I have sought your face with all my heart. (Psalm 119:58, NIV)
Let me place two words together and suggest that unless you are quite a golf fan, you were until this past weekend entirely unfamiliar with these joined words. Here you go:
Victor Dubuisson.
If you watched the Accenture Match Play Championship on Sunday afternoon, however, you will likely never forget Dubuisson now, even if he never does another thing in golf to get your attention. From the eighteenth through the twentieth holes of the extended final against Jason Day, Dubuisson pulled off almost unquestionably the greatest triplet of recovery pars in the history of the game. The golf world was abuzz, with texts flying into the TV studios from many of the game’s notables, including Arnold Palmer.
But even before this wonder, as Dubuisson was pushing past Bubba Watson, then Graeme McDowell, then Ernie Els (a personal hero of the 23-year-old Frenchman), TV’s commentators were scrambling to find any personal background they could on the former top-ranked amateur in the world who has suddenly emerged onto the professional scene.
Here’s what they came up with: Dubuisson is a loner. That’s not just an overzealous announcer’s description. Dubuisson says this of himself. He told Golfweek magazine before this tournament even began: “I’m very individualistic. I don’t mind to be alone for five, six weeks. Golf is a sport where you’re alone. I just like to play for myself.”
Loren Roberts once told me something similar, that to become great at professional golf, you have to be comfortable in your own company. There’s so much work to be done all by yourself.
What does a golfer accomplish in being alone? Chiefly this: Volume. Ian Poulter says he plays very few rounds of golf off tour each year, because in 25 minutes on the range, he can hit as many shots and stroke as many putts as it takes five hours to do on the golf course.
Out of the volume come the jewels. Out of the time and the repetition emerge the creativity and the feel and the results.
It’s a meaningful lesson for our walk of faith. It’s easy to recognize and praise God from the middle of the fairway, when the wind is down and the crowd is quiet, so to speak. But if we are to seek him and find him, thank him and praise him, when all the troubles of life land on our heads, we will only be able to do so because of the volume—the time spent in prayer, in reading Scripture, in meditating on the words of God. We are a household of faith, a community of believers, and we learn much from each other. But we learn most from the Lord, and that learning happens when we attend to him regularly and earnestly. It is here that we increase our knowledge of God’s love and mercy, so that when every circumstance of life screams at us to turn another direction, our eyes stayed fixed on our one Savior.
—
Jeff Hopper
February 27, 2014
Copyright 2014 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.