Quotes & Sayings About The Game Of Golf

In a broader context, all rounds of golf are of no consequence, whether score is kept or not. But you are the center of your own universe. You are free to create meaning for yourself. When you attempt to capture the highlights without burdening yourself with the tedium, the highlights lose the foundation that elevates them to the status of "highlight." Analogies abound because a focused attitude defines the quality of all that we do. In playing a game, dieting, or hiking the AT, you benefit most when you commit yourself to it, embrace it. — David Miller

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

Remember the basic rule. Make friends with your caddie and the game will make friends with you. How true this is. It is easy to arrange that your guest opponent shall be deceived in to undertipping his caddie at the end of the morning round, so that the news gets round among the club employees that your opponent is a no good, and the boys will gang up against him. — Stephen Potter

Because golf exposes the flaws of the human swing - a basically simple maneuver - it causes more self-torture than any game short of Russian roulette. — Grantland Rice

I heard a delightful - and possibly apocryphal - story about what happened when the British introduced golf to India in the 1820s. Upon building the first golf course there, the Royal Calcutta, the British discovered a problem: Indigenous monkeys were intrigued by the little white balls and would swoop down out of the trees and onto the fairways, picking them up and carrying them off. This was a disruption, to say the least. In response, officials tried erecting fences to keep the monkeys out, but the monkeys climbed right over. They tried capturing and relocating the monkeys, but the monkeys kept coming back. They tried loud noises to scare them away. Nothing worked. In the end, they arrived at a solution: They added a new rule to the game - "Play the ball where the monkey drops it. — Ed Catmull

If we are to preserve the integrity of golf as left to us by our forefathers, it is up to all of us to carry on the true spirit of the game. — Ben Crenshaw

Golf is not, on the whole, a game for realists. By its exactitudes of measurements it invites the attention of perfectionists. — Heywood Hale Broun

The winner of this tournament doesn't just win a major. He become a part of the history of the game. — Phil Mickelson

I think we have more good players today [2016] than we've ever had in the game of golf. And I think that's saying a lot because we had a lot of good players when I played. I think you had a bit of a lag in there for a while, that Tiger was just so much better than everybody else that he really didn't put anybody in with him. — Jack Nicklaus

You know what the game of golf is, don't you? It's basketball for people who can't jump and chess for people who can't think. — Tom Robbins

My main goal is to be the No. 1 American and the No. 1 player in the world. If an American is on top of the leader board every week, it will bring more people into the game of golf. — Paula Creamer

Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood. — Samuel Johnson

Golf is not a game of great shots. It's a game of most accurate misses. The people who win make the smallest mistakes. — Gene Littler

Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player. — Alice Cooper

Golf is just a game - and an idiotic game most of the time. — Mark Calcavecchia

Golf is a game of ego, but it is also a game of integrity: the most important thing is you do what is right when no one is looking. — Tom Watson

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements. — Ernest Hemingway,

Everybody who plays top-level sport, whether it's golf or football, or whatever, needs to get into 'The Zone' ... For me personally, on the morning of a round, preparation is always about getting into the zone. The less I communicate with other people, the better. I'm trying to rehearse in my mind what I am working on in my game: going through my swing keys, going through my putting keys. When I get to the course I get the pin positions for the day and I'll analyze those. I'll make a strategy for the golf course and look how I'm going to play it — Paul McGinley

You play the golf course just like you played it in your practice rounds and you stick to your game plan and just try to get whatever you can out of it. — Stewart Cink

Hitting a golf ball correctly is the most sophisticated and complicated maneuver in all of sports, with the possible exception of eating a hot dog at a ball game without getting mustard on your shirt. — Ray Fitzgerald

The competition I played against was fantastic, but golf is a different game now. The courses have shrunk because the equipment has gotten better. They're hitting the ball 10 to 15 percent farther because of the changes in the golf ball. — Hollis Stacy

To get an elementary grasp of the game of golf, a human must learn, by endless practice, a continuous and subtle series of highly unnatural movements, involving about sixty-four muscles, that result in a seemingly natural swing, taking two seconds to begin and end. — Alistair Cooke

