The Golf Game Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

Golf is the one game I know
which becomes more and more
difficult the longer one plays it. — Bobby Jones

I always knew I wanted to play golf and go to college. I try hard to be a positive role model, especially on the golf course. I try to carry myself well, and don't do anything outrageous. I try to play the game like a gentleman and give everyone respect. That's how the game should be played. — Dustin Johnson

The Scots say that Nature itself dictated that golf should be played by the seashore. Rather, the Scots saw in the eroded sea coasts a cheap battleground on which they could whip their fellow men in a game based on the Calvinist doctrine that man is meant to suffer here below and never more than when he goes out to enjoy himself. — Alistair Cooke

Golf is the only game I know where you call a foul on yourself. — Joe Torre

Golf is a nice game, but that's all. It's never going to be an exciting game to watch on TV. It's not a circus and never will be one. The audience for golf is not going to change significantly. It's always going to be people who play it, understand it, and love it. — Jack Nicklaus

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

I never played a round when I didn't learn something new about the game. — Ben Hogan

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

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

In golf your strengths and weaknesses will always be there. If you could improve your weaknesses, you would improve your game. The irony is that people prefer to practice their strengths. — Harvey Penick

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

We all know, the ones who play golf, know what a wonderful game it is and what a great past-time it is. — Bernhard Langer

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

Staying in the present is the key to any golfer's game: once you start thinking about a shot you just messed up or what you have to do on the next nine to catch somebody, you're lost. — Paul Azinger

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

Bob Hope has a beautiful short game. Unfortunately, it's off the tee. — Jimmy Demaret

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

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

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

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

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

Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I've played the game for 40 years and I still haven't the slightest idea how to play. — Gary Player

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

The difference between now and when I played during my younger days is my drives are shorter and my short game is longer. — Simon Hobday

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

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

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

Once you try, golf is the hardest game you'll ever play. — Roger Maltbie

I can play the game only one way. I must play every shot for all there is in it. I cannot play safe. — Bobby Jones

The game was easy for me as a kid. I had to play a while to find out how hard it is. — Ray Floyd

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

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

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

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

Golf is a hard game to figure. One day you will go out and slice it and shank it, hit into all the traps and miss every green. The next day you go out and, for no reason at all, you really stink. — Bob Hope

I never used golf as a job. I used it as a game. I always thought if I played the game well, my financial rewards would be there, but it came from, because I played well. But I had to play well to get the financial rewards. — Jack Nicklaus

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

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

Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose. — Woodrow Wilson

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

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

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

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

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'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

Pretty it's pretty good for me because I'm over here in the winters. It's really improved my golf game. — Peter Forsberg

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

When I hosted the dinner I served fast food hamburgers. It had nothing to do with black, white, purple, yellow, green race. it had nothing to do with Tiger or his family or his golf game. — Fuzzy Zoeller

This game is so elusive. You try to maintain the peaks and level up the valleys. — Tom Watson

The great thing about this game is that the bad days are wonderful. — William J. Clinton

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

Make friends with your caddie and the game will make friends with you. — Stephen Potter

The game just embarrasses you until you feel inadequate and pathetic. You want to cry like a child. — Craig Stadler

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

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

In golf, advice is not a big thing. If you don't have the ability, you won't get anywhere no matter how much advice you get. The only thing people can suggest that matters is, be a good person and treat people respectfully. But advice on your game doesn't mean much to me. — Angel Cabrera

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

When I used to play golf. It's a terrible miserable game. It's incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water ... You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to. — Alan Lightman

Dennis Murray is a wonderful Golf Professional who is personable and skillful as an instructor. Dennis helped me work on my golf swing for a full week back in the 80's when I was still playing the PGA Tour. His instruction was great and helped my game very much. — Jerry Pate

Go out and have fun. Golf is a game for everyone, not just for the talented few. — Harvey Penick

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

Dr. Parent has been a great influence on my mental game. ZEN GOLF is the best book at connecting golf and the mind together. It's for everyone, it really helps, and you're really going to enjoy it. — Vijay Singh

My golf game is getting real good. Last week, I got through the windmill. — Rodney Dangerfield

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

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

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

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

No one has ever conquered this game. One week out there and you are God, next time you are the devil. But it does keep you coming back. — Juli Inkster

I don't want to be just known for the way I dress. I want to be known for how I play, how I treat people, and how I am as a role model. I don't just want to be, 'He dresses cool' or 'He dresses crazy.' You're going to have lovers and haters. I want my golf game to be the main thing. — 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

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

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

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

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

I don't follow golf! I don't keep up with golf or know who is coming or going. I am just here to play the game and be done with it. — Boo Weekley

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 a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose — Winston S. Churchill

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

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

There is no better game in the world when you are in good company, and no worse game when you are in bad company. — Tommy Bolt

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