I'd been an avid golfer since I was 11 years old and even got a summer job as a caddy at the York Downs Golf Club at Sheppard and Bathurst in Toronto. I'd hike the mile and a half to get there from where I lived...there was no regular bus service along Sheppard then. I'd slip and slide down into the valley (there was no bridge there yet, either), and climb back up to get to the clubhouse. I gradually worked my way up from a 'C' caddy at $1.50 a round to an 'A' caddy at $3.00 a round.

I was only a runt of a kid when I started, but I was keen. When I wasn't caddying I was allowed to help in the pro shop.

I liked the playing members and they liked me. Something about the game got to me. I stuck with the club through my teens. I practiced my swings when I wasn't caddying. Eventually, the pros started to coach me and I really improved my playing skills. More than anything else, they taught me that golf is more than a game of skills. It's a test of concentration. Focus, stay calm, and you'll make it, the game taught me.

Caddying and shagging balls (and watching out not to get hit by shots), I had a chance to observe the players carefully. The ones who focused and kept calm, no matter what, did play well. I saw others get increasingly angry and wipe out altogether.

There are many other variables, besides the human factor, that a golfer has to take into account. There are wind, weather and ground conditions. There's a specific club to meet each variable head on. . When all the variables, especially my state of mind and my level of concentration, clicked together, what a sweet thrill it is.

I had tried many sports, but for me this was it. There's no game like it. Every stroke is a test. It's you alone against all the elements, all the variables. If I mess up, I alone have to kick my butt. If I get it together, it is bliss.

Every summer, my parents took us to our cottage, but when I was 14, I talked them into letting me stay home by myself so I could keep my job at the golf course. They arranged for me to have a room above the pro shop. From then on golf would become my passion. Eventually it saved my life.

Of course, there was method in their madness. They were giving me a chance to prove how I could handle myself on my own. It was how their parents had dealt with them at my age. My folks always said that's how you learn to grow up.

In those days, the golf course was country, serene. I felt so in tune with nature I wished I could live like this the whole year through. I lived for the time I could spend on the links.

When Parkinson's struck, I thought I was finished with golf because a new set of obstacles surfaced. My body was now a weather vane. Storms raging outside ripped through me inside as well. I would seize up with pain and stiffness. When my body went out of whack, my mind would rage. My moods would parallel the weather with storms that swept through my body. Most of the time I couldn't control my movement, so my game was erratic. If I wanted to connect, I had to learn slowly with a grim determination to focus and stay calm.

Every time I got onto the golf course, I realized I was vicariously playing the game of life, my life, too. The important thing was to give it one more try, because it just might prove to be the perfect shot that pushed me to the next level. Even today, when I can no longer control my movement, I have on occasion hit a good shot, started walking toward the ball, and suddenly pitched forward, involuntarily somersaulted back onto my feet, and continued. When a seizure can be triggered at any moment, it's on the golf links that I have the most control, where I feel most triumphant.

Golf and life are such a perfect match up. Just when I think I'm prepped to shoot a perfect game, when I have all the right strokes figured out, I'm hammered by something totally unforeseen, and I have to start all over again. But I have learned too, that if I gather myself, and give it just one more try, I might just ace a hole (I've yet to score a hole in one.). That's true even in my advanced Parkinson's state, when I can no longer hope to control my movement. Golf is still my life-affirming test. I spend every winter in Florida just so I can keep playing.

When coaching young players, the first thing I try to teach them is to visualize the path they think the ball will take. It's the best preparation and evaluation method I know. I also tell them to plan in their minds all the traps they may encounter. It saves the frustration of the unexpected.

Golf has seen me through many a crisis. I remember during my first catscan having a strange fantasy that I was teeing off on a small hill about 200 yards from the green, and if I could fade the ball, it would land near the 100-yard marker. I took my eight iron and aimed left of the flag because that was the wind direction, hoping to take out of play the bunker on my right.

To my horror and dismay, the ball went straight into the sand trap. I zoomed over by cart and found the ball just a foot from the trap. I chipped it to within eighteen inches of the hole, and sank the ball for par. I was just on my way to teeing off for the next hole when I heard Whrrr, Wheee, Whrrr, and a voice broke through. "Mr. Dingman you can open your eyes. We're finished." I had survived comfortably my first catscan.

I recently learned there's the possibility that golf may have contributed to the onset of Parkinson's. Back when I was a young caddy, I used to lick the balls clean and wipe them dry on my shirt. That's how it was done back then. It's possible the toxins from those balls can build up in the system and emerge as Parkinson's. Well, so what? Smoking can come back to haunt us as lung cancer decades after we've stopped smoking. Anyway, it's the game that counts. I've learned so much and had so much satisfaction from golf that I wouldn't give it up for anything.

Golf has made my life livable. It has rescued me from acute stress and severe distress, and provided vital exercise. It gives my life purpose and meaning when I'm at the end of my rope.

To explain, let me walk you through a typical game.