In 1960 my family moved to Atlanta from Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I first took golf lessons and learned the game. I was enrolled in the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, lived in Brookhaven and carpooled to school with the family of Charles Yates. By then I was a single-digit handicap and it didn’t take me long to learn of Yates’ golf history-British Amateur championship and association with Bobby Jones. Dad got tickets to the Masters that year, and the next year when I attended for the first time as a 15-year-old, Yates, a member at Augusta National Golf Club introduced me and a number of other youngsters to Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and several other professionals on the practice tee. I was fairly small for my age and immediately took to Player, who proved that you didn’t have to be a big man to be a great golfer. He won the tournament the year I was introduced to him, and I followed him most of the tournament and for years afterwards.

Dad moved back to Texas in 1967 during my second year at the University of Virginia. By then I had played on the golf team at Westminster and was actually close to qualifying for the last spot on the UVA team when an automobile accident took me away from the game for two years. In 1968 my parents returned to Augusta to stay with friends, but Dad had reduced his Masters ticket allotment; so for the first time since 1960 I had no ticket. An avid Masters fan, I had family friends in Atlanta and Augusta trying to find me a badge.

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