Quotes & Sayings About Golf And Life

[Golfers] are a special kind of moral relist who nips the normal romantic and idealstic yearnings in the bud by proving once or twice a week that life is unconquerable but endurable. — Alistair Cooke

I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything
spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking.
And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart. — Louise Brooks

Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature. — Robert Redford

One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it. — Tiger Woods

I mean, I can actually say goodbye to the game of golf, never hit another golf shot the rest of my life and I'd be happy because I can get back in life without any rotation. — Greg Norman

I carried with me into the West End Bar, the White Horse Tavern, a long list of things I would never do: I would never have my hair set in a beauty parlor. I would never move to a suburb and bake cakes or make casseroles. I would never go to a country club dance, although I did like the paper lanterns casting rainbow colors on the terrace. I would never invest in the stock market. I would never play canasta. I would never wear pearls. I would love like a nursling but I would never go near a man who had a portfolio or a set of golf clubs or a business or even a business suit. I would only love a wild thing. I didn't care if wild things tended to break hearts. I didn't care if they substituted scotch for breakfast cereal. I understood that wild things wrote suicide notes to the gods and were apt to show up three hours later than promised. I understood that art was long and life was short. — Anne Roiphe

The key is to design great golf courses all around the world. But my plan is only to do a select few. I devote so much of my time to these. I'm kind of a hands-on kind of person. I always want to do the best that I can in all of my life and this is no different. — Tiger Woods

And we were taught to play golf. Golf epitomizes the tame world. On a golf course nature is neutered. The grass is clean, a lawn laundry that wipes away the mud, the insect, the bramble, nettle and thistle, an Eezy-wipe lawn where nothing of life, dirty and glorious, remains. Golf turns outdoors into indoors, a prefab mat of stultified grass, processed, pesticided, herbicided, the pseudo-green of formica sterility. Here, the grass is not singing. The wind cannot blow through it. Dumb expression, greenery made stupid, it hums a bland monotone in the key of the mono-minded. No word is emptier than a golf tee. No roots, it has no known etymology, it is verbal nail polish. Worldwide, golf is an arch act of enclosure, a commons fenced and subdued for the wealthy, trampling serf and seedling. The enemy of wildness, it is a demonstration of the absolute dominion of man over wild nature. — Jay Griffiths

Golf gives no margin: either you win or you fail. You cannot hedge; you cannot bluff; you cannot give a stop order. One chance is given you, and you hit or miss. There is nothing more rigid in life. And it is this ultra and extreme rigidity that makes golf so intensely interesting. — Arnold Haultain

I have said many times that most people work all their life to retire to play golf, while I played golf all my life to retire to work. I enjoy working. It has kept me young and on the move, and I have had a good time with it. — Jack Nicklaus

It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of the people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully. Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything-a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood, landscape gardening. But somehow people wait passively for success to come to them, living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully. — Earl Nightingale

Remember you have to be comfortable. Golf is not a life or death situation. It's just a game and should be treated as such. Stay loose. — Chi Chi Rodriguez

My old friend Jack Benny has only had one ball all his golfing life. And now he's lost it. The string came off! — Bob Hope

I distracted Herbert by pretending to trip and break a bone. Ethan darted around to the red golf cart with a cocky smile on his face. He put the key in ignition, and the vehicle roared to life. "Hey," Herbert shouted, snapping his attention to Ethan.
I sprang up and ran up to Ethan. He pulled me in the cart and stomped on the gas pedal. We shot through the automatic doors with Herbert on our tail.
"Go faster!" I cheered.
My brother smacked the steering wheel. "I can't; it's a golf cart. — Erica Sehyun Song

I feel it's important to be active. People who retire, sit by their swimming pool and golf course and plan to relax have a very empty life. — Betty Ford

Life's too short to spend all the time in the gym. I just like to have a few beers and enjoy myself too. — Ian Woosnam

Basketball was my whole life until I was 20 years old. All I knew was basketball. Then came golf, and I thought that's all I wanted to do then. — Kip Moore

Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the flower beds and the clouds smothered the light, he missed his wife. — Helen Simonson

I think if you are going to base your whole life on what you do on the golf course, you are up for a lot of ups and downs. — Tom Lehman

Golf has always been a part of my life. My parents have footage of me in a walker swinging a plastic club. If I didn't play golf, I would have been a baseball player. I could sit and watch baseball all day. — Peter Uihlein

This preternatural love of rules almost for their own sake punctuates German finance as it does German life. As it happens, a story had just broken that a German reinsurance company called Munich Re, back in June 2007, or just before the crash, had sponsored a party for its best producers that offered not just chicken dinners and nearest-to-the-pin golf competitions but a blowout with prostitutes in a public bath. In finance, high or low, this sort of thing is of course not unusual. What was striking was how organized the German event was. The company tied white and yellow and red ribbons to the prostitutes to indicate which ones were available to which men. After each sexual encounter the prostitute received a stamp on her arm to indicate how often she had been used. The Germans didn't just want hookers: they wanted hookers with rules. — Michael Lewis

I've been around golf my whole life. My father did it all the time, and I resented him for it. But a couple years ago I picked up a golf club and I understood the physics of it. If anyone knows anything about golf, it's that once you hit a few shots, you'll become addicted. — Fred Durst

He had avoided what he regarded as some obvious errors of life, such as politics and golf. — Richard Flanagan

You figure they cheat at the ballpark, they'll cheat on the golf course, they'll cheat in business, and anything else in life. Players may laugh about it and say it's funny, but right down in their heart, they don't think it's funny at all, and they have no respect for a person who cheats. — Bob Feller

But, no, I don't feel my career has not been fulfilled because I didn't win the US Open. It's like the guy said: You going to crucify a man because he missed a putt to win a tournament? Does a three-foot putt mean his whole life? Another guy said, well, he couldn't win the big one. Well, Jesus, what do you call those others? What's big and what's small? — Sam Snead

In my life, I'd like to play more golf and, and get a decent handicap. — Ken Buck

A well hit golf shot is a feeling that goes up the shaft, right through your hands and into your heart. — Ben Hogan

When you come off that last hole and you've just finished a good round of golf, life is good. When you come off that last hole and you messed it up through four or five holes and just played a lousy round of golf, it's just not a very good day. It just isn't. — Tom Watson

We shot 'Dharma & Greg' six blocks from my house for five years. I had a Dodge Durango that I sold after five years, and it only had like 12,000 miles on it. My whole life was within eight square blocks of my house. There was a golf course across the street. In my downtime, I was on the driving range. — Joel Murray

No matter what calamities befall him in everyday life, the true hacker still needs the pressure and inconvenience of four hours of trudging in wind or rain or sleet or sun (or all of them at once), hacking at a white pellet that seems to have a mind of its own and a lousy sense of direction. — Tom O'Connor

All my life I wanted to play golf like Jack Nicklaus, and now I do. — Paul Harvey

The golf facet of my life doesn't go with the rest of my life, which is a rough-and-tumble life. I work in real estate development, which is the toughest business, and I do it in the toughest city. I deal with ruthless people. — Donald Trump

On stage, I'm this figure, this actor, who does things that people aren't used to seeing and I relish in that reaction. In real life, though, I play golf, I shop and I walk around with no makeup on and my hair in a ponytail. I may not be the typical middle-aged Joe, but I'm closer to normal than you think. — Alice Cooper

Sometimes things work out on the golf course and sometimes they don't. Life will go on. You try to understand what happens, but maybe today I don't want to know. I just screwed up so maybe I should just put it behind me. — Greg Norman

It is not a matter of life and death. It is not that important. But it is a reflection of life, and so the game is an enigma wrapped in a mystery impaled on a conundrum. — Peter Alliss

I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically. — John Madden

I had played so poorly recently, I started thinking that maybe I should do something else. Then I saw my friends going to work everyday and realised that my life wasn't so bad. — Steve Pate

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life. — B.C. Forbes

Two things I take very seriously in life. My golf game and my relationship with God. Neither one is simple. — Cheryl Ladd

