Quotes About Golf

“Golf is a game, but it a game that goes beyond the boundaries of simple recreation and carries us to the dark places of our own character. Into those dark places it shines a bright light so that we can see if we are honest, quick-tempered, mean-spirited, generous, courteous and other qualities that tell us who we are. That is because golf, as played by most of us, has no umpire, no referee, no linesman. We are the officials and we call the penalties on ourselves. That is the one clean, fine thing that separates golf from other sports where duplicity is often a valuable stratagem.” — Jack Whitaker

“Golf is twenty percent mechanics and technique. The other eighty percent is philosophy, humor, tragedy, romance, melodrama, companionship, camaraderie, cussedness and conversation.” — Grantland Rice

“The right way to play golf is to go up and hit the bloody thing.” — George Duncan

“When practicing, use the club that gives you the most trouble, and do not waste your time knocking the ball about with a tool that gives you the most satisfaction and with which you rarely make a bad stroke.” — Harry Vardon

“To play good golf rests entirely on the ability to find back the ball with the club head square.” — Henry Cotton

“Golf balls don’t know how old you are.” — Paul Lawrie

“What a beautiful place a golf course is. From the meanest country pasture to the Pebble Beaches and St Andrewses of the world, a golf course is to me holy ground. I feel God in the trees and grass and flowers, in the rabbits and the birds and the squirrels, in the sky and the water. I feel that I am home.” — Harvey Penick

“I never take myself too seriously.” — Lee Westwood

“I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.” — G.K. Chesterton

“Golf, like measles, should be caught young.” — P.G. Wodehouse

“The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf. It’s almost a law.” — H.G. Wells

“Golf: A plague invented by the Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man’s sins.” — James Barrett Reston

“Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.” — Dave Barry

“The road’s getting shorter and narrower, but I’ll play wherever the pigeons land.” — Sam Snead

“You play your best golf by just reacting to the target. If you are focused on the target, you aren’t thinking about anything bad happening.” — Davis Love III

“If there is one thing that golf demands above all else, it is honesty.” — Jack Nicklaus

“Thinking must be the hardest thing we do in golf, because we do so little of it.” — Harvey Penick

“The older you get the stronger the wind gets and it’s always in your face.” — Jack Nicklaus

“The object of a bunker or trap is not only to punish a physical mistake, to punish lack of control, but also to punish pride and egotism.” — Charles Blair Macdonald

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

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.” — Mark Twain

“If you think it’s hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball.” — Jack Lemmon

“Golf is a game in which you yell ‘fore,’ shoot six, and write down five.” — Paul Harvey

“Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.” — Sam Snead

“The only thing in my bag that works is the bug spray.” — Bruce Litsky

“You don’t win tournaments by playing well and thinking poorly.” — Lee Westwood

“I started drinking four years after I started playing golf. And I started playing golf when I was four.” — John Daly

“You get to know more of the character of a man in a round of golf than in six months of political experience.” — David Lloyd George

“Golf is not a sport — it’s an artistic exercise like ballet. You can be a fat slob and still play golf.” — John McEnroe

“Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to is.” — Arnold Palmer

“No matter how good you get, you can always get better — and that’s the exciting part.” — Tiger Woods

“Success in this game depends less on strength of body than strength of mind and character.” — Arnold Palmer

“The most important shot in golf is the next one.” — Ben Hogan

“You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.” — Bobby Jones

“A bad attitude is worse than a bad swing.” — Payne Stewart

“I’ve had a bad week. But in the real world, having a bad week is waking up and finding you’re a steelworker in Scunthorpe.” — Nick Faldo

“There is nothing so demoralizing as missing a short putt.” — Bobby Jones

“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 not a sport, it’s bondage. An obsession. A boulevard of broken dreams. It plays with men. And runs off with the butcher.” — Jim Murray

“The only time I talk on a golf course is to my caddie. And then only to complain when he gives me the wrong club.” — Seve Ballesteros

“The more I practice, the luckier I get.” — Gary Player

“Golf is the only sport I know of where a player pays for every mistake.” — Unknown

