Gaut was a champion amateur golfer based in Memphis. She won the Tennessee Women's Amateur Championship six times, starting at the inaugural event in 1916 and ending in 1938. She won the Southern Women's Championship four times, beginning in 1920, when she defeated
Alexa Stirling in Atlanta. She won the Memphis City women's title eleven times. She once played golf against
Babe Didrikson Zaharias; they were tied after eighteen holes, but Gaut won on the nineteenth-hole tiebreaker. She sponsored an annual golf tournament at the Memphis Country Club. She attended the Women's Texas Open Golf Tournament in 1945, in Fort Worth. She was president of the
United States Senior Women's Golf Association from 1949 to 1952. In 1953,
Clifford Davis read remarks into the
Congressional Record, marking Gaut's long career in golf. He quoted her as saying, "I hope to play as long as I'm able to walk and every time I play I'll enjoy it." Gaut also held a patent, granted in 1925, for a clamp to attach a tray to a card table. ==Personal life and legacy==