Quotes & Sayings About St Andrews

As a kid, I remember John Daly bombing it around St. Andrews in 1995 to win the British Open, and people say we are similar in a lot of ways. — Dustin Johnson

The reason the Road Hole at St. Andrews is the most difficult par 4 in the world is that it was designed as a par 6. — Ben Crenshaw

Of course, money matters to everyone even if some don't want to admit it. If I won the Race to Dubai, I look at that prize money and think it could pay off my new house or the range I'm building. I am privileged to play golf for a living - look around St Andrews, that's my office. — Rory McIlroy

To have the opportunity to complete the slam at the Open at St Andrews, the home of golf, is something I will never ever forget. — Tiger Woods

I think that (Alister) MacKenzie and I managed to work as a completely sympathetic team. Of course there was never any question that he was the architect and I was the advisor and consultant. No man learns to design a golf course simply by playing golf, no matter how well. But it happened that both of us were extravagant admirers of the Old Course at St Andrews and we both desired as much as possible to simulate seaside conditions insofar as the differences in turf and terrain would allow. — Bobby Jones

The only place that's holier than St. Andrews is Westminster Abbey. — Sam Snead

St. Andrews provided a gentle forgetfulness over the preceding painful years of my life. It remains a haunting and lovely time to me, a marrow experience. For one who during her undergraduate years was trying to escape an inexplicable weariness and despair, St. Andrews was an amulet against all manner of longing and loss, a year of gravely held but joyous remembrances. — Kay Redfield Jamison

When the British Open is in Scotland, there's something special about it. And when it's at St. Andrews, it's even greater. — Jack Nicklaus

Ridiculed as "Knox the knave" and "a runagate Scot," he was outlawed and forbidden to preach by the archbishop of St. Andrews, and orders were issued that he be shot on sight if he failed to comply.
Knox did not comply. Years later, a would-be assassin fired a shot through a window of Knox's house in Edinburgh, narrowly missing his mark.? Still Knox preached. — Douglas Bond

According to the Captain of The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, striking your opponent or caddie at St Andrews, Hoylake or Westward Ho! meant that you lost the hole, except on medal days when it counted as a rub of the green. — Herbert Wind

There are a lot of great players from Europe who have never played Augusta, but all the guys in America have all played St. Andrews. They've gone over and made a trip to play St. Andrews. — Tiger Woods

I hope I'm not a tourist attraction - I'm sure that they come here really because St. Andrews is just amazing, a beautiful place. — Prince William

St. Andrews is the Home of Golf and the greatest course in the world. Any time you can win at St. Andrews would be special. It's every golfer's dream to win out here. — Peter Uihlein

On Sunday at St St. Andrews in 2005, Tiger woke up with a two-stroke lead, and his warm-up on the practice range was freakishly good. He'd comment later that it was one of the best of his life. He hit the 50-yard sign four times in a row, the 100-yard sign three times in a row, and the 150-yard sign on his first shot. I jokingly told Steve that on shots around 100 yards he should remind Tiger to aim right or left of the pin. Sure enough, on the third hole Tiger's wedge hit the pin and bounced off the green. — Hank Haney

The great Jack Nicklaus summed things up neatly during a charity match on the Old Course at St. Andrews where he and I were playing against Ben Crenshaw and Glen Campbell. I asked him what he considered to be the most important factor to overcome in the game of golf. His reply, "It's an unfair game." — Sean Connery

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

The archbishop of St. Andrews threatened that if Knox preached, he would be shot on sight. Knox preached anyway, from Perth to Fife and beyond. As a result, the summer of 1559 saw an extraordinary revival spread throughout Scotland.59 — Douglas Bond

Until you play it, St. Andrews looks like the sort of real estate you couldn't give away. — Sam Snead

Sir Guy Campbell's classic account of the formation of the links, beginning with Genesis and moving step by step to the thrilling arrival of 'tilth' on the fingers of coastal land, suggests that such notable features of our planet as dinosaurs, the prairies, the Himalayas, the seagull, the female of the species herself, were accidental by-products of the Almighty's preoccupation with the creation of the Old Course at St. Andrews. — Alistair Cooke