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

The only thing I won't watch is darts. And I don't watch cricket. How can you like a game that requires you to take four days off work to follow a Test? And I don't really like golf. I know a lot of English footballers play, but I know that if I go with the club to play, sooner or later I will end up trying to smash the ball with my foot. — Thierry Henry

Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort. — Stephen Leacock

Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes. — Hayley Mills

This is a game of misses. The guy who misses the best is going to win. — Ben Hogan

Golf is a particularly severe strain upon the amiability of the average person's temper, and in no other game, except bridge, is serenity of disposition so essential. — Emily Post

You know, why the game of golf is popular? Very easy, it's a great game. — Bernhard Langer

It is the glorious uncertainty of golf that makes it the game it is. — P.G. Wodehouse

Tucker Case did not play golf. He'd tried it once, and although he'd enjoyed the drinking and driving the little electric car into the lake, he just didn't get the appeal. It seemed - and he'd examined the game closely because his father had loved it - an awful lot like a bunch of rich white guys in goofy clothing walking around on an absurdly large lawn hitting absurdly small white balls with crooked sticks. — Christopher Moore

But in the end it's still a game of golf, and if at the end of the day you can't shake hands with your opponents and still be friends, then you've missed the point. — Payne Stewart

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

My golf game's gone off so much that when I went fishing a couple of weeks ago my first cast missed the lake. — Ben Crenshaw

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

They don't even visit the dying
anymore. Their argument being that if someone is dying, there's no
point interrupting a good game of golf, and they'd best just get on with
dying. However, they do give you a helpline number for an
organisation called 'Dying To Help You Out.' A volunteer talks you
through the process of dying alone without medical attention: "feeling
a bit chilled are you, love, don't fret, it's just your lifeblood
congealing in your veins, you'll be gone any second now, hang on pet,
I've got a corpse on line nine, if I don't get back before you peg it,
have a nice afterlife," and then they bugger of leaving you with
Robbie Williams singing Angels. — Gillibran Brown

Everyone has something that they desperately need that makes them feel good, that they don't want anything to get in the way of. Whether it's a man's golf game, whether it's a woman's cooking. I have a friend who has to clean. She's addicted to cleaning. — Tasha Smith

He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Much of anyone's game is played (or should be played) in the short six-inch course between the ears. — Louise Suggs

The average player would rather play than watch. Those who don't play can't possibly appreciate the subtleties of the game. Trying to get their attention with golf is like selling Shakespeare in the neighbourhood saloon. — Bob Toski

There is even - as with no other game - a fascinating detective literature, a wry commentary on the human comedy, implicit in the book of rules. — Alistair Cooke

A sailor was stranded on a desert island and managed to survive by making friends with the local natives - such good friends, in fact, that one day the chief offered him his daughter for an evening's entertainment. Late that night, while they made love, the chief's daughter kept shouting, "Oga, boga! Oga, boga!" The arrogant sailor assumed this must be how the natives express their appreciation when something is fantastic. A few days later the chief invites the sailor for a game of golf. On his first stroke, the chief hit a hole in one. Eager to try out his new vocabulary, the sailor enthusiastically shouted "Oga boga! Oga boga!" The chief turned around with a puzzled look on his face and asked, "What you mean, 'wrong hole'? — Osho

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

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

It is a wonderful tribute to the game or to the dottiness of the people who play it that for some people somewhere there is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle, an unplayable course, the wrong time of the day or year. — Alistair Cooke

Keep your sense of humor. There's enough stress in the rest of your life not to let bad shots ruin a game you're supposed to enjoy. — Amy Alcott

Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort. — Abba Eban

No game designed to be played with the aid of personal servants by right-handed men who can't even bring along their dogs can be entirely good for the soul. — Bruce McCall

Aggressive play is a vital asset of the world's greatest golfers. However, it's even more important to the average player. Attack this game in a bold, confident, and determined way, and you'll make a giant leap toward realizing your full potential as a player. — Greg Norman

