An Inspiring Golfer

She Has the Will to Succeed
PALM DESERT - The new girl sits comfortably in the driver's seat. She operates the golf cart with her left foot, and on her right is one fine piece of carbon graphite and titanium that is unlike any club in her bag.

Palm Desert High golfer Scout Bassett's right leg is a prosthesis, an object of derision, the source of strength for a senior who stands only 4-foot-8 and is blessed with a selectively short memory.

"I love that you can finish one really bad hole, and on the next hole, you get a clean slate," said Bassett, a transfer from Michigan. "I love to start all over."

But how could she possibly forget her humble beginning, back when she was known as Zhu Fuzhi at an orphanage in Nanjing, China?

She was abandoned there as a 1-year-old, presumably because burns that had caused her leg to be amputated made her undesirable under the government's one-child policy.