Arnold Palmer Golf Quotes & Sayings

I played high school golf, I played amateur golf and I started getting officers. I was playing pretty good, won amateur tournaments as a junior, and the whole thing. — Arnold Palmer

I can't believe that Babe Ruth was a better player than Willie Mays. (Babe) Ruth is to baseball what Arnold Palmer is to golf. He got the game moving. But I can't believe he could run as well as (Willie) Mays, and I can't believe he was any better an outfielder. — Sandy Koufax

I can sum it up like this: Thank God for the game of golf. — Arnold Palmer

Putting is a fascinating, aggravating, wonderful, terrible and almost incomprehensible part of the game of golf. — Arnold Palmer

Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character. — Arnold Palmer

I have a tip that will take five strokes off anyone's golf game. It's called an eraser. — Arnold Palmer

If you are really serious about playing golf and playing good golf, stick to the basic fundamentals. Sure, there's going to be a little change here and a change there, but you don't want to make them. You want to stick to the things that you started with, and you learned, and you know how to apply them. — Arnold Palmer

My grandson Sam Saunders has been playing golf since he could hold a club and I spent a lot of time with him over the years. Like my father taught me, I showed him the fundamentals of the game and helped him make adjustments as he and his game matured over the years. — Arnold Palmer

Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. — Arnold Palmer

I love America. I wanted to play golf. — Arnold Palmer

I was born in 1929, that was the depression, so the golf course was manned by my father and two guys, they worked for my dad and they took me with them everywhere they went. And it was fun. — Arnold Palmer

Everyone I built a course for thinks they have the best golf course in the world and I'm very pleased and proud of that. — Arnold Palmer

I think I've heard somebody say that I was a well-dressed golfer. I guess that has something to do with the fact that a lot of people who play golf don't dress very well. — Arnold Palmer

I was the first son and first child. When my sister came along, well, she was two years younger, and I had to go to the golf course because my mother couldn't handle all the action going on. So I came with father to the golf course since I was a year and a half old and I spent the day with him here, and it worked in naturally. And it was fun for me being with my father, and doing things that a kid did it was great. — Arnold Palmer

I know, win or lose, I enjoyed the prospect of giving it my all. — Arnold Palmer

The game has such a hold on golfers because they compete not only against an opponent, but also against the course, against par, and most surely- against themselves. — Arnold Palmer

I always knew what was most important to me. When I was growing up, nothing was more important than golf, but that's the attitude of a young person who hasn't a care in the world. Later on I figured it out. Family was first. Always. Then golf and business come after. — Arnold Palmer

A lot of people are afraid of winning. I was afraid I might not win. — Arnold Palmer

On the Old Course at St. Andrews: This is the origin of the game, golf in its purest form, and it's still played that way on a course seemingly untouched by time. Every time I play here, it reminds me that this is still a game. — Arnold Palmer

I can only tell you one thing that I do know for sure, I am a dreamer. There are not many people that will recognize or want to recognize the fact that they are dreamers in their own life ... I continue to get up in the morning,enthusiastically, and go pick up a golf club with a thought that I can somewhere find that secret to making the cut. That's just an example, but it applies to other things in life, too, and that's the way I live and the way I think and the way I feel. — Arnold Palmer

Some golfers fantasize about playing in a foursome with Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Sam Snead. The way I hit I'd rather play in a foursome with Helen Keller, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder. — Bruce Lansky

What separates great players from the good ones is not so much ability as brain power and emotional equilibrium. — Arnold Palmer

I quit flying myself last year and that was difficult for me because I enjoy it as much as playing golf. It was an adjustment sitting in the back of the plane, rather than at the controls, but I've grown accustomed to it and enjoy reading a book, doing some work or challenging my wife to a game of dominos. — Arnold Palmer

I've noticed the sound of the golf ball being hit by the golf club is different, and much more realistic, with the hearing aids. The sound with the hearing aids makes sense, and better represents what I know is happening to the golf ball. So you could say that the hearing aids help give me confidence regarding my golf game. — Arnold Palmer

I've stated my position, and that is that we do not need a contraption to play the game of golf. I would hope that we'd play under one set of rules, and those rules would include a ban on the long putter hooked to the body in some way, shape or form. — Arnold Palmer

I would like to have won more golf tournaments. But I wouldn't sacrifice my life. I've enjoyed it. I'd love to do it again the same way. — Arnold Palmer

How did I make a twelve on a par five hole? It's simple - I missed a four foot putt for an eleven. — Arnold Palmer

The only really unplayable lie I can think of is when you're supposed to be playing golf and come home with lipstick on your collar. — Arnold Palmer

Timing is everything in life and in golf. — Arnold Palmer

I am against making golf courses obsolete, going to the national Open and playing half the holes with a one-iron. — Arnold Palmer

To hope is to wait for things to come to you. To dream is part of the process of setting goals and then striving to achieve them. You first must dream of doing things before you can do them. — Arnold Palmer

If you're stupid enough to whiff, you should be smart enough to forget it. — Arnold Palmer

I have a psychological feeling about things - and if I have something that I need to accomplish and I accomplish it, I let down after that, and that happened to me in golf. — Arnold Palmer

I was playing cowboys and Indians in the trees, and then I started hitting the golf club with clubs father sawed off for me, and I began playing right here with my father. — Arnold Palmer

Golf challenges you mentally at any age, and when you become my age, it's a challenge physically to try to make your game work as well as it ever did. That's close to impossible, but that doesn't keep you from trying to hit the ball where you used to hit it and make the putts you used to make all the time. — Arnold Palmer