Golf is a game of misses, and the winners are those who have the best misses — Kathy Whitworth

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

As a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats ... When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation; when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead; this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up! Good night and good luck. — Keith Olbermann

The beautiful thing about the game of golf is you can play good golf and compete well into your later years, and you can't do this in basketball or football or baseball. But in golf, it's a longer live sport. — Tom Watson

I used to be a columnist for 'Golf Monthly' and have contributed articles for national newspapers based on the humour that is in abundance in the game, which is more than can be said of tennis. — Jasper Carrott

It provides a different type of element and mental strain athletes love. That's what makes the game of golf so special. — Tiger Woods

One of the reserves came up to me and said 'I'm finding it a bit hard, it's the first time I've ever been dropped'. So I told him to do what Nick Faldo does and work at his game. Next thing I know he's doing exactly what Faldo does, he's taken up golf. — Ron Atkinson

Obviously my game wasn't too good at Augusta, I had a couple of technical faults, the posture wasn't too good. It's a bit unfortunate because I was playing a lot of good golf, but when I got sick (flu) before The Masters, that was bad timing and I wasn't quite myself. — Ernie Els

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

Green synthetic practice mats are the worst thing for your golf game that I know of. You can hit six inches behind the ball and not even know it, because the ball still gets airborne. Practice nets are awful, too. Swing a weighted club instead. — Lee Trevino

Golf is the only game in which a precise knowledge of the rules can earn one a reputation for bad sportsmanship. — Patrick Campbell, 3rd Baron Glenavy

Golf being a cold, calculating sort of game gives perhaps more scope for folly than any other. We have all the time in the world to make up our minds as to what is the wise thing to do and then we do the foolish one. — Bernard Darwin

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

I just think the game of golf teaches you so much about yourself like who you really are and what you're made of. — Stewart Cink

Golf has always been a game where you have to control both ends of the club. — Matt Kuchar

Golf is the most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man. — Westbrook Pegler

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

Golf is the only game that pits the player against an opponent, the weather, the minutest details of a large chunk of local topography and his own nervous system, all at the same time. — Mike Seabrook

No other game combines the wonder of nature with the discipline of sport in such carefully planned ways. A great golf course both frees and challenges a golfer's mind. — Tom Watson

When you play the game for fun, it's fun. When you play it for a living, it's a game of sorrows. — Gary Player

Golfers should not fail to realize that it is a game of great traditions, of high ideals of sportsmanship, one in which a strict adherence to the rules is essential. — Francis Ouimet

We've got to abide by the rules. We have to protect it. The game of golf at a professional level is so clean. We are our own judge, jury and executioner. If we don't do what we think is right, the game might get away from us. — Greg Norman

The problem with art is, it's not like the game of golf where you put the ball in the hole. There's no umpire; there's no judge. There are no rules. It's one of its problems. But it's also one of the great things about art. It becomes a question of what lasts. — Richard Prince

I've always said as a political scientist that "culture" is what we use when we can't explain things. I think it's more about accessibility. Part of the problem is that this is an expensive game [golf]. I know in a couple of places where there are black members, and they come from pretty much the same socioeconomic level that the white members come from. — Condoleezza Rice

I adore the game of golf. I won't ever retire. — Lee Trevino

I'm not really much of a video game player; my son would be the expert in that department. The only game I would really play is golf, the Tiger Woods video game. — Richard Roundtree

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

Golf is a game, and talk and discussion is all to the interests of the game. Anything that keeps the game alive and prevents us being bored with it is an advantage. Anything that makes us think about it, talk about it, and dream about it is all to the good and prevents the game becoming dead. — Alister MacKenzie

You can win tournaments when you're mechanical, but golf is a game of emotion and adjustment. If you're not aware of what's happening to your mind and your body when you're playing, you'll never be able to be the very best you can be. — Jack Nicklaus

One of the worst mistakes you can make in golf is trying to force the game. — Jack Nicklaus