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

But I think a life of raising prize cattle, going shooting two or three times a year, fishing in the summer, and interspersing the whole thing with some golf and bridge - and whenever I felt like talking or writing, doing it with abandon and with no sense of responsibility whatsoever - maybe such a life wouldn't be so bad. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I knew what I was getting into when I chose golf. Hell, I knew I'd never get rich and famous. All the discrimination, the not being able to play where I deserved and wanted to play - in the end, I didn't give a damn. I was made for a tough life because I'm a tough man. And in the end, I won: I got a lot of black people playing golf. — Charlie Sifford

You may be asking yourself at this very moment, Why isn't Stormie's husband writing this book? The answer is simple. He's just like you. He is a busy man, with places to go, people to see, work to do, a family to support, food to eat, a life to live, golf to play, ball games to watch, channels to flip, and a chronic lack of patience when it comes to writing. It's not that he doesn't pray. — Stormie O'martian

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be. — Lou Holtz

I fished a little while ago with a man, not in his first youth, who had wasted the flower of his life on business and golf and gardening and motoring and marriage, and had in this way postponed his initiation (to fly fishing) far too long. — Arthur Ransome

I just go out there and play the game; I get on with things. Golf is not everything in life. — Louis Oosthuizen

My mom and dad worked very hard to give me the best chance in - not just in golf but in life. You know, I was an only child, you know, my dad worked three jobs at one stage. My mom worked night shifts in a factory. — Rory McIlroy

Life is full of many minor annoyances, and few matters of real consequence. — Harvey Penick

In the language of the day it is customary to describe a certain sort of book as "escapist" literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly, that the life therein depicted cannot be identified with the real life which the critic knows so well in W.C.1: and may even have the disastrous effect on the reader of taking him happily for a few hours out of his own real life in N.W.8. Why this should be a matter for regret I do not know; nor why realism in a novel is so much admired when realism in a picture is condemned as mere photography; nor, I might add, why drink and fornication should seem to bring the realist closer to real life than, say, golf and gardening. — A.A. Milne

The importance of my legacy is not the golf course, it's what my life is, and what my life is intended to be. The game of golf is a game. My family is my life. — Jack Nicklaus

The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing. — Vince Gill

There are so many lessons in life that can be learned through golf. I am not afraid to say that I am still learning some of them and probably will continue for some time. — Paula Creamer

You hang around with good people, you play a lot of golf, and you have a pretty good life. That's what success is all about. It's getting people you like, who want to take the hill with you, who want to win, who have the passion. This is not rocket science. — Jack Welch

The doctors told me I'd be fine if I play only golf and tennis doubles for the rest of my life. But I dive. I dogsled. I trek. I guess I'll have surgery. — Lauren Hutton

The life of a professional golfer is precarious at best. Win, and they carry you to the clubhouse on their shoulders. Lose, and you pay the caddies in the dark. — Gene Sarazen

Golf is like 99.9 percent of my life, and then there's school. I don't get much time to go out with my friends. — Lydia Ko

I like to try to give something back to the community because I feel fortunate for how I was raised and how my life turned out. Each year, with the help of my brother, Grant, we run a charity golf tournament to raise money for the Ontario Federation for Cerebral Palsy. — Curtis Joseph

The real test in golf and in life is not in keeping out of the rough, but in getting out after you are in. — Zig Ziglar

Although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself she had a pleasant time. it had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations. what frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. the drinks, the clothes, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. she asked herself: if i were in charge, how could i have done it better? — E. Lockhart

There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim. — Billie Jean King

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

I forged more notes and my trips to the library became frequent. Reading grew into a passion. My first serious novel was Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. It made me see my boss, Mr. Gerald, and identify him as an American type. I would smile when I saw him lugging his golf bags into the office. I had always felt a vast distance separating me from the boss, and now I felt closer to him, though still distant. I felt now that I knew him, that I could feel the very limits of his narrow life. And this had happened because I had read a novel about a mythical man called George F. Babbitt. — Richard Wright

