On Sunday, Professional golfer Stewart Cink won his second PGA Tour event of 2021 to climb into the FedEx Top 5 and then pointed to Christ during a post-tournament press conference.
Cink won the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C., with a four-round total of 19-under par, four strokes ahead of second-place Harold Varner III.
For the 47-year-old Cink, it was his second tour win of the year and propelled him from No. 26 to No. 3 in the FedEx Cup standings.
Afterward, Cink told reporters that peace in life – and on the golf course – comes from his faith.
"The thing about me and my family with the peace and joy we experience, it's not something that we wait for the circumstances to line up like the planets or some signs or tea leaves or something. We install our own peace and joy because of our faith in Jesus Christ, and that is the number one tenet of my life," Cink said. "And it enables me to feel peaceful and joyful even when the golf ball is not agreeing with my clubface and not going in the hole. I don't seek peace and joy out of golf, because I know I can never depend on it to fully sustain that kind of peace and joy that I'm looking for, and it's too low of a target."
Cink now has eight career PGA Tour victories. The two wins for 2021 match his previous best year (2004), when he also had two victories.
"The joy and peace I feel on the golf course – it's something that stems from something far different than golf, and golf happens to benefit from it," he said. "But golf is not the end goal for me. I love playing and winning. And having a week like this is just amazing, but the peace and joy that we experience and – it's available to everybody – is something that you don't have to wait for the circumstances – the worm to turn, so to speak – it's there and that's what we choose to go for."
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Patrick Smith/Staff
Video courtesy: ©Golf Channel
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
