publication, Golf Magazine, rated them very highly among its top 25 in the nation.
“It held that position several years,” she said. “By 1981 there was a proliferation of golf schools in the country. A lot of them were backed by Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, big corporations, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer. Two women — I think we were No. 4 out of the 25 — that was a big accomplishment.”
Among those on the Craft-Zavichas School staff were a couple of fellow Colorado Golf Hall of Famers — Pat Lange and Sharon Miller — along with Brett Dean, who was a standout player while growing up in Colorado. At the school’s peak, Zavichas said it probably had 8-10 instructors at a given time.
As for Zavichas herself, among the things she’s consistently imparted to her students was something her aunt Babe Zaharias taught her so long ago.
“She showed me the grip, which I absolutely have passed on to my students. It was a darned good one,” said Zavichas, whose mother was the sister of George Zaharias, who married Babe.
George, who was born in Pueblo, was a regular at the Zaharias family farm east of Pueblo when he and Babe would visit.
“They had alfalfa and corn and things like that,” Zavichas noted. “My grandparents lived there, and (Babe) and George would visit it could have been three of four times a year depending on their schedules. Myself and my younger sister, we were always at the farm. When they arrived it was a big deal. (George later purchased the farm.)
“(Babe) would take the both of us shopping — do this, do that. Depending on the time of year they came — I think there’s three or four cuts of alfalfa in the year — when they cut the alfalfa field down, she would hit balls out into the alfalfa field and then we’d go pick them up. She got us kids swinging. She gave us the club and we were all swinging out there.”
Another memory with Zaharias took place in the small town of Rocky Ford, located about 55 miles southeast of Pueblo — when Penny was about 9 years old.
“My first adventure with my Aunt Babe in golf is she took me and my sister Connie (to an exhibition she was conducting in Rocky Ford); she was still an amateur at the time,” Zavichas said. “I remember there were sand greens of all things. We didn’t know anything about what we were doing. My mom dressed us up as if we were going to church and off we went. (Babe) said, ‘You just follow me around.’ My sister and I started picking up tees; we didn’t know what the heck they were. She gave somebody some money and said go buy the kids some hot dogs. Then my uncle shows up — he drove down by himself — and he said what are you guys doing? We said, ‘Aunt Babe brought us.’ He said, ‘Well, don’t talk to the press.’ We thought, ‘What the hell is the press?’
“Long story short, when she was here she involved us kids in her activities. Everybody just loved her in town. They all knew her. She’d go over and play golf at the country club and things like that. Of course that was George’s hometown; he was born in Pueblo along with my mom.”
Some might ask what inspired a person in her mid-80s to do all the organization, research and writing necessary to put together another book. Of course, that same person might wonder why Zavichas, then 83, opened a small Greek sandwich and food shop in Pueblo three years ago, on the site she owned where there was once a gas station. Yet there it is — Zorba’s Gyro.
“I wanted to keep busy. I’m busy now,” she notes. “Eighty-three years old and decide to go back in business. I’m down there a lot. It’s kind of family-run. We go from 11-4 during the week, closed on Sunday.”
But regarding the book, Zavichas said it took her about five months to organize things and write it, thanks in no small part to the assistance of Jennifer Mullen, a retired Colorado State University-Pueblo Mass Communications Department chair who served as the book’s editor.
“I’ve been keeping all the records of the golf school, all the students, the number of students, their addresses,” Zavichas noted. “It took me quite a while to because I just kept jotting down (tidbits) when I felt like I wanted to do it. The older I got, the harder it got to get it assembled. I’m not a writer. In fact, one of my students who asked us to do a few little articles for her, I sent them to her, and she says, ‘My God, Penny, you make more mistakes in a sentence than I do in a bunker.’
“But I did get some help. (Mullen) jumped at the chance, and was wonderful. She’s retired but she’s crazy about golf. She helped me correct spelling and make the sentences readable. I owe a lot to her.
“I’d write a chapter, assemble it, put a title to it. She’d take it, make corrections. We’d put it in order. I’ve got a lot of funny stories. But a lot of it is in the cookbook, and I didn’t want to repeat. She helped me tremendously.”