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

We keep on going, he continued, fostering all kinds of crazy hopes. To redeem the lost, some sliver of personal revelation. It's an addiction, like playing the slots, or a game of golf. - It's a lot easier to talk about nothing, I said. He didn't outright ignore my presence, but he did fail to respond. - Well, anyway, that's my two cents. - You're just about to pack it in, toss the clubs in a river, when you hit your stride, the ball rolls straight in the cup, and the coins fill your inverted cap. — Patti Smith

All you can do is really the prep work and make sure you're ready to hit each golf shot. Outside of that, you're not sure really what's going to happen. It's a funny game, but I think that's why I love it. You never know, one day to the next; you could go shoot 62, and the next day you're going to shoot 78, and you can't predict it. — Rickie Fowler

Golf is the only game where the worst player gets the best of it. He obtains more out of it as regards both exercise and enjoyment, for the good player gets worried over the slightest mistake, whereas the poor player makes too many mistakes to worry about them. — David Lloyd George

I moved to Los Angeles, and 'The Office' became successful, and the charity/cocktail party circuit is really not my scene. But I played golf, and I started getting invited to charity golf events, and I just fell in love with the game ten-fold, and at a lot of these events, there were athletes. — Brian Baumgartner

If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfibul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf was invented at the same moment. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I don't support the belly putter. I think it's bad for the game of golf. — Padraig Harrington

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

The trouble that most of us find with the modern matched sets of clubs is that they don't really seem to know any more about the game than the old ones did. — Robert Browning

You did not tell me what you are doing athletically just now but I do hope that if your arm comes along next spring you can get it in good shape to try out for the pitching spot on the varsity. However, if you don't make it then I suggest you take up golf which after all is the best game of all of them. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I've just discovered the secret of golf. You can't play a really hot game unless you're so miserable that you don't worry over your shots. Take the case of a chip shot, for instance. If you're really wretched, you don't care where the ball is going and so you don't raise your head to see. Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at the top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro? — P.G. Wodehouse

Journalism is a craft that takes years to learn. It's like golf. You never get it right all the time. It's a game of fewer errors, better facts, and better reporting. — Ben Huh

The extrovert assumption is so woven into the fabric of our culture that an employee may suffer reprimands for keeping his door closed (that is, if he is one of the lucky ones who has a door), for not lunching with other staff members, or for missing the weekend golf game or any number of supposedly morale-boosting celebrations. Half. More than half of us don't want to play. We don't see the point. For us, an office potluck will not provide satisfying human contact - we'd much rather meet a friend for an intimate conversation (even if that friend is a coworker). For us, the gathering will not boost morale - and will probably leave us resentful that we stayed an extra hour to eat stale cookies and make small talk. For us, talking with coworkers does not benefit our work - it sidetracks us. — Laurie A. Helgoe

A lot of people think that you have to specialize in one sport from an early age in order to turn pro. Most of my teammates played a lot of different sports when we were kids. I liked to golf, water ski and play baseball. That helped me develop other aspects of my game and made me WANT to be on the ice even more once hockey season started. — Pat LaFontaine

Regardless of what the tour pros think, golf is a rich and varied game, and what all of us awkward fools do on weekends is what golf is truly all about. — Dan Jenkins

You don't have the game you played last year or last week. You only have today's game. It may be far from your best, but that's all you've got. Harden your heart and make the best of it. — Walter Hagen

Scottish golf is a more public game. It is more reasonably priced and they play faster. It isn't cart golf. The only reason resorts force you into carts is for the money. They are selling off the soul of the game for a few dollars. — Daniel J. King

Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring - But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don't understand boring guys. I really don't. — J.D. Salinger

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

Golf is not a wrestle with Bogey; it is not a struggle with your mortal foe; it is a physiological, psychological and moral fight with your self; it is a test of mastery over self; and the ultimate and irreducible element of the game is to determine which of the players is the more worthy combatant. — Arnold Haultain

Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world's best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL. — Hunter S. Thompson