Quotes on Golf
A. A. Milne: "Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad."
A. P. Herbert: "Men who would face torture without a word become blasphemous at the short fourteenth. It is clear that the game of golf may well be included in that category of intolerable provocations which may legally excuse or mitigate behavior not otherwise excusable."
Abba Eban: "Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort."
Adlai Stevenson: "Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses."
Al Boliska: "Have you ever noticed what golf spells backwards?"
Alistair Cooke: "Golf is an open exhibition of overweening ambition, courage deflated by stupidity, skill scoured by a whiff of arrogance."
Arnold Palmer: "I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone's golf game: it's called an eraser."
Arnold Palmer: "What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive."
Art Rosenbaum: "Golf is a game in which the ball lies poorly and the players well."
Arthur Daley: "Golf is like a love affair. If you don't take it seriously, it's no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart."
B.C. Forbes: "Golf is an ideal diversion but a ruinous disease."
Barry Fitzgerald: "A golf course is nothing but a poolroom moved outdoors."
Ben Crenshaw: "I'm about five inches from being an outstanding golfer. That's the distance my left ear is from my right."
Ben Hogan: "Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing."
Ben Hogan: "The most important shot in golf is the next one."
Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News, on his impression of the selection of Royal St. George's Golf Club in Sandwich, England for the 2003 British Open: " Only the British Open can get away with its annual aesthetic torture, staging the thing in places that nave no beauty, no style, no landscaping. Plant a geranium, for cripe's sake."
Bev Norwood, British Open historian, challenging the ascertations that Ben Curtis is the most obscure British Open winner: "That honor would have to go to David "Deacon" Brown, who won at Musselburgh, Scotland, in 1886. Brown was the town chimney sweep and a pretty good golfer. Because they had an odd number of players that year, tournament officials sought out Brown-who was diligently working and covered with soot- to fill out the pairing. They gave him a bath and clean clothes and he shot 79-78 to win by two strokes over Willie Campbell."
Billy Graham: "The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course."
Billy Graham: "The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course."
Bob Bruce, about the Champions Tour: "What's nice about our tour is you can't remember your bad shots."
Bob Hope, about his golfing : "I just hope I don't have to explain all the times I've used His name in vain when I get up there."
Bob Hope: "Drugs are very much a part of professional sports today, but when you think about it, golf is the only sport where the players aren't penalized for being on grass."
Bob Hope: "If I'm on the course and lightning starts, I get inside fast. If God wants to play through, let him."
Bob Hope: "If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf."
Bob Hope: "I'll shoot my age if I have to live to be 105."
Bob Hope: "Isn't it fun to go out on the course and lie in the sun?"
Bob Ryan: "A passion, an obsession, a romance, a nice acquaintanceship with trees, sand, and water."
Bobby Jones: "Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course - the distance between your ears."
Brent Musburger: "I'd play every day if I could. It's cheaper than a shrink and there are no telephones on my golf cart."
Bruce McCall: "It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification."
Bruce McCall: "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."
Bryant Gumbel, on Real Sports, stated to Michelle Wie "I saw where you said you're not interested in money." Wie responded: "When did I say that?"
Burt Shotten: "Any game where a man 60 can beat a man 30 ain't no game."
Chi Chi Rodriguez: "A golf ball is like a clock. Always hit it at 6 o'clock and make it go toward 12 o'clock. But make sure you're in the same time zone."
Chi Chi Rodriguez: "After all these years, it's still embarrassing for me to play on the American golf tour. Like the time I asked my caddie for a sand wedge and he came back ten minutes later with a ham on rye."
Chi Chi Rodriguez: "Golf is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off."
Chi Chi Rodriguez: "I never pray to God to make a putt. I pray to God to help me react good if I miss a putt."
Chi Chi Rodriguez: "The first time I played the Masters, I was so nervous I drank a bottle of rum before I teed off. I shot the happiest 83 of my life."
Chi Chi Rodriguez: "Trevino is in a league by himself. We don't even count him. We figure when you come in second, you're a winner."
