Yesterday afternoon I watched the closest thing to a train wreck happening live on TV.  It was something so tragic that I couldn’t look away let alone turn off the TV – and I watched it in HD, no less!

On the 18th Hole of the PGA championship, Dustin Johnson was in the last group, leading the tournament by one shot.  All he had to do was par the last hole for his first major tournament win at the young age of 26. 

Here’s where the train wreck began:  He sliced his tee shot way to the right and into the crowd behind the ropes.  Whistling Straights has over 1200 bunkers of all shapes and sizes.  His ball landed in one of them.  Dustin, to his ultimate despair, didn’t recognise the trampled, ill-defined, mess of sand and footprints as a bunker and let his club touch the ground before he hit the ball – a major boo-boo in tournament play costing him a two-stroke penalty.

It was bad enough that he lost the lead and the opportunity to join two other players in a playoff for the win.  The practical, too gross to turn away from fact is that, the simple act of allowing his club to touch the sand on one shot, on one hole, out of 72, cost him

$1,030,000.00  (that’s One million, thirty-thousand dollars!!!)

Now that you have put your dentures back in, the reality is that much of life is not unlike poor Dustin’s 72nd hole at Whistling Straits:  It’s the little things that really matter.  Paying attention to detail is often more important than we realize until it is too late.

• Time not spent with our kids
• Putting work ahead of our spouse
• Neglecting our faith
• Our health taking a back seat
• Buying the latest toy instead of saving for a rainy day

All it takes is a momentary lapse of attention to detail and we can pay an extreme cost.

I intend to learn a lesson from poor Dustin’s tragedy – hopefully a less expensive one.

I hope you do too . . .

Pressing on toward the goal . . .

RevDrKid