You may very well ask what the goddess of love is doing in St. Andrews, writing trashy romances. Adapting. — Kelly Link

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

Already many of the memories of the previous two weeks had faded: the smell of that small hotel in St. Andrews; that mixture of bacon cooking for breakfast and the lavender-scented soap in the bathroom; the air from the sea drifing across the golf course; the aroma of coffee in the coffee bar in South Street. She should have noted them down. She should have said something about all that and the light and the hills with sheep on them like small white stones. — Alexander McCall Smith

I like the course, the history - everything about St. Andrews. — Louis Oosthuizen

If you're going to be a player people will remember, you have to win the Open at St. Andrews. — Jack Nicklaus

The emblem on the necktie reserved for the members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews - The Vatican of golf - is of St. Andrew himself bearing the slatier cross on which, once he was captured at Patras, he was to be stretched before he was crucified.Only the Scots would have thought of celebrating a national game with the figure of a tortured saint. — Alistair Cooke

But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there's a most corking links near here."
He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
"You don't mean honestly she said that?"
"She said you said it was better than St. Andrews."
"So I did. Was that all she said I said?"
"Well, wasn't it enough?"
"She didn't happen to mention that I added the words, 'I don't think'?"
"No, she forgot to tell me that."
"It's the worst course in Great Britain. — P.G. Wodehouse

There's more to be learned here [St. Andrews] about course design than anywhere. Collection bunkers, false fronts, bump shots. The fundamentals of design became fundamental because of what's here. And it happened accidentally. Or maybe accidentally on purpose. — Jack Nicklaus

To win at Augusta and to win The Open Championship at St. Andrews, it's hard to put it into words as a golfer, as an athlete, as a guy - I'm not rich in history, I can tell you that. I'm not a great historian. — Zach Johnson

Hagen said that no-one remembers who finished second. But they still ask me if I ever think about that putt I missed to win the 1970 Open at St. Andrews. I tell them that some times it doesn't cross my mind for a full five minutes. — Doug Sanders

When one thinks of golf and Scotland, the first thing that comes to mind is usually St. Andrews, especially the famed Old Course. — Raymond Bonner

If St. Andrews is the home of golf, I think Pebble Beach feels like the home of American golf, like the home of championship golf. It has a real sense of history here. — Stewart Cink

St. Andrews by far is my favorite golf course in the world. It's where the game all started, it's why we have 18 holes instead of 22 and I think the history behind St. Andrews is amazing. There is no other golf course in the world that can say that every great player who has ever played the game has played that golf course. — Tiger Woods

When that happens [the demise of golf], old men will furtively beckon to their sons and, like fugitives from the guillotine recalling the elegant orgies at the court of Louis XV, will recite the glories of Portmarnock and Merion, of the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the sixth at Seminole, the eighteenth at Pebble Beach. They will take out this volume from its secret hiding place and they will say: "There is no question, son, that these were unholy places in an evil age. Unfortunately, I had a whale of a time." — Alistair Cooke

Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
[The Rectorial Address Delivered by James M. Barrie at St. Andrew's University May 3, 1922, to the Red Gowns of St. Andrews, Canada, 1922] — J.M. Barrie

No golfer's journey is complete without a pilgrimage to St. Andrews, the mecca of the game. This is where it all began, back in the 15th and 16th centuries. — Alex Shoumatoff

It took my year in England to make me realize how much I had been simply treading water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in and seeking out life. The chance to escape from the reminders of illness and death, from a hectic life, and from clinical and teaching responsibilities was not unlike my earlier year as an undergraduate in St. Andrews: it gave me a semblance of peace that had eluded me, and a place of my own to heal and mull, but most important to heal. England did not have the Celtic, magical quality of St. Andrews - nothing, I suppose, ever could for me - but it gave me back myself again, gave me back my high hopes of life. And it gave me back, my belief in love. — Kay Redfield Jamison