Chris Codiroli: "My handicap? Woods and irons."
Chris Perry: "The worst club in my bag is my brain."
David Brenner: "I don't like watching golf on TV. I can't stand whispering."
Davis Love, Jr.: "When it's breezy, hit it easy."
Dean Martin: "If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt."'
Dicky Pride, commenting to a spectator after his concentration was broken by the spectator's cell phone ringing: "Excuse me, sir, I'm working here. If you have to work, would you please go to your office."
Don Carter: "One of the advantages bowling has over golf is that you seldom lose a bowling ball."
Doug Sanders: "I'm working as hard as I can to get my life and my cash to run out at the same time. If I can just die after lunch Tuesday, everything would be perfect."
Eric Linklater: "All I've got against it is that it takes you so far from the clubhouse."
Fletcher Knebel: "Find a man with both feet firmly on the ground and you've found a man about to make a difficult putt."
G.K. Chesterton: "I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles."
Gardner Dickinson: "They say golf is like life, but don't believe them. golf is more complicated than that."
George Archer: "Baseball players quit playing and they take up golf. Basketball players quit, take up golf. Football players quit, take up golf. What are we supposed to take up when we quit?"
George Archer: "One thing about golf is you don't know why you play bad and why you play good."
George Deukmejian: "The difference between golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie."
Gerald Ford: "I would like to deny all allegations by Bob Hope that during my last game of golf, I hit an eagle, a birdie, an elk and a moose."
Golf Saying: "Even God has to practice his putting."
Grantland Rice: "Eighteen holes of match or medal play will teach you more about your foe than will 18 years of dealing with him across a desk."
Grantland Rice: "Golf gives you an insight into human nature, your own as well as your opponent's."
Greg Norman: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and my father."
H. G. Wells: "The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf -- it's almost a law."
H. L. Mencken: "It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf."
H.G. Wells: "The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf. It's almost a law."
Hank Aaron: "It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course."
Harold Segall: "Golf is not just an exercise; it's an adventure, a romance... a Shakespeare play in which disaster and comedy are intertwined."
Harry Toscano: "I'm hitting the woods just great, but I'm having a terrible time getting out of them."
Harry Vardon: "Don't play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty."
Harry Vardon: "If your opponent is playing several shots in vain attempts to extricate himself from a bunker, do not stand near him and audibly count his strokes. It would be justifiable homicide if he wound up his pitiable exhibition by applying his niblick to your head."
Harvey Penick: "Golf has probably kept more people sane than psychiatrists have."
Henry Beard: "Play it as it lies" is one of the fundamental dictates of golf. The other is "Wear it if it clashes."
Henry Longhurst: "If you call on God to improve the results of a shot while it is still in motion, you are using "an outside agency" and subject to appropriate penalties under the rules of golf."
Henry Longhurst: "They say "practice" makes perfect " Of course, it doesn't. For the vast majority of golfers it merely consolidates imperfection."
Heywood Hale Broun: "Golf is not, on the whole, a game for realists. By its exactitudes of measurements it invites the attention of perfectionists."
Homero Blancas, asked if he had any uphill putts : "Yeah, after each of my downhill putts."
Horace G. Hutchinson: "If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is."
Huxtable Pippey: "Real golfers, no matter what the provocation, never strike a caddie with the driver. The sand wedge is far more effective."
Ian Baker-Finch, on John Daly: "His driving is unbelievable. I don't go that far on my holidays."
Isabelle Beisiegel, remarking on her chances of qualifying for the men's tour: "The ball doesn't know if it is a man or a woman who is hitting it."
Jack Benny: "Give me the fresh air, a beautiful partner, and a nice round of golf, and you can keep the fresh air and the round of golf."
Jack Burke: "The average golfer doesn't play golf. He attacks it.
Jack Lemmon: "If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball."
Jack Nicklaus, on why he tees his ball so high: "Through years of experience I have found that air offers less resistance than dirt."
Jack Nicklaus, responding to a reporters question "You really know your way around a course. What's your secret?" Nicklaus replied: The holes are numbered."