Golf has been such a gift in my life, and I've enjoyed it so much and enjoyed lots of wonderful times on the golf course with my husband first, and then I got to play in all these celebrity tournaments. I'm often the only female celebrity in the tournament, hence the term 'Token Chick.' So it's been such a great, great gift in my life. — Cheryl Ladd

I try to go out, check out the town, and have a good time. It's a life experience: not everyone gets the chance to see the world and play golf, do the thing you love while travelling. — Peter Uihlein

For instance, he says I let him play golf, and he says, he lets me be miserable in my job. Now - that doesn't quite sound right, does it? But nonetheless, I think for the first time in my life, I'm not going to be miserable in my life when I come and work at CNN. — Connie Chung

I want people to judge me on what we have achieved after five years. I will go back to my home in Bermuda, play some golf and live a healthier life. — Fergus McCann

Hitting a golf ball and putting have nothing in common. They're two different games. You work all your life to perfect a repeating swing that will get you to the greens, and then you have to try to do something that is totally unrelated. There shouldn't be any cups, just flag sticks. And then the man who hit the most fairways and greens and got closest to the pins would be the tournament winner. — Ben Hogan

I was a pitcher, and my dad played in college. The hardest day of my life was telling him I was going to quit to focus more on golf. But with golf, I felt like the game can't be perfected, and that motivated me. — Jordan Spieth

I want to be best golfer in the world. But I feel like golf is not everything in my life, but I want to keep doing it, keep working hard, do the best I can on the tour and give back to the tour. — Yani Tseng

What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is earnest. We live in a practical age. All around us we see foreign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf? What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good? — P.G. Wodehouse

I understand golf is a game, and I've never treated it as anything else. Family is something that's very special, and so they all contributed to the room. They all contributed to what my life was, my career was. — Jack Nicklaus

I wrote to Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I said: "Here is the sentence once written by the immortal Bobby Jones. I thought you might like to have it done in needlepoint and mounted in a suitable frame to hang over Little John's bed. It says, The rewards of golf - and of life, too, I expect - are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules." I never heard from Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I can only conclude that the letter went astray. — Alistair Cooke

He was a professional athlete and coach, a Ferrari who lived his life in the fast lane. She was a girl-next-door kind of girl, closer to a golf cart than a sports car. — Emily March

I am among those who firmly believe that a round of golf should not take more than three and a half hours, four at most. Anything longer than that is not a round of golf, it's life in Albania. — Dan Jenkins

Look, there are no shortcuts in golf, and there are no shortcuts in life. You have to work for it. Dream big and keep your dreams for yourself. Because the dreams that you have are those things that separate you from others. If you give up your dream, you give up hope. And without hope, you are nothing. — Tiger Woods

I see a lot of actors for whom life becomes one big schedule. I guess I try to be more sensitive to my private life - to take a breath of fresh air and be in the countryside or on a golf course. — Gerard Butler

If you can help anyone in any way, that is what we are here for. The pinnacle of my life has really been two lives - golf and service to my fellow man. — Billy Casper

You may be sick of what you did the first half of your life, but you don't have to just walk around and play golf or doing nothing. It's not like fifty is the new thirty. It's like fifty is the new chapter. — Sharon Stone

The kids say golf taught them this and that. I get it with the military: A guy joins the military because he needs discipline and has to find himself. But don't tell me, 'Golf helps you find yourself.' I've been playing my whole life, and I'm still looking for myself. — Lewis Black

Dad was certainly a free spirit and had his own ways. He was very proud of my golf achievements but more proud of the person I've turned into. He brought me up to lead a very balanced life. — Luke Donald

Sometimes, we should maybe sit back and look at all we have. It's because of golf and the tour. I mean, this life we lead is unbelievable. — Vijay Singh

I played competitive golf all my life. Then all of a sudden, when I quit playing the game, I've got all this spare time and this energy. And certainly I wasn't ready to pack up my bags and go sit in front of the television with a shawl on. — Jack Nicklaus

Golf is a lot like sex. It's something you can enjoy all your life. And if you remain an amateur, you get to pick your own playing partners. — Jess Sweetser