I didn't get playing professional golf until I was 25 years old. And I always said that if I could make it work, I would play as long as I could walk. — Arnold Palmer

The whole secret to mastering the game of golf - and this applies to the beginner as well as the pro - is to cultivate a mental approach to the game that will enable you to shrug off the bad days, keep patient and know in your heart that sooner or later you will be back on top. — Arnold Palmer

Hit it hard, go find it and hit it hard again. — Arnold Palmer

[Golf]is deceptively simple, endlessly complicated. A child can play it well, and a grown man can never master it. Any single round of it is full of unexpected triumphs and perfect shots that end in disaster. It is almost a science, yet it is a puzzle without an answer. It is gratifying and tantalizing, precise and unpredictable. It requires complete concentration and total relaxation. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time, rewarding and maddening. And it is without doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented. — Arnold Palmer

All the things that I have derived either directly or indirectly through the game of golf are things I owe a great deal to the game and to the people who support the game. — Arnold Palmer

We just became very good friends [ with Dwight Eisenhower ], we played golf, we played heart exhibitions. Then his doctor said he should not play golf anymore. — Arnold Palmer

Feel is the most perplexing part of golf, and probably the most important. — Arnold Palmer

My father started on this golf course at Latrobe when he was sixteen years old. He was digging ditches when they were building the golf course. — Arnold Palmer

Trouble is bad to get into but fun to get out of. If you're in trouble, eighty percent of the time there's a way out. If you can see the ball, you can probably hit it; and if you can hit it, you can move it; and if you can move it, you might be able to knock it in the hole. At least it's fun to try. — Arnold Palmer

I'm in love with golf, and I want everybody else to share my love affair. — Arnold Palmer

I always look to see what Arnold [Palmer] shot; it's a habit. We will always compete against each other. — Jack Nicklaus

Golf is a game of inches. The most important are the six inches between your ears. — Arnold Palmer

I was playing golf in Palm Springs and after a round I asked the waitress in a restaurant to bring me a glass of iced tea and lemonade. A lady sitting nearby heard me and asked the waitress to bring her a "Palmer," too. The name caught on and the beverage quickly spread around the country. — Arnold Palmer

I would say my first golf memory was asking who Arnold Palmer was when he was always on the Pennzoil commercials. When I was a little kid I watched a lot of sports, but I didn't watch a lot of golf, and this guy was always on a tractor. — Mike Greenberg

Golf never ceases to be a challenge, even when it really is just you and the ball out there and nobody else. — Arnold Palmer

I try to deign golf courses that are individual in character and individual in their own standing. — Arnold Palmer

From the beginning it was drilled into me that a golf course was a place where character fully reveals itself
both its strengths and its flaws. As a result, I learned early not only to fix my ball marks but also to congratulate an opponent on a good shot, avoid walking ahead of a player preparing to shoot, remain perfectly still when someone else was playing, and a score of other small courtesies that revealed, in my father's mind, one's abiding respect for the game. — Arnold Palmer

[Jack Nicklaus] was the first to bring in course management. He could go to a course and tell you within one stroke what was going to win. He used to set his sights on that because he could shoot it. He was the only player I know who, if he decided he wanted to win a tournament, could go out and do it. No one will ever be as popular as Arnold Palmer and no one will ever come close to Jack as a player. — Lee Trevino

I feel more strongly than ever about this. I would like the professional game freed of golf carts. Golf is a physical game. If we are playing competitive professional golf, we should walk. When I can't walk 18 holes, I'll pack it in. — Arnold Palmer

There's no question that the galleries still like to see birdies and eagles. If you take them all away, it takes some of the dramatics, the excitement of a golf tournament and we [people] don't want to do that. — Arnold Palmer

There isn't a flaw in his golf or his makeup. He will win more majors than Arnold Palmer and me combined. Somebody is going to dust my records. It might as well be Tiger, because he's such a great kid. — Jack Nicklaus

Even before you step up to the ball, have a full battle plan for the hole worked out. — Arnold Palmer

Arnold Palmer is the biggest crowd pleaser since the invention of the portable sanitary facility. — Bob Hope

If you can see it, you can hit it and if you can hit it, you can hole it. — Arnold Palmer

Players need to remember they didn't make golf. Golf made them. — Arnold Palmer

That's another thing about my father. He made me very conscious of the fact I wasn't very good and I had to prove to him that I was good. And that hung with me, and I always wanted to play golf with him and show him. He said Never, Never tell anyone how good you are. Show them! — Arnold Palmer

I like the Miami because I could play golf all winter. — Arnold Palmer

Your worst putt will usually be as good as your best chip. — Arnold Palmer

You don't go to Palm Springs in the summer unless you're building a golf course. — Arnold Palmer

One thing I've learned over time is, if you hit a golf ball into water, it won't float. — Arnold Palmer

I suppose I could think of a lot of things to say about the fact that I still play. But I don't really need to. I can tell you this, that I enjoy it. I still enjoy it. I like to get out in the air and I like to walk and I like to do the things that are involved in playing golf. — Arnold Palmer

Every day I play golf, that's my goal. To break 70 the other way. To shoot 70 or better. — Arnold Palmer

First time I met Jack [Nicholas ] I had heard about his golf and prowess - I was playing in the Ohio amateur. — Arnold Palmer

There's some good news, too, and the good news is that the players [finally] have become more aware of the fact that we [in golf] need sponsors, and we need the good will that is created by the players being, let's say, cooperative with the sponsors - meaning friendly. — Arnold Palmer