Jack Nicklaus: "If you want to hit it farther, hit it better."
Jeff Cesario: "Who watches golf on TV? Who calls eight friends over and gets a keg of beer? Landscapers, I guess. They sit around the TV, yelling, "Will you look at that golf path? Pure pea gravel."
Jerry Barber, about golf: "The more I practice, the luckier I get."
Jim Bishop: "Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun."
Jim Dent: "I can airmail the golf ball, but sometimes I don't put the right address on it."
Jim Murray: "Actually, the only time I ever took out a one-iron was to kill a tarantula. And it took a seven to do that."
Jim Murray: "Golf is the cruelest of sports. Like life, it's unfair. It's a harlot. A trollop. It leads you on. It never lives up to its promises.... It's a boulevard of broken dreams. It plays with men. And runs off with the butcher."
Jim Murray: "Golf without mistakes is like watching haircuts. A dinner without wine."
Jimmy Demaret: "Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at."
Jimmy DeMaret: "Golf and sex are the only things you can enjoy without being good at them."
Joe E. Louis: "I play in the low 80's. If it's any hotter than that, I won't play."
Joey Adams: "If you break 100, watch your golf. If you break 80, watch your business."
John Updike: "Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five."
John Updike: "The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things."
Julius Boros: "Retire to what? I'm a golfer and a fisherman. I've got no place to retire to."
Julius Boros: "Swing easy and hit hard."
Ken Harrelson: "In baseball you hit your home run over the right-field fence, the left-field fence, the center-field fence. Nobody cares. In golf everything has got to be right over second base."
Ken Venturi, on Art Rosenbaum: "Art said he wanted to get more distance. I told him to hit it and run backward."
Larry Nelson: "If I can hit a curveball, why can't I hit a ball that is standing still on a course?"
Lee Trevino, describing how he was one under during a tournament : "One under a tree, one under a bush, one under the water."
Lee Trevino, who had been struck by lighting while playing golf previously, commenting on why he immediately stops playing when rain and lightning are present: "When God wants to play through. I let him play through."
Lee Trevino: "A rough should have high grass. When you go bowling they don't give you anything for landing in the gutter, do they?"
Lee Trevino: "Columbus went around the world in 1492. That isn't a lot of strokes when you consider the course."
Lee Trevino: "If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron."
Lee Trevino: "I'm a golfaholic, no question about that. Counseling wouldn't help me. They'd have to put me in prison, and then I'd talk the warden into building a hole or two and teach him how to play."
Lee Trevino: "I'm a golfaholic. And all the counseling in the world wouldn't help me."
Lee Trevino: "I'm not saying my golf game went bad, but if I grew tomatoes, they'd come up sliced."
Lee Trevino: "My swing is so bad I look like a caveman killing his lunch."
Lee Trevino: "Putts get real difficult the day they pass out the money."
Lee Trevino: "There are two things you can do with your head down - play golf and pray."
Lee Trevino: "You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work."
Lee Trevino: "You can talk to a fade but a hook won't listen."
Lee Westwood: "I'm a golfer, not an athlete."
Lon Hinkle: "Golf is golf. You hit the ball, you go find it. Then you hit it again."
Louise Suggs: "Golf is very much like a love affair, if you don't take it seriously, it's no fun, if you do, it breaks your heart. Don't break your heart, but flirt with the possibility."
Lyndon Johnson: While visiting The Masters golf tournament was asked by a spectator what his handicap was. Johnson replied "Congress."
Mac O'Grady, describing a typical round of golf : "One minute you're bleeding. The next minute you're hemorrhaging. The next minute you're painting the Mona Lisa."
Mac O'Grady: "A hole in one is amazing when you think of the different universes this white mass of molecules has to pass through on its way to the hole."
Mac O'Grady: "When I putt, my emotions collide like tectonic plates. It's left my memory circuits full of scars that won't heal."
Mark Twain: "Golf is a good walk spoiled."
Martha Beckman: "Man blames fate for other accidents but feels personally responsible for a hole in one."