In fact, in her “Meet the Author” on her website, Zavichas shares a quote from Mullen:
“Golf students are hopeful people! Perfection cannot be achieved in golf, just as in life. A golfer knows they can never master the game; it’s not possible. Joy and satisfaction must come in the process, not just the result of a score or a win. Just as in life, it’s the process of dealing with the highs and lows that make golf worth playing. Golf is a game, yes, but golf may also be the perfect game in life.”
Zavichas has been pretty low-key regarding her book, noting, “Basically I’m just sending postcards out (about it) to former students right now. I haven’t let the LPGA know (yet about the book). I should really do that. But I’m not doing a gigantic advertising campaign.”
As for who the book is geared for, Zavichas feels youngsters might gain inspiration and learn perseverance and fortitude from it.
“I think older people, especially the LPGA (pros), the instructors, may get a kick out of reading it — how the Teaching Division started, who started it, who are these personalities who kept it going and who are the ones who still keep it going,” Zavichas said. “When we started, I don’t think we had 50 members in the LPGA Teaching Division. Now there’s over 1,700. So it might prove valuable to some teachers.”
Zavichas has imparted much knowledge regarding golf instruction over the past 50-plus years. But it all started with the seed her famous aunt, Babe Zaharias, planted way back when. Zaharias passed away on Sept. 27, 1956 — at the age of just 45 after battling colon cancer, but not before doing one last considerate thing for Zavichas, who was only about 18 at the time.
“I just hated she passed away so soon,” Zavichas said of Babe. “She and my mother were very good friends. Mom would talk to her while she was in the hospital and (Babe) would ask about me. I had just started golf in late ’55. (Babe would ask) ‘What’s Penny shooting?’ and this and that. She said, ‘I’m going to send her some golf clubs.’ She passed away in September of ’56, and I was working at the time. I had graduated (from high school) in ’56, and I went home and there was that box of clubs (signature Wilsons) not too long after she passed away. Now they’re in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
“After that, when the World Golf Hall of Fame (opened in Pinehurst, N.C., in 1974), she was one of the first inducted, so I represented her. My God there was Ben Hogan and Patty Berg and Jack (Nicklaus) and Arnie (Palmer), the family of Walter Hagen, the 13 (inaugural) inductees. Then they moved it to St. Augustine (Fla.) and they called me up and said they want me to send the clubs to the World Golf Hall of Fame. I said, ‘What?’ I never played with them. I just had them there at the house. I just cherished them too much (to ever hit a ball with them). I called the Hall of Fame and said, ‘Do I really have to give them?’ They said no; you can put them on loan. I said thank God. So they’re still on loan. That’s a long loan.”
These days, though Zavichas’ life has largely been centered around golf and golf instruction, her age and some ailments preclude her from participating now — either as an instructor or as a player. She gave up teaching about two years ago, and her last time playing the game was roughly a year ago.
“I hated to give it up (teaching) — and I hate not being able to play because I can’t move like I want. It was a struggle,” she said. “I couldn’t move my legs, my knees. I should have used an old drill I gave students: you put the feet together, get the hands up to the right shoulder area, swing to the left with your feet together. You hit it straight — probably 150 yards. I could play like that. I couldn’t hit a driver though.”
Yes, even at age 86, Zavichas can’t stop giving lessons.
“It’s been quite a career kicking up dust all over the country,” she noted. “Something unusual no one (else) has ever tried. I wanted to make sure that was recorded somewhere in the history of golf. It’s interesting to talk about it. I’ve forgotten a lot of it. I could go on and on and on about the stories, all the travels on the road. It was unusual, and it was hard.”
But, looking back, Zavichas wouldn’t have had it any other way. She just hopes readers will enjoy the ride vicariously as much as she did personally.
As Zavichas notes in starting out the final chapter, “Thank you for reading my memoir. It’s not destined for the New York Times best seller list for sure, but I hope you enjoyed the read.”
To get more information about Zavichas or to order her new book, CLICK HERE. Or call 719-406-7990.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com