I read many years ago that Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, was asked, "How is your marriage so successful?" She replied, "Because he plays golf, and I play bridge." Ruth Bell Graham understood the value of outside sources of life for a marriage to flourish. — Henry Cloud

I had played in a tournament with the captain of the University of Minnesota's golf team, and he thought I was good. He called his coach, and the coach called me and recruited me. A five-minute phone call changed my life. — Tom Lehman

Life for women in rural Scotland is not like anywhere else in the world. We all live very far apart, and you don't just ring your girlfriend up for a cup of coffee. There really is no sense of community, no pubs, no clubs. The golf clubs are male prerogatives, and the women are isolated and have to have their own resources. — Rosamunde Pilcher

Sometimes I lie awake ay night, and I wonder, "is life like golf or is it more like baseball?" Then a voice comes to me out of the dark that says, "try shuffleboard. — Charles M. Schulz

I never allow mediocrity on the golf course. Yet I allowed it to dominate my personal life. Don't you find that odd?" Myron made a noncommittal motion with his head. He could feel Linda's unhappiness radiating off her like a breaking fever. She looked up now and smiled at him. The smile was intoxicating, nearly breaking his heart. He found himself wanting to lean over and hold Linda Coldren. He felt this almost uncontrollable urge to press her against him and feel the sheen of her hair in his face. He tried to remember the last time he had held such a thought for any woman but Jessica; no answer came to him. "Tell me about you," Linda suddenly said. The change of subject caught him off guard. He sort of shook his head. "Boring stuff." "Oh, I doubt that," she said, almost playfully. "Come on now. It'll distract me." Myron — Harlan Coben

In my own life, I find myself doing some task - driving or playing golf - and having a conversation with my mother or father, who are both deceased. I don't know if that means I'm mentally ill, but I suspect lots of people do it. And when I hold that conversation, different images of my parents appear to me. — James Remar

If I had ever been set down in any one place and told I was to play there, and nowhere else, for the rest of my life, I should have chosen the Old Course at St. Andrews. — Bobby Jones

I found golf late in life, in 1990. I took some lessons and struggled. Then one day, I hit a drive that was so crisp and clean, with no vibration. There's no feeling like it. I was hooked. — Dennis Quaid

Obama's the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn't public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. — Roger Ailes

Fitness plays such an important role in my life, and an integral part of my golf structure, that I think I might be quite good at teaching others the benefits of sport and fitness. — Rory McIlroy

We got talking about how some people were selfish and some weren't, and the difference between right-wing people and left-wing people. You said it all came down to imagination. Conversative people don't usually have very much, so they find it hard to imagine what life is like for people who aren't just like them. They can only empathise with people just like they are: the same sex, the same age, the same class, the same golf club or nation or race or whatever. Liberals can pretty much empathise with anybody else, no matter how different they are. It's all to do with imagination, empathy and imagination are almost the same thing, and it's why artists, creative people, are almost all liberals, left-leaning. a character in The Steep Approach to Garbadale: Iain Banks. — Iain Banks

I've known the thrill of winning a tough ball game and of winning a golf match on the last hole. But to me the biggest thrill is to win the big one - the spiritual battle of life. — Billy Graham

A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting. — Billy Joel

Sometimes, it just gets mentally tough, but at the end of the day, I'm playing golf for a living. And reaching out to a huge fan base and knowing people are following my progress and looking up to me means the world to me. So if all I have to do is some photo shoots and answer questions, that's nothing to me. That's part of my life. — Lexi Thompson

My parents lived by Rancho Park. And my mom, later in life, got into playing golf. She and her male cronies would get up at five in the morning and sneak onto the back nine. I kind of just started getting into it. For a long time, I was really puzzled by why people liked it. — Kim Gordon

The rewards of golf, and of life too I expect, are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules. — Bobby Jones

To me, life is like the back nine in golf. Sometimes you play better on the back nine. You may not be stronger, but hopefully you're wiser. And if you keep most of your marbles intact, you can add a note of wisdom to the coming generation. — Clint Eastwood