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hospital following some severe abdominal pains. I joined her at the hospital as quickly as I could. While I was there, the doctors performed a litany of tests on her, including blood work, urine analysis, and another thorough sonogram. After all was said and done, we were relieved to learn that it was nothing immediately serious. The abdominal pain, in combination with unusually high amounts of protein in Jess’s urine, points toward preeclampsia, which the doctors described as a pregnancy-induced form of high blood pressure. It’s treatable, but as a precaution they have put Jessalynn on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. Jess isn’t too keen on the inconvenience of it all, but she’s thankful that all is well with the baby. I’m counting my blessings, too, knowing that they are both going to be okay.

    September 1, 1973—The baby is kicking regularly these days, and with full force—I like to think that he is in there practicing his golf swing. It is thrilling to think that our own little miracle is growing and developing beneath Jessalynn’s expanding waistline. She has warmed up greatly to motherhood as she has felt the baby move. She told me last night that when she first learned that she was pregnant her heart broke because she knew it would disrupt all her hopes and dreams. Now she says her heart melts to think that she will have the privilege of being a mother to the special little child that is joining our family.

    November 25, 1973—A letter arrived today from none other than Vincent Montgomery! I was surprised to get it, because I had not heard anything further from him following our round of golf back in June. My hand is shaking even as I write this, because he has offered to take me on personally as his student. He is confident that I have what it takes to compete as a professional player. Mr. Montgomery would like me to join him in Georgia at the start of the new year to embark on what he says will be a very intensive year of training and traveling to various amateur events around the country. Our primary practice course will be the famed Augusta National! He has advised that the days will be long, and that my family would be better off remaining in Vermont so as not to be a distraction. Essentially, I won’t be able to see Jessalynn or our new child for the better part of a year, maybe even two.
    Jessalynn says that I should do it—that she and the baby should not get in the way of my dreams. I think my dreams must be changing, because my heart is torn on the matter.

CHAPTER 9

    I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.
    —Arnold Palmer
    T urtles and I have a long and illustrious history together. When I was a boy I would sneak out in the evenings onto the golf course by our house and hunt the hard-shelled creatures that populated a large pond on the thirteenth fairway. I loved to catch them, study them, scare them into their shells, and then toss them back along the surface of the water to see how many times they would skip. That was, of course, before my sense of compassion for living things was fully developed. But even now, having devoted my life to the care and keeping of animals, I believe that turtles are much better off in golf ponds, where insensitive little boys can toss them around like polished skipping stones, than they are being stuck in a glass aquarium on some kid’s dresser. What does one do with a pet turtle other than feed it? They don’t play, they don’t fetch, they won’t cuddle up with you on the couch, and after a few weeks in a lonely tank they really begin to stink. They are, in this veterinarian’s opinion, useless pets.
    Nevertheless, every so often a parent comes into my clinic with a teary-eyed child holding a dear sweet pet turtle, which has mysteriously become lethargic. I use these opportunities to tell the children that the life expectancy