“I don’t think it’s healthy to take yourself too seriously.” — Payne Stewart

“Golf and sex are the only things you can enjoy without being good at them.” — Unknown

“You don’t know what pressure is until you play for five bucks with only two bucks in your pocket.” — Bobby Jones

“It’s the most humbling sport ever. It’s like a lousy lover. It’s like some guy who’s never there when you need him. Every once in a while, he comes and makes you feel like heaven on earth. And then the moment you say, ‘I really need this,’ he’s gone.” — Dinah Shore

“Golf books are laced with aphorisms and pithy one-line nuggets of advice because golfers aren’t supposed to overload their brains. ‘Swing thoughts’ should be few and simple, according to the experts. One’s mind should be uncluttered, and at ease. Unfortunately, the single most important fact about golf is as calming as a digital prostate exam: It’s hard.” — Carl Hiaasen

“Golf is a game to be played between cricket and death.” — Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie

“Play every shot as if it’s the first shot you’re ever going to play. The tournament starts on the next shot you hit.” — Greg Norman

“Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.” — William Wordsworth

“Golf teaches you how to behave.” — Jack Nicklaus

“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

“Stay true to yourself and listen to your inner voice. It will lead you to your dream.” — James Ross

“The only way of really finding out a man’s true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.” — P.G. Wodehouse

“Always throw clubs ahead of you. That way you don’t have to waste energy going back to pick them up.” — Tommy Bolt

“I never pray on a golf course. Actually, the Lord answers my prayers everywhere except on the course.” — Billy Graham

“I can tell right away if a guy is a winner or a loser just by the way he conducts himself on the course.” — Donald Trump

“All games are silly, but golf, if you look at it dispassionately, goes to extremes.” — Peter Alliss

“Every golfer has a little monster in him, it’s just that type of sport.” — Fuzzy Zoeller

“Golf was my first glimpse of comedy. I was a caddie when I was a kid. I was on the golf course rather than being in lessons, but I can play better now than I could then.” — Bill Murray

“There was the man who seemed to be attempting to deceive his ball and lull it into a false sense of security by looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard.” — P.G. Wodehouse

“The most exquisitely satisfying act in the world of golf is that of throwing a club. The full backswing, the delayed wrist action, the flowing follow-through, followed by that unique whirring sound, reminiscent only of a passing flock of starlings, are without parallel in sport.” — Henry Longhurst

“You must attain a neurological and biological serenity in chaos. You cannot let yourself be sabotaged by adrenaline.” — Mac O’Grady

“Golf is the hardest game in the world. There’s no way you could ever get it. Just when you think you do, the game jumps up and puts you in your place.” — Ben Crenshaw

“I adore the game of golf. I won’t ever retire. I’ll play until I die. Then I want them to roll me into a bunker, cover me with sand and make sure nobody’s ball lands in there for a while.” — Lee Trevino

“The toughest thing for most people to learn in golf is to accept bad holes — and then forget about them.” — Gary Player

“If you think positively and keep your mind on what is right, it gives you a better attitude. If you moan and groan and are disgusted, you play miserably too.” — Bernhard Langer

“Talking to a golf ball won’t do you any good. Unless you do it while your opponent is teeing off.” — Bruce Lansky

“I enjoy the oohs and aahs from the gallery when I hit my drives, but I’m pretty tired of the ‘was’ and the ‘uhh’ when I miss the putts.” — John Daly

“Don’t tell the opponent to drive first when you have won the toss for the honor. It is a confession of weakness.” — H.L. Fitzpatrick

“I’m about five inches from being an outstanding golfer. That’s the distance my left ear is from my right.” — Ben Crenshaw

“Stroke play is a better test of golf, but match play is a better test of character.” — Joe Carr

“When facing a hazard, focus your attention sharply on your target, not the hazard.” — Bob Rotella

“Watching Phil Mickelson play golf is like watching a drunk chasing a balloon near the edge of a cliff.” — David Feherty

“Golf is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off.” — Chi Chi Rodriguez

“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

“Life is not fair, so why should I make a course that is fair.” — Pete Dye

“A great shot is when you pull it off. A smart shot is when you don’t have the guts to try it.” — Phil Mickelson

“Don’t be too proud to take lessons. I’m not.” — Jack Nicklaus

“Happiness is a long walk with a putter.” — Greg Norman

“Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly a thousand times, he should be able to duplicate the performance at will. But such is certainly not the case.” — Bobby Jones

“Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle.” — Anonymous

“Golfing excellence goes hand-in-hand with alcohol, as many an Open and amateur champion has shown.” — Charles Price

“I had to figure out myself to figure out my game.” — Stewart Cink

“Golf is deceptively simple, endlessly complicated. A child can play it well, and a grown man can never master it.” — Robert Forgan

“Dividing the swing into its parts is like dissecting a cat. You’ll have blood and guts and bones all over the place. But you won’t have a cat.” — Ernest Jones

“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

“After you get the basics down, it’s all mental.” — Ken Venturi

“Never hurry, never worry, and always remember to smell the flowers along the way.” — Walter Hagen

“What’s the penalty for killing a photographer — one stroke or two?” — Davis Love III

“Everything that needs to be said about the mental side of golf could be written on a single sheet of paper.” — Mark James

“It’s a marriage. If I had to choose between my wife and my putter… well, I’d miss her.” — Gary Player

“Golf has probably kept more people sane than psychiatrists have.” — Harvey Penick

“When we complain about conditions, we’re just bitches. But when the men complain, people think, well, it really must be hard.” — Betsy King

“Instead of putting pressure on myself and thinking, ‘I’ve got to make this shot,’ I just thought, ‘Go ahead and make it.’ It’s a subtle difference but a big one.” — Corey Pavin

“As for Dr. Remond Courtney, his golf swing was so unusual that from a distance he appeared to be beating a snake to death. It was a very violent golf swing for a psychiatrist.” — Carl Hiaasen

“The trouble with me is I think too much. I always said you have to be dumb to play good golf.” — JoAnne Carner

“The man who can go into a patch of rough alone with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.” — P.G. Wodehouse

“I’m a great believer that if you don’t get the ball to the hole, it won’t go in.” — Colin Montgomerie

“Water creates a neurosis in golfers. The very thought of this harmless fluid robs them of their normal powers of rational thought, turns their legs to jelly, and produces a palsy of the upper limbs.” — Peter Dobereiner

“First you teach a golfer to hook the ball by using his hands and arms properly. Then you teach him how to take the hook away by using his body and legs properly.” — Harvey Penick

“Golf’s three ugliest words: still your shot.” — Dave Marr

“The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course.” — Billy Graham

“Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.” — Jack Nicklaus

“The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody put a flagstick on top.” — Pete Dye

“They call it golf because all the other four-letter words were taken.” — Raymond Floyd

“Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character.” — Arnold Palmer

“I look into eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, I am going to bury you.” — Seve Ballesteros

“Stand them over an 18-inch putt to win a Major and the game reverts to its 15th-century essence, the eternal puzzle of getting a little ball into a small hole.” — Derek Lawrenson

“More than a billion golf balls are manufactured annually, and most end up lost.” — Carl Hiaasen

“It’s much easier to have one swing thought than many.” — Butch Harmon

“I’m actually allergic to grass, trees, moss, mould and pine, all of which is rather inconvenient if you’re a golfer.” — Ian Poulter

“I didn’t think you would miss it. But I wasn’t going to give you the chance.” — Jack Nicklaus

“Give me a man with big hands and big feet and no brains and I’ll make a golfer out of him.” — Walter Hagen

“Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun.” — Jim Bishop

“My swing is so bad, I look like a caveman killing his lunch.” — Lee Trevino

“You’ve got to have the guts not to be afraid to screw up.” — Fuzzy Zoeller

“Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golfers become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.” — John Updike

“Tempo is the glue that sticks all elements of the golf swing together.” — Nick Faldo

“Don’t play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty.” — Harry Vardon

“As far as swing and techniques are concerned, I don’t know diddly squat. When I’m playing well, I don’t even take aim.” — Fred Couples

“If I played over here four straight weeks I’d be a raving lunatic.” — Tom Watson

“No one in the world could have holed that. Hack Nicklaus wouldn’t have holed it nor would Tony Jacklin. And I certainly wouldn’t have holed it.” — Seve Ballesteros

“I’ve learned to trust the subconscious. My instincts have never lied to me.” — Tiger Woods

“I hit it so well on the range today I almost posted a video. Then I realized even I don’t give a shit.” — Eddie Pepperell

“Don’t lose your temper about anything — anything whatsoever. If you lose your temper, you lose everything; self-control, self-respect, judgement, equanimity, decency of language, and, of course, the hole, and probably the game.” — Arnold Haultain

“The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.” — P.G. Wodehouse

“If God had wanted man to play golf, he would have given him an elbowless left arm, short asymmetrical legs with side-hinged knees, and a trapezoid rib cage from which diagonally jutted a two-foot neck topped by a three-eye head.” — Alan Coren

“Some weeks Nick likes to use Fanny, other weeks he prefers to do it by himself.” — Ken Brown

“What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.” — Arnold Palmer

“The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things.” — John Updike

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

“If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf.” — Percy Boomer

“Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” — Arnold Palmer

“Golf tips are like aspirin: One may do you good, but if you swallow the whole bottle you’ll be lucky to survive.” — Harvey Penick

“I never learned anything from a match that I won.” — Bobby Jones

“It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.” — David Feherty

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

“Shanking is like the hiccups; once you start, you never know when you’ll stop.” — Carl Hiaasen

“He’s practically taken a brass-rubbing of this green.” — Andrew Cotter

“Reverse every natural instinct you have and just do the opposite of what you’re inclined to do and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.” — Ben Hogan

“Bryson and I were talking about some of the science of an uphill putt and a downhill putt and the break and why it’s most from this point and that point and so forth… Dustin kind of shook his head and he said, ‘If I hang around you guys much longer, I’ll never break 100.’” — Phil Mickelson

“I would say it depends on what I can do in the restrictions of my biomechanics. So it’s all about air, air tolerances.” — Bryson DeChambeau

“It certainly puts into perspective little things like missed putts.” — Jean van de Velde

“The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.” — Bobby Jones

“If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is.” — Horace G. Hutchinson

“If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they’d starve to death.” — Sam Snead

“Hit it hard. It will land somewhere.” — Mark Calcavecchia

“If I’d learned anything about my golf game during the past eighteen months it was this: the longer I stare at the ball, the more likely I am to botch the shot.” — Carl Hiaasen

“I just practice before the majors. Regular tournaments I don’t practice.” — Brooks Koepka

“You make some stuff up in your brain, you know… What holds you back from doing your normal thing? I don’t know what it is. I can go to that putting green now and make twenty straight 3-footers. And then you get on the course, and you feel a little different, and you can’t do what you normally do.” — Ernie Els

“Being left-handed is a big advantage. No one knows enough about your swing to mess you up with advice.” — Bob Charles

“No game demands more scientific accuracy than golf, and there is no game in which shots that are not well played more surely meet with a just punishment.” — James Braid

“Yeah, I really need to work on my game.” — David Duval

“I have found the game to be, in all factualness, a universal language wherever I traveled at home or abroad.” — Ben Hogan

“Golf is the only sport I know of where a player pays for every mistake. A man can muff a serve in tennis, miss a strike in baseball, or throw an incomplete pass in football and still have another chance to square himself. In golf, every swing counts against you.” — Lloyd Mangrum

“Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.” — Arnold Palmer

“Mulligan: invented by an Irishman who wanted to hit one more twenty-yard grounder.” — Jim Bishop

“For this game you need, above all things, to be in a tranquil frame of mind.” — Harry Vardon

“You don’t know what pressure is until you play for five bucks with only two bucks in your pocket.” — Lee Trevino

“The golfer’s left side must be the dominant part of the swing. This is the only way to get maximum power and accuracy. If the right side takes over, there is no golf swing.” — Kathy Whitworth

“In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000-hour rule. In effect, that to achieve mastery of a task requires practicing it repeatedly for that length of time. Which means that at two hours a day of hitting balls, you should reach that target after about thirteen and a half years. And yes, this also explains why a lot of top sportsmen aren’t sparkling social creatures.” — Andrew Cotter

“My golf swing is a bit like ironing a shirt. You get one side smoothed out, turn it over and there is a big wrinkle on the other side. Then you iron that one out, turn it over and there is yet another wrinkle.” — Tom Watson

“A hybrid might rescue a player from a bad lie, but there is no rescue from a bad swing. When you suck, you suck.” — Carl Hiaasen

“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.” — Peter Jacobsen

“Golf is a game you can never get too good at. You can improve, but you can never get to where you master the game.” — Gay Brewer

“A leading difficulty with the average player is that he totally misunderstands what is meant by concentration. He may think he is concentrating hard when he is merely worrying.” — Bobby Jones

“Golf is the loneliest sport. You’re completely alone with every conceivable opportunity to defeat yourself. Golf brings out your assets and liabilities as a person. The longer you play, the more certain you are that a man’s performance is the outward manifestation of who, in his heart, he really thinks he is.” — Hale Irwin

“Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot.” — Sam Snead

“The golf ball may represent the flight of imagination, but the driver reflects the baser instincts of man, the animalistic passion to dominate. I am totally addicted to my driver. It’s bombs away, bombs away, bombs away.” — Mac O’Grady

“Reading the green is like reading the small type in a contract. If you don’t read it with painstaking care, you’re likely to be in trouble.” — Claude Hamilton

“Only one golfer in a thousand grips the clubs lightly enough.” — Johnny Miller

“If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.” — Dean Martin

“Golf is about how well you accept, respond to, and score with your misses much more so than it is a game of your perfect shots.” — Dr. Bob Rotella

“Never concede the putt that beats you.” — Harry Vardon

“Every shot counts. The three-foot putt is as important as the 300-yard drive.” — Henry Cotton

“You know what they say about big hitters…the woods are full of them.” — Jimmy Demaret

“When you lip out several putts in a row, you should never think that means that you’re putting well. When you’re putting well, the only question is what part of the hole it’s going to fall in, not if it’s going in.” — Jack Nicklaus

“The mind messes up more shots than the body.” — Tommy Bolt

“His driving is unbelievable. I don’t go that far on my holidays.” — Ian Baker-Finch

“On a putting green the mind can be a grave source of trouble. Begin to dislike the look of a putt, and the chances of holing it at once becomes less.” — Joyce Wethered

“It doesn’t matter if you look like a beast before or after the hit, as long as you look like a beauty at the moment of impact.” — Seve Ballesteros

“The trouble with golf is you’re only as good as your last putt.” — Doug Sanders

“A bad attitude is worse than a bad swing.” — Payne Stewart

“There are no shortcuts on the quest for perfection.” — Ben Hogan

“You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.” — Bobby Jones

“A shot that goes in the cup is pure luck, but a shot to within two feet of the flag is skill.” — Ben Hogan

“A perfectly straight shot with a big club is a fluke.” — Jack Nicklaus

“Forget your opponents; always play against par.” — Sam Snead

“Putts get real difficult the day they hand out the money.” — Lee Trevino

“You drive for show and putt for dough.” — Bobby Locke

“The more I practice, the luckier I get.” — Gary Player

“My eyes go out of focus and my brain kind of goes out of a little focus too. So I don’t get hung up on trying to hit anything on a perfect line. It’s hard to explain.” — Loren Roberts

“Let the ball get in the way of the swing, instead of making the ball the object.” — Jack Burke Sr.

“Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.” — Alan Shepard

“A golf swing is a collection of corrected mistakes.” — Carol Mann

“I’ve never had a coach… Most people make everything far too complicated, in life as well as golf. You can pick up a club and just get on with it.” — Laura Davies

“I don’t let birdies and pars get in the way of having a good time.” — Angelo Spagnolo

“It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.” — Hank Aaron

“Golf… is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.” — P.G. Wodehouse

“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 a compromise between what your ego wants you to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.” — Bruce Crampton