AMAZING STORY
David Cook: Golf's Sacred Journey
By Tim Branson
The 700 Club
CBN.com - Utopia is a peaceful, out-of-the way town in the west Texas hill country. If you’ve never heard of Utopia, you’re not alone. The town is the setting for the new film, Seven Days in Utopia. It’s based on the bestselling novel, Golf’s Sacred Journey, by noted performance coach, Dr. David Cook. It stems from his 25 plus years experience as a sports psychologist.
“The story starts with a failure, with a meltdown. This young man who is an aspiring, mini tour professional golfer in San Antonio, Texas, has the meltdown of the century. He just has to leave the scene of the accident. He begins to drive out of the town, frustrated, upset, knowing he’s going to be the butt end of a bunch of jokes for the rest of his life.”
That’s when the golfer, played by Lucas Black, finds his way to Utopia. He meets a rancher named Johnny, played by Robert Duvall. It turns out the old cowboy knows a thing or two about golf, and offers the young man a challenge, to spend seven days in Utopia and he will find his game. So for the next week Johnny uses some unconventional methods to teach him the essence of the game.
“Johnny understands the kid doesn’t have a performance problem. He’s got a heart problem. Johnny uses all sorts of things around this little community of Utopia to draw some of the truths of the game out for him.”
It’s then, that Johnny reveals the core of his teaching.
“He teaches the kid there are three key elements in performance. Number one, you have to see what you want to have happen. Number two, you have to feel or have a strategy that goes with that. Third is to trust yourself as you perform that. So it’s a simple see it, feel it, trust it strategy that gets the mind off all the negative things and all the things that could go wrong, and focuses them on what is it that you are trying to accomplish.
David gives a demonstration on how ‘See, Feel, Trust’ works. “See that shot. We are going to feel that shot, we’re going to trust it instead of seeing the problem.
This book is not about golf, it’s about performance in life and what that means to God and how God can be honored through our performance.”
At the end of the seven-day journey Johnny brings the golfer to the Waresville Cemetery. It’s here where he teaches him the most important lesson of all.
First, he had to learn to get rid of the baggage he was carrying. “The golfer’s bringing baggage. He’s bringing lies with him, lies that say, ‘Your self worth is based on the score that you shoot.’ Which is like many men in our culture that our worth, our value, our identity, is based on how we perform in life. That’s the wrong scoreboard. God has a totally different scoreboard. ‘You are My child. The score at end of game is Jesus wins. And you are a player in the game.’”
With a renewed passion and sense of purpose, the golfer enters the next PGA tournament and, well, you’ll have to see for yourself. In the meantime, you should know that ‘See, Feel, Trust’, is much more than just a strategy for good performance.
“The See, Feel, Trust becomes ‘See His face, Feel His presence, and Trust His love.’ If we could walk every moment of our life seeing the face of Christ, feeling the presence of Jesus, and trusting His love moment by moment knowing that the God of the universe that’s called us into being, is with us and walking with us? Oh my gracious.”
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