Review of "Golf's Sacred Journey"

An avid golfer, I have never been able to finish a book about golf. I've received several as gifts, tried my best to read them, but never been able to get all the way through one. Not only have I never purchased a book about golf for myself, I've never even shopped for or considered shopping for a book about golf. I do read golf magazines, but mostly for their reviews of new courses and products and interviews with players. So it is a signal achievement for me to have finished—devoured may be a better word—this brief novel by David L. Cook, PhD.

I first heard about Golf's Sacred Journey watching a trailer for the forthcoming movie based on the novel. Robert Duvall stars in the picture, which is named after the book's subtitle Seven Days In Utopia. The fact that there really is a town named Utopia and it really does have a 9-hole course next to the cemetary helped lure me in—that and its location just outside San Antonio in the wonderful Texas hill country, where I've played several different courses over the years.

Given that I am currently adapting a friend's novel into a screenplay—not a golfing tale—I had extra motivation to read this book so I could compare book-to-film when the picture releases.

Big caveat: if you don't play the game, I don't know how you could enjoy this book. So many of the extended descriptions of the the grip, the stance, the swing, ball flight, trajectory, course management, club selection and unexplained jargon make this pretty much a novel only for golfers. That said, if you do play, I doubt you've ever read anything that captures better the way you feel when you pure a long iron, or execute a shot exactly the way you'd visualized it.

The novel opens with a hungry young professional golfer contending for the lead on the back nine Sunday at a mini-tour event in San Antonio. But on the par five 10th he melts down and takes a 15, including 3 penalty strokes—two for burying his putter-head into the green. In disgust and despair he drives away from the tournament heading aimlessly toward the setting sun, taking a fateful fork in the road away from Vanderpool and toward Utopia, population 373.

On Monday morning, along the banks of the Sabinal River, the crusty old owner of the Links of Utopia finds a disillusioned young pro pounding balls on his dusty driving range. Recognizing a desperate need, he challenges the player: "Spend seven days with me...and you'll find your game." And thus begins a week-long psychological deconstruction and rebuilding of not just the young man's game, but of his very soul.

While Golf's Sacred Journey won't win a Pulitzer or be taught in college english courses, the old man's object-lessons (oil painting, fly-fishing, washer-tossing, Cessna-flying) are strangely affecting. And given the universal anguish even casual golfers experience, the dawning self-awareness in the young pro rings true. But nothing in the first six lessons is remotely sacred...and then comes Sunday. By now the old man's wisdom and goodwill establish him as completely trustworthy, and the outcome of his sermon-in-a-cemetery is never in doubt. This set-piece doesn't feel the least bit contrived—and the term "buried lies" will never again be merely about a golf ball in a sand trap.

From there it's all denouement. At his next tournament the pro stays in the zone, conquers his demons, knocks down flagsticks—and has progressed so far beyond golf that the notion of life-and-death grinding on the links has become a faint echo in the warm sunshine. Golf's Sacred Journey is a good walk unspoiled.