Michael Green: " The number of shots taken by an opponent who is out of sight is equal to the square root of the sum of the number of curses heard plus the number of swishes."
Michael Green: "Golf balls are attracted to water as unerringly as the eye of a middle-aged man to a female bosom."
National Lampoon: "If you want to take long walks, take long walks. If you want to hit things with sticks, hit things with sticks. But there's no excuse for combining the two and putting the results on TV. Golf is not so much a sport as an insult to lawns."
Nick Faldo, after winning a million dollars in a golf tournament, was feeling generous when he asked his wife if there was anything she'd like to have. She said "A divorce." He replied, "I wasn't thinking of anything quite that expensive."
Nick Faldo, on John Daly : "John certainly gives it a good hit, doesn't he? My Sunday best is a Wednesday afternoon compared to him."
Nubar Gulbenkian: "It is more satisfying to be a bad player at golf. The worse you play, the better you remember the occasional good shot."
Osbert Sitwell: "A golf course outside a big town serves an excellent purpose in that it segregates, as though a concentration camp, all the idle and idiot well-to-do."
P.G. Wodehouse: "After all, golf is only a game," said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is a kink in their character. They simply don't realize what they are saying."
P.G. Wodehouse: "Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character."
P.G. Wodehouse: "The least thing upsets him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of butterflies in the adjoining meadows."
P.G. Wodenhouse: "Golf, like measles, should be caught young."
P.J. O'Rourke: "Golf combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick."
Paul Gallico: "If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out."
Paul Harvey: "Golf is a game in which you yell "fore," shoot six, and write down five."
Paul O'Neil: "Golf is essentially an exercise in masochism conducted out-of-doors."
Percey Boomer: "If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf."
Pete Alfano: "One almost expects one of the players to peer into the monitor and politely request viewers to refrain from munching so loudly on cheese and crackers while the golfers are trying to reach the greens."
Pete Dye: "The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody put a flagstick on top."
Peter Aliss: "He used to be fairly indecisive, but now he's not so certain."
Peter Andrews: "There is one thing in this world that is dumber than playing golf. That is watching someone else playing golf. What do you actually get to see? Thirty-seven guys in polyester slacks squinting at the sun. Doesn't that set your blood racing?"
Peter Jacobsen: "One of the most fascinating things about golf is how it reflects the cycle of life. No matter what you shoot - the next day you have to go back to the first tee and begin all over again and make yourself into something."
Phil Blackmar: "Golf isn't like other sports where you can take a player out if he's having a bad day. You have to play the whole game."
Phyllis Diller: "The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing."
President Gerald Ford: "I know I'm getting better at golf because I'm hitting fewer spectators."
President Woodrow Wilson: "Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose."
Princess Anne of Great Britain: "Golf seems to me an arduous way to go for a walk. I prefer to take the dogs out."
Raymond Floyd: "They call it golf because all of the other four-letter words were taken."
Renton Laidlaw: "He certainly didn't appear as cool as he looked."
Renton Laidlaw: "Pinero has missed the putt. I wonder what he is thinking is Spanish."
Rick Reilly: "Golf is the cruelest game, because eventually it will drag you out in front of the whole school, take your lunch money and slap you around."
Robert Browning: "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 Lynd: "It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place this world is when one is playing golf."
Robin Williams: "Golf is a game where white men can dress up as black pimps and get away with it."
Roger Simon: "The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.
Ron Green, Charlotte Observer: "When you hear someone shout "You da man," if he ain't shouting at Arnold Palmer, then it ain't da man."
Sam Snead, about golf : "I figure practice puts your brains in your muscles."
Sam Snead, playing with Bobby Cole at the tee of a dogleg-left par 5: "You know Bobby, when I was your age I'd drive the ball right over those trees at the corner." Feeling challenged Mr. Cole hit a big driver right into those big trees. Snead then said "Of course, when I was your age, those trees were only 10 feet high."
Sam Snead, to Ted Williams, arguing which was more difficult, to hit a moving baseball or a stationary golf ball: "But you don't have to go up in the stands and play your foul balls. I do."
Sam Snead: "Forget your opponents; always play against par."
Sam Snead: "I was a better player at 50 than I was at 30."
Sam Snead: "If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death."
Sam Snead: "These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow."
Samuel Johnson: "A game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood."
Sandy Lyle: "It's not whether you win or lose - but whether I win or lose."
Seve Ballesteros: "I look into their eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, 'I am going to bury you."
Seve Ballestero when asked to describe his four-putt at Augusta's No. 16 in 1988: "I miss. I miss. I miss. I make."
Silk Stockings TV Show: "The people who gave us golf and called it a game are the same people who gave us bag pipes and called it music."
Stewart Maiden: "Hit 'em hard. They'll land somewhere."
Steve Sax: "You can't call it a sport. You don't run, jump, you don't shoot, you don't pass. All you have to do is buy some clothes that don't match."
Ted Ray: "Golf is a fascinating game. It has taken me nearly forty years to discover that I can't play it."
Tiger Woods: "Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps."
Tim Allen: "Playing golf is like going to a strip joint. After 18 holes you're tired and most of your balls are missing."
Tom Weiskopf's conversation with a couple of unimpressed Scots at the back of number 8 at Carnoustie after he hit a hole in one the week before the 1975 British Open: "Didn't you see my ball go in?" "Aye, laddie." "And you didn't even clap?" "Boot laddie, it didn't coont now, did it?"
Tommy Armour: "Golf is an awkward set of bodily contortions designed to produce a graceful result."
Tommy Armour: "Love and putting are mysteries for the philosopher to solve. Both subjects are beyond golfers."
Tommy Bolt, about the tempers of modern players: "They throw their clubs backwards, and that's wrong. You should always throw a club ahead of you so that you don't have to walk any extra distance to get it."
Tommy Bolt, toward the end of one of his infamous high-volume, temperamental, club-throwing rounds, asked his caddie for a club recommendation for a shot of about 155 yards. His caddie said: "I'd say either a 3-iron or a wedge, sire." "A 3-iron or a wedge?" asked Bolt. "What kind of stupid choice is that?" "Those are the only two clubs you have left, sir." said the caddie.
Tommy Bolt: "Never break your putter and your driver in the same round or you're dead."
Tommy Bolt: "Putting allows the touchy golfer two to four opportunities to blow a gasket in the short space of two to forty feet."
Unknown: "Born to golf. Forced to work."
Unknown: "Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic.
Unknown: "Gone golfin'... be back dark thirty."
Unknown: "If I hit it right, it's a slice. If I hit it left, it's a hook. If I hit it straight, it's a miracle."
Unknown: "In primitive society, when native tribes beat the ground with clubs and yelled, it was called witchcraft; today, in civilized society, it is called golf."
Unknown: "Is my friend in the bunker or is the bastard on the green?"
Unknown: "It is good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."
Unknown: "I've spent most of my life golfing... the rest I've just wasted."
Unknown: "May thy ball lie in green pastures... and not in still waters."
Unknown: "My body is here, but my mind has already teed off."
Unknown: "The sport of choice for the urban poor is basketball. The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is bowling. The sport of choice for front-line workers is football. The sport of choice for supervisors is baseball. The sport of choice for middle management is tennis. The sport of choice for corporate officers is golf. Conclusion: The higher you are in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become."
Unknown: "When I die, bury me on the golf course so my husband will visit."
Unknown: "Golf is not a game, it's bondage. It was obviously devised by a man torn with guilt, eager to atone for his sins."
Val Doonican: "Golf is like an 18-year-old girl with big boobs. You know it's wrong but you can't keep away from her."
Vice President Dan Quayle: "In golf, you keep your head down and follow through. In the vice presidency, you keep your head up and follow through. It's a big difference."
Will Rogers: "Golf is good for the soul. You get so mad at yourself you forget to hate your enemies."
Will Rogers: "I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies."
Will Rogers: "Income Tax has made more liars out of the American people than Golf."
William Wordsworth: "Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness."
Winston Churchill: "Golf is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture."