\------------------------------------------------------------------- It is decreeted and ordianed, that the Weapon-shawinges be halden be the Lordes and Baronnes Spiritual and Temporal, four times in the zeir. And that the Fute-ball and Golfe be uttlerly cryed downe, and not be sued. And as tuitching the Fute-ball and the Golfe, to be punished by the Barronniss un-law. --James II of Scotland, 1457 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fute-ball and Golfe be abused in time cumming, and that the buttes be made up, and schuting used. --James III of Scotland, 1471 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is statute and ordianed that in na place of the Realme there be used Fute-ball, Golfe, or uther sik unproffitable sportes. --James IV of Scotland, 1491 -------------------------------------------------------------------- What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is earnest. We live in a practical age. All around us we see foreign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf? What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good? --P.G. Wodehouse (The Clicking of Cuthbert) -------------------------------------------------------------------- On the golf course, a man may be the dogged victim of inexorable fate, be struck down by an appalling stroke of tragedy, become the hero of unbelievable melodrama, or the clown in a side-splitting comedy. --Robert Tyre Jones (The World of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is more exacting than racing, cards, speculation or matrimony. In almost all other games you pit yourself against a mortal foe; in golf it is yourself against the world: no human being stays your progress as you drive your ball over the face of the earth. --Arnold Haultain (The Mystery of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no shape nor size of body, no awkwardness nor ungainliness, which puts good golf beyond reach. There are good golfers with spectacles, with one eye, with one leg, even with one arm. In golf, while there is life there is hope. --Sir Walter Simpson (The Art of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I look on my life and try to decide out of what I have got most actual pleasure, I have no doubt at all saying that I have got more out of golf than anything else. --Lord Brabazon (The Brabazon Story) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game to teach you about the message from within, about the subtle voices of the body-mind. And once you understand them you can more clearly see your `hamartia', the ways in which you approach to the game reflects your entire life. Nowhere does a man go so naked. --Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom -------------------------------------------------------------------- Excessive golfing dwarfs the intellect. Nor is this to be wondered at when we consider that the more fatuously vacant the mind is, the better for play. It has been observed that absolute idiots play the steadiest. --Sir Walter Simpson (The Art of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The soldier, having sought the bubble reputation in the cannon's mouth, may earn laurels on a field which shall be bloodless and receive at least a purer pleasure from deftly landing his ball in the hole than ever came to him from letting daylight into his fellow mortals. --Dr. Proudfoot, 1890 -------------------------------------------------------------------- However unlucky you may be, it really is not fair to expect your adversary's grief for your undeserved misfortunes to be as poignant as your own. --Horace Hutchinson (Hints on Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The glorious thing is that thousands of golfers, in park land, on windy downs, in gorse, in heather, by the many-sounding sea, enjoy their imbecilities, revel in their infirmities, and from failure itself draw that final victory - the triumph of hope. --R.C. Robertson-Glasgow -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf in the interest of good health and good manners. It promotes self-restraint and affords a chance to play the man and act the gentleman. --President Taft -------------------------------------------------------------------- Shall the married man play golf? This admits of no argument. Certainly. Of all the plagues to a woman in the house is a man during the day. --Dr. Proudfoot, 1890 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is to me what his Sabine farm was to the poet Horace - a solace and an inspiration. --Ramsay MacDonald -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a test of temper, a trial of honour, a revealer of character. It means going into God's out of doors. getting close to nature, fresh air and exercise, a sweeping of mental cobwebs and a genuine relaxation of tired tissues. --David Forgan -------------------------------------------------------------------- The poetic temperament is the worst for golf. It dreams of brilliant drives, iron shots laid dead, and long putts holed, while in real golf success waits for him who takes care of the foozles and leaves the fine shots to take care of themselves. --Sir Walter Simpson (The Art of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is one man who ought never appear on a golfing green. And this is the good man. Let him remain away. That immaculate creature whose life is spent in seeing his neighbour's faults and comparing them with his own wonderful perfection, is quite out of place amongst golfers. They are all men, not saints. Therefore let the Pharisee, whose pretensions to superiority we will never dispute, keep at home. --Dr. Proudfoot, 1890 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a science, the study of a lifetime, in which you can exhaust yourself but never your subject. --David Forgan -------------------------------------------------------------------- Unlike the other Scotch game of whiskey drinking, excess in it is not injurious to the health. --Sir Walter Simpson (The Art of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Beyond the fact that it is a limitless arena for the full play of human nature, there is no sure accounting for golf's fascination. Obviously yet mysteriously, it furnishes its devotees with an intense, many-sided, and abiding pleasure unlike that which any other form of recreation affords. Perhaps it is, as Andrew Carnegie once claimed, `indispensable adjunct of high civilization'. Perhaps it is nothing more than the best game man has ever devised. --Herbert Warren Wind (The Complete Golfer) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Try to remember that a person may be a most indifferent golfer, and yet be a good Christian gentleman, and in some respects worthy of your esteem. --Horace Hutchinson (Hints on Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't care to join and club that's prepared to have me as a member. --Groucho Marx -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- A golfer needs a loving wife to whom he can describe the day's play through the long evening. --P.G. Wodehouse -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game kings and presidents play when they get tired of running countries. --Charles Price -------------------------------------------------------------------- In golf, humiliations are the essence of the game. --Alistair Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf puts a man's character on the anvil and his richest qualities - patience, poise, restraint - to the flame. --Billy Casper -------------------------------------------------------------------- What golf has of honour, what it has of justice, of fair play, of good fellowship, and sportsmanship - in a word, what is best in golf - is almost surely traceable to the inspiration of the Royal and Ancient. --Isaac Grainger -------------------------------------------------------------------- You get to know more of the character of a man in a round of golf than in six months of political experience. --Lloyd George -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is typical capitalist lunacy. --George Bernard Shaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a way of spoiling a good walk. --Mark Twain -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --Sir Winston Churchill -------------------------------------------------------------------- My favourite shots are the practice swing and the conceded putt. The rest can never be mastered. --Lord Robertson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is Life. If you can't take golf, you can't take life. --Anon -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golfing excellence goes hand and hand with alcohol, as many an open and amateur champion has shown. --Henry Longhurst -------------------------------------------------------------------- I owe everything to golf. Where else would a guy with an IQ like mine make this much money? --Hubert Green -------------------------------------------------------------------- Be funny on a golf course? Do I kid my best friend's mother about her heart condition? --Phil Silvers -------------------------------------------------------------------- If your adversary is badly bunkered, there is no rule against your standing over him and counting his strokes aloud, with increasing gusto as their number mounts up; but it will be a wise precaution to arm yourself with the niblick before doing so, so as to meet him on equal terms. --Horace Hutchinson (Hints on Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- A tournament goes on for days. It is played at a dangerously high mental pressure. Golf makes its demands on the mind. A golfer is terribly exposed in almost every way. The responsibility is his and there is no way to camouflage this, no hope of jettisoning it. --Peter Alliss (Alliss through the Looking Glass) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When five up express, as is polite, regret at laying a stimy, but rejoice in your heart. --Sir Walter Simpson (The Art of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- When the great snooker player Joe Davis saw his first game of golf the putting puzzled him. `Why', he asked his golfing friend, `don't they knock the ball onto the hole the first time?`. --Anon -------------------------------------------------------------------- The game requires a certain cold toughness of mind, and absorption of will. There was not an athlete I talked to from other sports who did not hold the professional golfer in complete awe, with thanksgiving that golf was not their profession. --George Plimpton (The Bogey Man) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The best stroked putt in a lifetime does not bring the aesthetic satisfaction of a perfectly hit wood or iron shot. There is nothing to match the whoosh and soar, the almost magical flight of a beautifully hit drive or 5-iron. --Al Barkow -------------------------------------------------------------------- A man who can putt is a match for anyone. --Willie Park -------------------------------------------------------------------- While, on the whole, playing through the green is the part most trying to the temper, putting is that most trying to the nerves. There is always the hope that a bad drive may be redeemed by a fine approach shot, or that a `foozle' with the brassy may be balanced by some brilliant performance with the iron. But when the stage of putting-out has been reached no further illusions are possible. --Earl Balfour (Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When a putter is waiting his turn to hole out a putt of one or two feet in length, on which the match hangs at the last hole, it is of vital importance that he think of nothing. At this supreme moment he ought to fill his mind with vacancy. He must not even allow himself the consolation of religion. --Sir Walter Simpson (The Art of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter Hay, goldsmith, accusit for playing at the boulis and golff upoun Sondaye in the tyme of the sermon. --Record of Elgin, 1596 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Long drives, if it be not the most deadly, is certainly the most dashing and fascinating part of the game; and of all the others the principal difficulty of the Golfer to acquire, and his chief delight when he can manage it. --H.B. Farnie, 1857 -------------------------------------------------------------------- He struck Gysbert Cornelisz, tavern-keeper, and Claes Andriesz with a golf club at the house of Steven Jansz for which, together, he forfeits FL. 20. --Court minutes of the colony of Rensselaerswtck, Albany, 1650 -------------------------------------------------------------------- A good player who is a great putter is a match for any golfer. A great hitter who cannot putt is a match for no one. --Ben Sayers -------------------------------------------------------------------- Whoever plays ball with a club shall be fined 20 shillings or their upper garment. --The Magistrate of Brussels, 1360 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a better game played downhill. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- The behavior etiquette for a greenside bunker should go into reverse. Players should be forbidden to smooth them in any way. The bunker should be the fearful place it once was, not the perfect surface from which a pro expects to float his ball out stone dead, something he doesn't expect when chipping. --Michael Hobbs -------------------------------------------------------------------- The next time you see a good player stalking backward and forwards on the green, do not be led away by the idea that he is especially painstaking, but rather pity him for a nervous individual who is putting off the evil moment as long as he possibly can. --Ted Ray -------------------------------------------------------------------- The person I fear most in the last two rounds is myself. --Tom Watson -------------------------------------------------------------------- A good one iron shot is about as easy to come by as an understanding wife. --Dan Jenkins -------------------------------------------------------------------- We have these champions of the practice range who hit hundreds of shots but I think if you haven't got it when you get to a tournament you won't find it hitting away for hours. Use your brain, not your endurance. --Peter Thompson -------------------------------------------------------------------- In America the Ryder Cup rates somewhere between the Tennessee Frog Jumping Contest and the Alabama Melon-Pip Spitting Championship, although the players themselves have always taken it seriously until Tom Weiskopf declined to play in favour of a week's holiday shooting sheep. --Peter Dobereiner, 1978 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The better you putt, the bolder you play. --Don January -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hitting a golf ball and putting have nothing in common. They're two different games. You work all your life to perfect a repeating swing that will get you to the greens, and then you have to try to do something that is totally unrelated. There shouldn't be any cups, just flag sticks. And then the man who hit the most fairways and greens and got closest to the pins would be the tournament winner. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- It may have been the greatest four-wood anyone ever hit. It was so much on the flag that I had to lean sideways to follow the flight of the ball. --Gary Player -------------------------------------------------------------------- No one remembers who came second. --Walter Hagan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I may go for it or I amy not. It all depends on what I elect to do on my backswing. --Billy Joe Patton -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tennis is not in use amongst us, but in lieu of that, you have that excellent recreation of goff-ball than which truly I do not know a better. --The Marquis of Argyll, 1661 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody strikes the ball on the streets with clubs with lead or iron heads. --Oridinace of Zierikzee, 1429 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the only game in which a precise knowledge of the rules can earn one a reputation for bad sportsmanship. --Patrick Campbell -------------------------------------------------------------------- Winners are a different breed of cat. They have an inner drive and are willing to give of themselves whatever it takes to win. --Byron Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Victory is everything. You can spend the money but you can never spend the memories. --Ken Venturi -------------------------------------------------------------------- To be a champion, you have to find a way to get the ball in the cup on the last day. --Tom Watson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never pray on a golf course. Actually, the Lord answers my prayers everywhere except on the course. --Billy Graham -------------------------------------------------------------------- The more I practice, the luckier I get. --Gary Player -------------------------------------------------------------------- A perfectly straight shot with a big club is a fluke. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- With the huge excited crowd surging all around him, it is only natural that the player should come in for a good deal of buffeting about. It amy come as a surprise to many people to know after a big tournament my ankles and shins are black and blue. --Harry Vardon -------------------------------------------------------------------- I feel calm in calm colours. I don't want people to watch the way I dress. I want people to watch the way I play. --Severiano Ballesteros -------------------------------------------------------------------- The British Open probably would have died if the American stars hadn't started going over to play in it more regularly the last 15 years. Arnold Palmer saved it, but as far as I'm concerned he didn't do us any favours. --Dave Hill -------------------------------------------------------------------- The hundred or so followers of the Royal and Ancient game who journeyed from Edinburgh on the morning of Thursday 22 September, the opening day, went prepared to have a thorough treat. --David Scott Duncan (of the first Muirfield Open, 1892) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Never break your putter and your driver in the same round or you're dead. --Tommy Bolt -------------------------------------------------------------------- What other people may find in poetry, I find in the flight of a good drive. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- The number one guys have to be almost totally self-centered. They have to possess an incredible burning for success. They have to ignore their friends and enemies and sometimes their families and concentrate entirely on winning. I couldn't survive that constant intensity, their ability to burn and burn and burn. --Frank Beard -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mary Queen of Scots appears to have practiced this game, for it was made a charge against her by her enemies, as an instance of her indifference to Darnley's fate, that she was seen playing at golf and pall-mall in the fields beside Seton a few days after his death. --Inventories of Mary Queen of Scots, 1863 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tommy Morris eclipse his contemporaries and totally changed their conception of how well the game could be played - like Vardon, Jones and Hogan in later generations. --Michael Hobbs -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a special delight in seeing the kind of divine fury with which he laces into the ball, and yet the wonderful accuracy with which the club meets the ball. --Horace Hutchinson (of James Baird) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here Eddie, hold the flag while I putt out. --Walter Hagan (to the Prince of Wales) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When the Haig died in 1969, Junior called me from Detroit to tell me there would be no funeral. Instead, a bunch of his cronies were going to throw a party at the Detroit Athletic Club. They thought The Haig would prefer that. I didn't go. Like Hamlet, golf's sweet prince, I thought, deserved a grander exit than that. He was splendid. They should have carried him out on a shield. --Charles Price (of Walter Hagen) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Miss a putt for $2,000? Not likely! --Walter Hagen -------------------------------------------------------------------- About three days before Jones' death, when he knew he was dying, he said to the members of his family, `If this is all there is to it, it sure is peaceful.' That is good to know. We were lucky we had Jones so long, for he had a rare gift for passing ideas and ideals on to other people. I think he probably enriched more lives than anyone else I have known. He enriched mine beyond measure. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we all played golf like Mac Smith, the National Open Championship could be played on one course every day in the year and never a divot mark would scar the beautiful fairway. He treats the grass of a golf course as though it were an altar cloth. --Tommy Armour -------------------------------------------------------------------- He dresses like a gardener and usually plays like one. --Henry Cotton (of 1935 Open Champion Alf Perry) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I held the putter in a vice-like grip and from the moment I took it back from the ball I was blind and unconscious. --Tommy Armour (commenting on how he had holed the putt which won him the 1931 Open Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam Snead was once told a very funny story about gambling at golf. He laughed so loud you could have heard a pin drop. --Porky Oliver -------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually, Ben didn't leave himself much time for laughter. I can't recall him ever finding humour in anything that happened on the golf course. Golf was his business - a tough business, full of disappointments. --Fred Corcoran -------------------------------------------------------------------- I just try to put it on the fairway, then the green and not threeputt. --Peter Thompson -------------------------------------------------------------------- How about that amigo. I just come over to see my friends and I win ze bloody championship. --Roberto De Vicenzo (on winning the 1967 Open Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe you think I'm a stupid Argentine, but you spell my name wrong on the seating plan, the place cards and the menu - and different each time. --Roberto De Vincenzo (at an official dinner after he failed to tie for the 1968 Masters after signing an incorrect scorecard) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hagen said that no one remembers who finished second. But they still ask me if I ever think about that putt I missed to win the 1970 Open at St. Andrews. I tell them that sometimes it doesn't cross my mind for a full five minutes. --Doug Sanders -------------------------------------------------------------------- Real pressure in golf is playing for $10 when you've only got $5 in your pocket. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- We tournament golfers are much overrated. We get paid to much. --Tom Watson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I had a reputation for being tough. You had to be when you were Italian. --Gene Sarazan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than TV golf. --Jack Lemmon -------------------------------------------------------------------- You have the hands, now play with your heart. --Roberto De Vicenzo (to Seve Ballesteros before he won the 1970 Open Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They say I get into too many bunkers. But is no problem. I am the best bunker player. --Severiano Ballesteros (after winning the 1970 Open Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My swing is faultless. --Ian Woosnam -------------------------------------------------------------------- Of all the golfers in the world I cannot believe that anyone will make a greater impact upon the championships than this very tough, very determined young man. The world is at his feet and he is only 21 years old. --Pat Ward Thomas (of Jack Nicklaus) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think I fail a bit less than everyone else. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- So how did Nicklaus win so much? Because he could finish a hole better than anyone else. As a player he's the greatest of all time but as a golfer I can't even put him in the first fifty. --Wild Bill Mehlhorn -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nicklaus plays a kind of golf with which I am not familiar. --Bobby Jones -------------------------------------------------------------------- He is the most immeasurable of golf champions. But this is not entirely true because of all he has won, or because of that mysterious fury with which he has managed to rally himself. It is partly because of the nobility he has brought to losing. And more than anything because of the pure unmixed joy he has brought to trying. --Dan Jenkins (of Arnold Palmer) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The answer to Hogan is, I fancy, that if Hogan means to win, you lose. --Henry Longhurst -------------------------------------------------------------------- I couldn't wait for the sun to come up the next morning so that I could get out on the course again. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I try to work with God as a partner. --Gary Player -------------------------------------------------------------------- Why that would be like challenging Bing Crosby to a singing contest, wouldn't it? --Ben Hogan (on hearing of a challenge from the reigning British Open Champion) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold Palmer is an early riser. He is anxious to get the day going because who knows how many good things might happen. --Mark McCormack -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm almost delighted I lost. I might have turned pro otherwise. --Billy Joe Patton -------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the remarkable things about Walter Hagen was the fact that, even in their defeat, his opponents all had tremendous affection for him. --Fred Corcoran -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ben Hogan will keep winning championships as long as he wants to badly enough. --Bobby Jones -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no other loser in sport who has shown himself to be as gracious and warm as Nicklaus has shown himself to be. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- Seve Ballesteros is a rare kind of guy. He's an excitable golfer who can still concentrate. --Larry Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- In those days [the 1930s] the money was the main thing, the only thing I played for. Championships were something to grow old with. --Byron Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I had to have someone putt a 20-footer for everything I own - my house, my cars, my family - I'd want Nicklaus to putt for me. --Dave Hill -------------------------------------------------------------------- The King's guards shall attend him at the church and also when he goeth to the fields to walk or goff. --Lord Lothian (referring to Charles II) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hell, it ain't like losing a leg! --Billy Joe Patton (after losing the Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- So in the summer of 1968, a young golfer from Texas experienced something that would forever change his life. Not only did I fall in love with formal tournament competition, but I was enraptured with so many other facets of the game; the different courses, the people, the history and traditions. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- If Charles II felt any way troubled he was at least allowed to have recourse to the distractions of golf. --Samuel R. Gardiner, 1894 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The ugly specter of racism in golf reared its head in America as early as 1896. In the second US Open, held that year at Shinnecock Hill, a group of professionals threatened to boycott play if John Shippen, of black and Indian parentage, was allowed to compete. The first USGA president, Theodore Havemeyer, refused to bar him. --Bud Dufner -------------------------------------------------------------------- King Charles I is said to have been fond of the exercise of the golf. While he was engaged in a party of golf on the Links of Leith, a letter was delivered into his hands, which gave him the first account of the rebellion in Ireland. --William Tytler, 1792 -------------------------------------------------------------------- A big-name winner like Palmer is a modern King Midas. Everything he drinks, smokes, wears or drives can turn to gold. All he has to do is testify, yes, that's what I put on my hair, smoke, drink, wear, drive, swing and hit. --Tony Lema -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter arrives late. `I was shaving,' he explained easily. `Shaving?' I asked. 'You must have had a month-old beard to get rid of.' Hagen shook his head and smiled. `No,' he said, 'You see, when I have a match to play I begin to relax as soon as I wake up. Everything I do, I do slow and easy. That goes for stroking the razor, getting dressed, and eating my breakfast. I'm practically in slow motion. By the time I'm ready to tee off, I'm so used to taking my time that it's impossible to hurry my swing.' --Johnny Farrell -------------------------------------------------------------------- After a golfer has been out on the circuit for a while he learns how to handle his dating so that it doesn't interfere with his golf. The first rule usually is no woman-chasing after Wednesday. --Tony Lema -------------------------------------------------------------------- The putter which Locke uses has often been called his magic wand. It was given to him in 1926 and was a long wooden shafted rusty old club with a small upright iron blade. Locke treasured it above all his possessions and on his first visit to the United States he was so fearful of losing it that he slept with it at night. --Ronald Norval -------------------------------------------------------------------- A match against Bobby Jones is just as though you got your hand caught in a buzz saw. He coasts along serenely waiting for you to miss a shot, and the moment you do he has you on the hook and you never get off. He can drive straighter than any man living. He is perfectly machine-like in his iron play, and on the greens he is a demon. --Francis Ouimet -------------------------------------------------------------------- Just knock hell out of it with your right hand. --Tommy Armour -------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh hang it! With so many things to be thought of all at once, steady play is impossible. --Sir Walter Simpson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Give me a man with big hands and big feet and no brain and I'll make a golfer out of him. --Walter Hagen -------------------------------------------------------------------- Only one golfer in a thousand grips the club lightly enough. --Johnny Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I didn't know my distance to a yard, I couldn't break 80 on any golf course. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I want a long ball, I spin my hips faster. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a hands game. --Henry Cotton -------------------------------------------------------------------- All good players have good hands. And I'm afraid you have to be born with them. --Dave Stockton -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is played with the arms. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can talk to a fade but a hook won't listen. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --R.T.Jones -------------------------------------------------------------------- Every good golfer keeps his left hand leading the clubhead through impact. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- Through the ball we are all the same. We just have different ways of getting it there. --Charles Coody -------------------------------------------------------------------- `The caddie will only drink the more if overpaid,' you say. Indeed! and to what good purpose do you apply the money you grudge to the poor? Is there something nobler in your gout and dyspepsia than in my caddie's red nose? --Sir Walter Simpson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was lying 10th and had a 350foot putt. I whispered over my shoulder: `How does this one break?' And my caddie said `Who cares?' --Jack Lemmon -------------------------------------------------------------------- The only time I talk on the golf course is to my caddie. And then only to complain when he gives me the wrong club. --Severiano Ballesteros -------------------------------------------------------------------- To criticisms, rectifying them, and then sending the bill to whoever had complained. --George Plimpton (The Bogey Man) -------------------------------------------------------------------- These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- The fairways were so narrow you had to walk down them single file. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- St. Andrews is drenched in golf. It reminds me of a Spanish town when bull-fighting is afoot. Every man, woman, and child seems to have a stake in the game. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker but finish their days work to be off to the links. --Peter Lawless -------------------------------------------------------------------- Until you play it, St. Andrews looks like the sort of real estate you couldn't give away. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- The trick for the developer, as devised through his architect, is to build something that is photogenically stunning, however impractical, extravagant or absurd. Never mind the golfer, that most gullible of all citizens. --Peter Thompson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I try to build courses for the most enjoyment by the greatest number. --Alister Mackenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- The mystique of Muirfield lingers on. So does the memory of Carnoustie's foreboding. So does the scenic wonder of Turnberry, and the haunting incredibility of Prestwick, and the pleasant deception of Troon. But put them all together and St. Andrews can play their low ball for atmosphere. --Dan Jenkins -------------------------------------------------------------------- St. Andrews never impressed me at all. I wondered how it got such a reputation. The only reason could be on account of its age. --Bill Mehlhorn -------------------------------------------------------------------- After the Restoration, James Duke of York was sent to Edinburg, and his favourite pastimes appear to have been torturing of the adherents to the Covenant, and the playing of golf on the Links of Leith. --John Robertson -------------------------------------------------------------------- About this toun are the fairest and largest linkes of any pair of Scotland, fitt for Archery, Goffing, Ryding, and all other exercises; they do surpasse the fields of Montrose or St. Andrews. --Sir Robert Gordon (writing about Dornoch, 1630) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Had the gutta-percha golf ball not been invented, it is likely enough that golf itself would now be in the catalogue of virtually extinct games, only locally surviving, as stool-ball and knurr and spell. --Horace Hutchinson, 1899 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The advent of the rubber ball was instrumental in creating an entirely different method of striking the object. The solid ball required to be hit for carry, whereas it was quickly apparent that the Haskell lent itself to an enormous run. I hold the firm opinion that from this date the essential attitude towards accuracy was completely lost sight of. This was the start of the craze for length and still more length. --Harry Vardon, 1933 -------------------------------------------------------------------- To control his own ball, all alone without help or hindrance, the golfer must first and last control himself. At each stroke, the ball becomes a vital extension, an image of one's innermost self, --John Stuart Martin (The Curious History of the Golf Ball) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The niblick, with its heavy head of iron, is a capital club for knocking down solicitors. --Anon -------------------------------------------------------------------- John Ball was using the Haskell ball and doing such wonders with it that I found myself envying him. I had not seen the rubber-cored ball before and when we reached the 15th hole, Mr. Ball, smiling at my comments regarding his drives, gave me a Haskell to try. That was the end of the gutty for me. --Sandy Herd -------------------------------------------------------------------- I found very little difference in the length of drive between the Haskell and gutta balls; perhaps they run further, but certainly don't carry as far. They are also more difficult to stop when approaching and on the putting green are very liable to jump out of the hole. --James Braid -------------------------------------------------------------------- I really do not see why we should allow the Haskell to come in. It should be slaughtered at the ports. The discovery of a ball that flies considerably further would be a menace to the game of golf. It would immediately make all of our holes the wrong length. --Manchester Guardian, 1901 -------------------------------------------------------------------- No power on earth will deter men from using a ball that will add to the length of their drives. --Golf Illustrated, 1902 -------------------------------------------------------------------- One never realized what a stubborn, inert thing a gutty is until the Haskell come on the scene. --Golf Illustrated, 1902 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here one makes clubs fine and noble. Play colf with pleasure, not brawls. Play for a pint or a gallon. Let the winter be cold and hard, We play the ball just the same. --House Sign in Haarlem, 1650 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ye will remember to bring with you ane dossen of common golf ballis to me and David Montcrieff. --Letter from the Orkneys, 1585 -------------------------------------------------------------------- `Who is the best lefthand player you ever saw,' said Mr. Bliss, himself a lefthander and playing the game of his life. `Never saw one worth a damn,' Harry Vardon replied. --Michael Hobbs -------------------------------------------------------------------- For the 1920 US Open, the future superstar, Bobby Jones, playing his first Open, was paired with the great Harry Vardon, then the greatest player the game had ever seen. Early in the round, Jones thinned a simple short pitch right through the green. Red with embarrassment he turned to Vardon and said: `Mr. Vardon, have you ever seen a worse shot than that!' `No,' Vardon replied. --Michael Hobbs -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hush-a-bye, baby, pretty one, sleep; Daddy's gone golfing to win the club sweep. If he plays nicely (I hope that he will) Mother will show him her dressmaker's bill. Hush-a-bye, baby, safe in your cot; Daddy's come home, and his temper is hot. Cuddle down closer, baby of mine; Daddy went round in a hundred and nine! --Anon -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't like doctors. They are like golfers. Every one has a different answer to your problem. --Severiano Ballesteros -------------------------------------------------------------------- My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery people would stop dying. --Ed Furgol -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf and sex are the only things you can enjoy without being good at them. --Jimmy Demaret -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I dine with Mr. Snead he always suggests that I order as if I was expecting to pay for it myself. I have known many great destroyers of money, but Mr. Snead is not among them. --George Low -------------------------------------------------------------------- In the USA a number of first class golfers take as long to choose a wife as a club. Sometimes they make the wrong choice in each case. --Dai Rees -------------------------------------------------------------------- Look like a woman but play like a man. --Jan Stephenson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Twice Open Champion Willie Park coined the slogan: `The man who can putt is a match for anyone.' To which J.H. Taylor produced the response: `The man who can approach does not need to putt.' --Michael Hobbs -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's good sportsmanship not to pick up lost balls while they are still rolling. --Mark Twain -------------------------------------------------------------------- Is my friend in the bunker or is that bastard on the green? --Anon -------------------------------------------------------------------- Let us examine the proposition that women golfers are people. It requires an effort to adjust to this idea, for ever since the beheading of the first woman golfer, Mary Queen of Scots, the golf world has openly regretted that the practice didn't start a trend. --Peter Dobereiner -------------------------------------------------------------------- Moderation is essential in all things, madam, but never in my life have I failed to beat a teetotaller. --Harry Vardon -------------------------------------------------------------------- You have to play golf in Scotland. What else is there to do there? Wear a skirt? --George Low -------------------------------------------------------------------- A passionately keen golfer died and in due course found himself in Hell. To his delight, however, he immediately came upon a superb golf course. `This is marvellous surprise, but why is no one golfing?' The reply came: `This is Hell you know. The problem is that there are no balls.' --Michael Hobbs -------------------------------------------------------------------- A good golf course is like good music. It does not necessarily appeal the first time one plays it. --Alister Mackenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- `The man who hates golfers' is what they call me. They couldn't be more wrong. I design holes that are fun to play. --Robert Trent Jones -------------------------------------------------------------------- The reason the Road hole at St. Andrews is the most difficult par 4 in the world is that it was designed as a par 6. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- St. Andrews? I feel like I'm back visiting an old grandmother. She's crotchety and eccentric but also elegant. Anyone who doesn't fall in love with her has no imagination. --Tony Lema -------------------------------------------------------------------- By all means screw their women and drink their booze but never write one word about their bloody awful golf course. --Henry Longhurst (advise to a fellow journalist being pressed to make a trip to a new expensive golf development) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Forget Cypress Point and the others. This is easily the finest course in the world, the absolute number one. I am glad it is difficult to get here and I am not going to tell anyone about Dornoch. I want to keep it for myself, the way it is, and come back every year until I die. --American Golf Architect -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm glad I brought this course, this monster, to its knees. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- You would like to gather up several holes from Prestwick and mail them to your top ten enemies. --Dan Jenkins -------------------------------------------------------------------- Course built for 300 yard tee shot artists are not great course. --Peter Thompson -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Londoner who declared golf a moral game is all wrong. Golf is anything but a moral pastime. It is essentially and in all its phases immoral. Golf is followed by a set of Cyrenaic sensuits as corrupt in their philosophy and profane in their doctrines as ever Aristippus was. They are a set of Hottentots who find golf the consummate answer to the proposition that the greatest good is the gratification of the senses. --St. Louis Republic editorial in 1905 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf has so many virtues; it is not too strenuous; it is healthy; it can be played, anyhow in our climate, practically the whole year round. It has so many advantages over all other games that it must endure and prosper. --Lord Barbazon of Tara, 1952 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a thousand pities that neither Aristotle nor Shakespeare was a golfer. There is no other game that strips the soul so naked. --Horace Hutchinson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Unlike many other sports, golf does not enjoy the priviledge of knowing its exact birthright. --Ian Morrison, 1990 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Because golf exposes the flaws of the human swing - a basically simple manuever - it causes more self-torture than any game short of Russian roulette. --Grantland Rice -------------------------------------------------------------------- Its fascinations have always been gratefully acknowledged, and not a few of its worthier practioners have from time to time in prose and verse, rehearsed its praises. --Robert Clark, 1875 -------------------------------------------------------------------- No one remembers who was second. --Walter Hagan -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is an exercise which is much used by the Gentlemen of Scotland. A large common in which there are several little holes is chosen for the purpose. It is played with little leather balls stuffed with feathers; and sticks made somewhat in the form of a handy-wicket. He who puts a ball into a given number of holes, with the fewest strokes, gets the game. --Benjamin Rush, 1771 (Rush was one of the signers of the Declaration of Indepenence) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When you fall in love with golf, you seldom fall easy. It's obsession at first sight. --Thomas Boswell, 1990 -------------------------------------------------------------------- If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game would be played far better than it is. --Horace Hutchinson, 1886 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is deceptively simple, endlessly complicated. A child can play it well, and a grown man can never master it. Any single round if it is full of unexpected triumphs and seemingly perfect shots that end in disaster. It is almost a science, yet it is a puzzle without an answer. It is gratifying and tantalizing, precise and unpredicatable. It requires complete concentration and total relaxation. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening - and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented. --Robert Forgan -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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, 1989 -------------------------------------------------------------------- No athletic game affords such opportunity for cool calculation or such occasion for self-examination and self-castigation as golf. -John L. Low, 1903 -------------------------------------------------------------------- A great deal of unnecessarily bad golf is played in this world. --Harry Vardon, 1922 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Of this diversion the Scots are so fond, that, when the weather will permit, you may see a multitude of all ranks, from the senator of justice to the lowest tradesman, mingled together, in their shirts, and following the balls with utmost eagerness. --Thomas Smollett, 1771 -------------------------------------------------------------------- A tolerable day, a tolerable green, a tolerable opponent, supply, or ought to supply, all that any reasonably constituted human being should require in the way of entertainment. --A.J. Balfour, 1890 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember that it is always possible to 'overgolf' yourself. Two rounds a day is enough for any man with a week or more of solid golf in front of him. --Horace Hutchinson, 1896 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, it is a cruel game, one in which the primitive instincts of man are given full play, and the difference between golf and fisticuffs is that in one the pain is of the mind and in the other it is of the body. --Henry Leach, 1914 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The game lends itself to fantasies about our abilities. --Peter Alliss, 1981 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Playing golf is like learning a foreign language. --Henry Longhurst, 1937 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Any game where a man 60 can beat a man 30 ain't a game. --Burt Shotten (former manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf obviously provides one of our best forms of healthful exercise accompanied by good fellowship and companionship. --Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 -------------------------------------------------------------------- He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie. --Mickey Mantle, 1962 -------------------------------------------------------------------- If a man can shoot 10 birdies, there's no reason why he can't shoot 18. Why can't you birdie every hole on the course? --Ben Hogan, 1941 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The problem with golf is I have to deal with a humiliation factor. --George H. W. Bush -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game of the head as well as a game of the hands. --Jerome Travers, 1913 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never played a round when I didn't learn something new about the game. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- From its earliest beginnings, golf has been a gentleman's game - to be played as much for the sake of the game as for the contest. --Tony Lema, 1966 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf charms by its infinite variety. --Theodore Moone -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no special age for learning to play golf, but it is better not to postpone the attempt till after 50. --Arnaud Massey, 1911 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think golf is good for boxing, but the reverse is far from being the case. --Max Baer, 1939 (former heavyweight champion) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game in which attitude of mind counts for incomparably more than mightiness of muscle. --Arnold Haultain, 1908 -------------------------------------------------------------------- With any other sport or pastime golf compares favourably. --Sir W.G. Simpson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf, after all, is probably the universal sport. --Lorne Rubenstein -------------------------------------------------------------------- In golf, as in no other sport, your principal opponent is youself. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never learned anything from a match that I won. --Robert T. Jones, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- It can be asserted with total confidence that one of the most important reasons why we golfers believe golf to be the finest of all games is that it is played in beautiful surroundings. --Peter Dobereiner, 1978 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Pressure is playing a five-dollar Nassau with only a dollar in your pocket. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf keeps the heart young and the eyes clear. --Andra Kirkaldy, 1921 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was one of Scotland's greatest gifts to modern civilization. --Charles Mortimer, 1952 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game not just of manners but of morals. --Art Spander -------------------------------------------------------------------- No man ever will have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps that is why golf is the greatest of games. --Robert T. Jones, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- That little white ball just sits there. A man can beat himself before he ever swings at it. --Ellsworth Vines (tennis great turned professional golfer) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Whatever anyone may care to say about golf, at least one thing is mercifully certain, namely it is a voluntary affair. --Henry Longhurst, 1955 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The steps you hit your drive past your opponent are the most golden you'll walk in your life. --Paul Berthody -------------------------------------------------------------------- My love of golf is part of my religion. I introduce the game to friends and other people constantly, hoping they will get from it what I have. --Bill Blue, 1989 (LPGA Commissioner) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Par is a designation of excellence. --Robert Sommers, 1974 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game of emotions. If you can't control your emotions, you can't play golf. --Ben Hogan, 1976 -------------------------------------------------------------------- In golf you almost always beat yourself or are destroyed by the game. --Al Barkow, 1976 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is peculiar game of a parculiar people. --John L. Low, 1903 -------------------------------------------------------------------- After all, as every golfer in every land will attest after a good round, it may well be the best game ever invented. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tennis is like a wonderful, longstanding relationship with a husband. Golf is a tempestuous, lousy lover; it's totally unpredicatable, a constant surprise. --Dinah Shore -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a compromise between what your ego wants you to do, what expereince tells you to do, and what your nevers let you do. --Bruce Crampton -------------------------------------------------------------------- Why do we work so hard to feel so terrible. --Hollis Stacy -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd rather make the cut in the Crosby than win another Oscar. --Jack Lemmon -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a puzzle without an answer. It's the most exact sport I know of. It's unpredicatable. --Gary Player -------------------------------------------------------------------- In any other sport, it's considered semi-honorable, even chuckle-creating to cheat. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like trying to win. That's what golf is all about. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Of all the games man has devised, supposedly for his enjoyment, golf is in a class by itself in the anguish it inflicts. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- It aint't how in this game. It's how many. --Lloyd Mangrum -------------------------------------------------------------------- By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you've blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time. --Richard M. Nixon -------------------------------------------------------------------- I go to sleep when I watch golf on television. --George Archer, 1989 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I started out 8, 6, 8 and then I blew up. --Tony Mullas, 1950 (on caddie day at Plum Hollow) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ninety precent of golf is played from the shoulders up. --Deacon Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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, 1937 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Cheap golf, it is accepted, is the Scotsman's birthright. --Peter Dobereiner, 1970 -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are three types of golf - golf, tournament golf and major championship golf. --Grantland Rice -------------------------------------------------------------------- A game in which you can claim the priviledge of age and retain the playthings of childhood. --Samuel Johnson -------------------------------------------------------------------- The trouble with golf is you're only as good as your last putt. --Doug Sanders -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the Esperanto of sport. All over the world golfers talk the same language - much of it nonsense and much unprintable - endure the same frustrations, discover the same infallible secrets of putting, share the same illusory joys. --Henry Longhurst -------------------------------------------------------------------- The game embarrasses you until you feel inadequate. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I first witnessed golf in Scotland it looked to me like a silly game for old men. --Charles Blair Macdonald, 1928 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ever since golf began - Scottish historians have settled on the year 1100 as a reasonable date of birth- the game has been an enigma. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the loneliest of games, not excluding postal chess. --Peter Dovereiner, 1970 -------------------------------------------------------------------- That little ball won't move until you hit it, and there's nothing you can do for it after it is gone. --Mildred "Babe" Zaharias -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is not the slightest doubt in my own mind that golf as played in the United States is the slowest in the world. --Henry Longhurst -------------------------------------------------------------------- The pleasures of golf are increased a thousandfold when it is played correctly. --Alex Herd, 1923 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Few learn golf in a lifetime. --Grantland Rice -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf will grow so long as it's fun. --Tom Watson, 1978 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf to me is not a business; it's an art form, like a Picasso or a Steinbeck novel. --Tom Watson, 1978 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is like love. One day you think you are too old and the next day you want to do it again. --Roberto de Vincenzo, 1989 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is nevertheless, a game of considerable passion, either of the explosive type, or that which burns inwardly and sears the soul. --Robert T. Jones, Jr. 1962 -------------------------------------------------------------------- In golf you've got two continuously merciless competitors, yourself and the course. --Tommy Armour, 1959 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Splosh! One of the finest sights in the world: the other man's ball dropping in the water - preferably so that he can see it but cannot quite reach it and has therefore to leave it there, thus rendering himself so mad that he loses the next hole as well. --Henry Longhurst, 1959 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game of a lifetime. --Tony Lema, 1966 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is the constant and undying hope for improvement that makes golf so exquisitely worth the playing. --Bernard Darwin -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is like solitare. When you cheat, you cheat only yourself. --Tony Lema, 1966 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fashions come and go in golf clubs as they do in clothes and often what is hailed as the latest thing is only a revival of what was all the rage 50 years ago. --Henry Longhurst, 1962 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Every ball maker all over the world, according at any rate to the advertisments, makes a ball which goes farther than everybody else's. --Henry Longhurst, 1966 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Three things there are as unfathomable as they are fascinating to the masculine mind: metaphysics, golf and the femine heart. --Arnold Haultain, 1908 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf may be a hussy, but I love her. --Don Herold, 1952 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is more than a mere game. It is a religion. --Walter Travis -------------------------------------------------------------------- Next to the idiotic, the dull unimaginative mind is the best for golf. --Sir Walter Simpson -------------------------------------------------------------------- It does look like a very good exercise. But what is the little white ball for? --Ulysses S. Grant (after watching a beginner swing several times without making contact with the ball) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have often been gratefully aware of the heroic efforts of my opponent not to laugh at me. --Bernard Darwin, 1934 -------------------------------------------------------------------- My golf is woeful but I will never surrender. --Bing Crosby -------------------------------------------------------------------- Would that I could hand on unimpaired the great game as it was my good fortune to know it! --Charles Blair Macdonald -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game of situations. --John L. Low, 1903 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The more you play it the less you know about it. --Patty Berg, 1937 -------------------------------------------------------------------- This game is so elusive. You try to maintain the peaks and level up the valleys. --Tom Watson, 1979 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is very unpredicatable. --Seve Ballesteros, 1990 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is not sacred, and there is no use getting so gosh-darned solemn about it. --Don Herold, 1952 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Don Quixote would understand golf. It is the impossible dream. --Jim Murray, 1988 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is at least 50 percent mental game, and if you recognize that it is in the mind that prompts us physically then we can almost say that golf is entirely a mental game. --Peter Thomson, 1961 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Always remember that however good you may be the game is your master. --J.H. Taylor -------------------------------------------------------------------- The real success in golf lies in turning three shots into two. --Bobby Locke -------------------------------------------------------------------- For this game you need, above all things, to be in a tranquil frame of mind. --Harry Vardon, 1921 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I wish to emphasize that there are no secrets to golf. --Ernest Jones, 1953 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've always said basketball players are the greatest athletes in the world, but I think golfers are the greatest professional performers because they have no teammates. --Sparky Anderson, 1990 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The guy who chokes least wins the most. --Hubert Green -------------------------------------------------------------------- I dreamed one night that I had 17 holes-in-one and one two, and when I woke up I was so goddam mad. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is nothing new or original to say that golf is played one stroke at a time. But it took me many strokes to realize it. --Robert T. Jones, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can play the game only one way. I must play every shot for all there is in it. I cannot play safe. --Robert T. Jones, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The woods are full of long hitters. --Jerry Barber -------------------------------------------------------------------- Everyone cheats when they first start playing golf. A lot of people don't ever stop. --Frank Beard -------------------------------------------------------------------- We all shoot better than we score. --Brian Swarbrick, 1972 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have always felt and said that a man who can be a champion in one era could be a champion in any other era because he has what it takes to reach the top. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- In golf, the best players prefer the strongest tests, where skill is most readily rewarded, inferior play is promptly penalized, and the gap between the best and the mediocre is widened. --Joseph C. Dey, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hagen was the first professional to make a million dollars at the game - and the first to spend it. --Fred Corcoran -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think he was, without question, the greatest putter of all time. He could putt any kind of green under any conditions. --Gene Sarazan, 1975 (On Walter Hagen) -------------------------------------------------------------------- His golf was fallible and impertinent, which endeared him to the common man. --Henry Longhurst (On Walter Hagen) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter Hagen was the greatest loser and the greatest winner and the greatest golfer. --Chick Evans, 1969 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sir Walter Hagen was the greatest golfer that ever lived. I truly believe this, greater than ever Vardon and Vardon went three and one-half years without hitting a sandtrap. --Wilfrid Reid, 1953 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Making a million or having the return of his laundry delayed by fiscal factors, nothing bothers Hagen. He could relax on a hot stove. --Tommy Armour, 1935 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Decidely unorthodox and a suggestion of a sway, but I am going to reserve my decision on this chap until I have seen more of his game. After all, he appears to have the fundamentals; and a lad with a stout heart can come nearer to scoring than the perfect golfing robot without a heart. --Harry Vardon, after his first look at Hagen's game, 1920. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hagen played in tournaments as though they were cocktail parties. --Charles Price, 1979 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter Hagen goes down in history as the greatest exponent of the dramatic art of turning three shots into two. --Henry Longhurst -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf has never had a showman like him. All the professionals who have a chance to go after the big money today should say a silent thanks to Walter each time they stretch a check between their fingers. It was Walter who made professional golf what it is. --Gene Sarazan, 1950 (On Walter Hagen) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter Hagen never knew where his ball was going and he had to invent six or seven new shots every time he played just to get his ball back into play. --Peter Dobereiner, 1990 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Vardon played as if he was enjoying the game, Braid as if he were going through his day's work, and Taylor, in certain moods at any rate, as if he hated it. --Bernard Darwin -------------------------------------------------------------------- Vardon always played well within himself. He always kept 10 yards of his power in reserve and there were times, when he hit the ball flat out, that he could add as much as 30 yards to a drive. --Gene Sarazan -------------------------------------------------------------------- Little Bobby Jones of Atlanta is really a fine player, and shows every indication of becoming a tremendous great one, once he is master of himself, which must come with maturity. --A.W. Tillinghast, 1916 (when Jones was only 14) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is nonsense to talk about who was the greatest golfer in the world. All you can say that there have been none greater than Bobby Jones. --Tommy Armour -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bobby Jones was the most genuinely modest person I have ever met. When one had talked with him a short time he gave you the feeling that the only difference between your game and his was that he had been much more lucky. --Raymond Oppenheimer -------------------------------------------------------------------- The name speaks for itself. He stands for all the good there is in golf. --Jimmy Demaret (on Gene Sarazan) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If Jimmy had concentrated on golf as much as laughing, he might have won more but I wouldn't have liked him as much. --Ben Hogan (on Jimmy Demaret) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The three things I fear most in golf are lightning, Ben Hogan and a downhill putt. --San Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's the only player I have ever known to get an ovation from the fans on the practice tee. I've seen him playing practice rounds before a tournament and half the gallery was made up of other professionals. --Tommy Bolt (on Ben Hogan) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, Ben, you've started a new trend. We're all going out tonight and try to get hit by a bus. --Tommy Bolt (following Hogan's victory in the U.S. Open at Merion 1950) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought I was a hard fighter. I thought Hagen and Sarazan were. We're not in a class with this fellow, Hogan. When he has a 90-yard shot to play, he expects to hole it. --Robert T. Jones, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we could have just screwed another head on his shoulders, he would have been the greatest golfer who ever lived. --Ben Hogan (on Tommy Bolt) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tommy threw clubs with class. --Don January (on Tommy Bolt) -------------------------------------------------------------------- To me, his golf swing was perfect. --Tom Weiskopf (on Tommy Bolt) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bobby was the prime example of someone who could not hit the ball, but really could play golf. --Henry Cotton (on Bobby Locke) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I had been on tour just a short time when I first laid eyes on Ivan Gantz. I was walking down one fairway and looking over into another and there was this fellow with blood pouring out of a big gash on his forehead. It was Gantz and he had gone and hit himself in the head with his putter. --Don January -------------------------------------------------------------------- If he'd miss a tee shot, he would back off in the crowd and stomp hell out of his driver. Later I found that Ivan stomped with just his shoe, never the heel. I stomped with the heel. --Tommy Bolt (on Ivan Gantz) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Forget the PGA tour. There's no money in it. --Titanic Thompson (giving advice to Lee Trevino, 1966) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was low Mexican last week. Since Lee Trevino won all that money last year, he became Spanish. He's not a Mexican anymore. --Homero Blancas, 1970 -------------------------------------------------------------------- They'd have to carry me out here before they would get me in a golf cart. --Arnold Palmer (when carts were permitted on the Senior Tour for the first time, 1985) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Are you sure you played all the holes Christy? --Henry Cotton (when Christy O'Conner shot 64 in 1985 to break Cotton's course record set 51 years earlier) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The hardest shot in golf is a mashie at 90 yards from the green, where the ball has to be played against an oak tree, bounces back into a sandtrap, hits a stone, bounces on the green and then rolls into the cup. That shot is so difficult I have made it only once. --Zeppo Marx -------------------------------------------------------------------- I could cope wi' Allan [Robertson] myself, but I could na cope wi' Tommy --Old Tom Morris (on Young Tom Morris) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Na, na, We're na goin t'eat in the kitchen. --Willie Anderson, 1901 (prior to the U.S. Open in 1901 when the professional golfers were told they couldn't each lunch in the club house) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If your going to miss 'em, miss 'em quick. --George Duncan -------------------------------------------------------------------- The most abysmal advise ever given by the ignorant to the stupid. --Tommy Armour (on keeping your eye on the ball) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Why Don't you aim more to the right? --Ben Hogan (to a player asking for advice on why he always hits his shots to the left) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Never give a golfer an ultimatum unless you're prepared to lose. --Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead center of middle age. It occurs when you are to young to take up golf and too old to rush to the net. --Franklin Adams, American journalist -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's the easiest 69 I ever made. --Walter Hagen (on turning 69) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You know your getting old when all the names in your little black book have M.D. after them. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm getting so old, I don't even buy green bananas anymore. --Chi Chi Rodriguez -------------------------------------------------------------------- His nerve, his memory, and I can't remember the third thing. --Lee Trevino (on the three things an aging golfer loses) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm about as concerned as Jack would be if he read that I was practicing to compete in the Masters --Mark McCormack (superagent and owner of a sports management firm, on Jack Nicklaus's new sports management firm) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The amateur has an infectious, contagious enthusiasm for golf and life. --Mac O'Grady -------------------------------------------------------------------- I told him he was one year away from the Tour and next year he'll be two years away. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on the potential of an amateur) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like the thought of playing for money instead of silverware. I never did like to polish. --Patty Sheehan (on turning pro) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I din't answer the phone. I get the feeling whenever I do that there will be someone on the other end. --Fred Couples -------------------------------------------------------------------- I lost the round in a bar. --Roger Maltbie (on shooting a record 92 at a tournament after going out drinking the night before) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I had been in the gallery, I'd have gone home. --Johnny Miller (on shooting 39 on the first nine of a tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I feel like I've been beaten up by the neighborhood bully. --Mac O'Grady (after a bad round) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That round of golf was like a first date. She didn't care for me and I didn't like her. I tried to kiss her, but she slapped me. I was afraid to come back for a second date. --Mac O'Grady (on withdrawing from an event after shooting a 79 on the first round) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think I'll go to Hertz and see if I can rent a game. --Phil Rodgers (after a bad round) -------------------------------------------------------------------- All of a sudden I had friends I hadn't seen or heard from in years. And, oddly enough, they all had daughters and just wanted to drop by my house. --Bynna Barner (wife of Seve Ballesteros's agent, on having the golfer over for lunch) -------------------------------------------------------------------- God said to Faldo, as He once said to Nicklaus, "You will have the skills like no other." Then he whispered to Ballesteros, as he whispered to Palmer, "but they will love you more." --Tom Callahan, columnist for the Washington Post -------------------------------------------------------------------- Seve can have an off week and still win. But if Seve plays well and the rest of us play well, Seve wins. --Ben Crensahw (on Seve Ballesteros) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He goes after a course like a lion at a zebra. He doesn't reason with it.... He tries to hold its head under water until it stops wriggling. --Jim Murray (on Seve Ballesteros) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's just another screwball too big for his britches. --Bill Murray (on Deane Beman) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm the best. I just haven't played yet. --Muhammed Ali (on golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I try to be semi-humble. If I started going around saying how good I was, everything would go wrong. --Johnny Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody ever heard Jack Nicklaus say "I don't know" about anything. --Johnny Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never exaggerate. I just remember big. --Chi Chi Rodriguez -------------------------------------------------------------------- If it wasn't for golf, I don't know what I'd be doing. If my IQ had been two points lower, I'd have been a plant somewhere. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- I know I had a couple drinks last night, but I didn't expect to wake up in Sun Valley, Idaho. --Jimmy Demaret (on partying the night before a fluke snowstorm at the Crosby Pro-Am in Monterey, California) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm going to be around until the Atomic Energy Commission finds a safe place to bury my liver. --Phil Harris (on how long he will continue to golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You've heard of Arnie's Army. Well, those are Dean's Drunks. --Dean Martin (on his followers on the golf course) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt. --Dean Martin -------------------------------------------------------------------- It'll be nice not to have to use my fake IDs anymore. --Phil Mickelson (on turning 21) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It could be worse; I could be alergic to beer. --Greg Norman (on being allergic to grass) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- My friend Tom Purtzer says I just eat it so I have an excuse to drink Margaritas. --Howard Twitty (on his love for Mexican food) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's Perry Como's kid by another marriage. --Don Rickles (on the laid-back play of Julius Boros) -------------------------------------------------------------------- How's my name going to fit on that thing? --Mark Calcavecchia (on the trophy awarded him for winning the 1989 British Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They are the same people who knock the pyramids because they don't have elavtors. --Jim Ferree (On players who complain about St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He must have left a hole out. --Hale Irwin (on Seve Ballesteros shooting a 16 in the last 5 holes of the 1979 British Open at Royal Lytham and St. Annes) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When the British Open is in Scotland, there's something special about it. And when it's at St. Andrews, it's even greater. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- I wish I had kept my damn mouth shut. --Jack Nicklaus (after he gave Lee Trevino encouragement and Trevino ended up beating him at the 1971 Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you're going to be a player people will remember, you have to win the Open at St. Andrews. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nick Faldo's victory in the British Open earned him another Green jacket. --Dan Patrick (ESPN commentator, confusing the majors) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe we Americans should come look at this course, considering the crap we are building today. --Curtis Strange (on St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- How can they beat me? I've been struck by lightning, had two back operations, and been divorced twice. --Lee Trevino (on his prospects for winning the 1983 British Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- At 15 we put down my bag to hunt for a ball, found the ball, lost the bag. --Lee Trevino, at Royal Birkdale -------------------------------------------------------------------- What if Isao Aoki had won? --Lee Trevino (told by a cabdriver that he named his child after whoever won the 1972 British Open, won by Trevino) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Only Opens. --Tom Watson (asked if he collected anything Scottish for good luck) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The only equivalent plunge from genius I could think of was Ernest Hemmingway's tragic loss of ability to write. Hemmingway got up one morning and shot himself. Nicklaus got up the next morning and shot 66. --Ian Woolridge (British journalist, on Nicklaus shooting 83 in the first round of the British Open and following that up with a 66) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Make them tee it up in the Open left-handed. Put 40,000 people out there watching them play from the other side. Let Nicklaus, Kite, Watson and Floyd get in a bunker and try to get out left-handed. Everybody would be giggling and laughing. --Mac O'Grady (on what he would do to spice up the game) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I wasn't even on the Top 60 in caddie earnings before the Kemper. --J.C. Anderson (touring pro, on getting $46,000 for finishing 6th at the Kemper Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If it wasn't for golf, I'd probably be a caddie today. --George Archer -------------------------------------------------------------------- She knows how to hang on to my money. I wish her mom were the same way. --Orville Moody (on having his daughter caddie for him) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Essentially, he has been retired since he was 21. --Jack Nicklaus (on the work habits of his longtime caddie Angelo Argea) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He told me just to keep the ball low. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on the advice his caddie gave him on a crucial putt) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody buy you and your caddie care what you do out there, and if your caddie is betting against you, he doesn't care, either. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- For the first time I felt like they used to feel when they played with me - Mark hits it so hard and far, I felt totally inadequate. --Jack Nicklaus (on Mark Calcavecchia) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I really don't know if there ever was a Big Three [Nicklaus, Palmer and Player] in professional golf. If there was, it should have been a Big Four, with Billy Casper in there. There's no way you could leave Casper out. --Orville Moody -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's Jack Benny. He's always out there on bad days like that looking for golf balls. --Bing Crosby (after a skin diver came out of the water at the 16th hole of the Crosby Pro-Am) -------------------------------------------------------------------- All tennis courts look alike. --Bradford Dillman (actor, on why he likes golf more than tennis) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The safest place would be in the fairway. --Joe Garagiola (on the best place for spectators to stand during celebrity golf tournaments) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You've got to be rich to have a swing like that. --Bob Hope (on the elegant swing of Bing Crosby) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He hits the ball 130 yards and his jewelry goes 150. --Bob Hope (on the golf game of Sammy Davis Jr.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. --Jack Lemmon -------------------------------------------------------------------- Forward the check to charity to hellp offset the cost of all the condo windows I broke during my play here. --Gary McCord (on winning $2,000 at the Bob Hope Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't hit a ball more than 200 yards. I have no butt. You need a butt if you're going to hit a golf ball. --Dennis Quaid (on losing weight for a movie) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Most people play a fair game of golf - If you watch them. --Joey Adams -------------------------------------------------------------------- If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out. --Paul Gallico -------------------------------------------------------------------- Isn't it fun to go out on the course and lie in the sun? --Bob Hope -------------------------------------------------------------------- He plays just like a union man. He negotiates the final score. --Bob Hope (on playing golf with Geroge Meany) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone's game. It's called an eraser. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- It taught me perserverance, it taught me not to cheat - no easy think for a boy when he's two down and his ball is deep in the woods. --James Reston -------------------------------------------------------------------- The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. --Will Rodgers -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game in which the ball lies poorly and the players well. --Art Rosenbaum -------------------------------------------------------------------- They keep trying to give me the championship, but I won't take it. --Leo Digel (on choking in the last round of the 1933 British Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Absolutely everyone has done it, but there are few people who admit it. --David Feherty (on choking) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Everyone has his own choking level, a level at which he fails to play his normal golf. As you get more experienced, your choking level rises. --Johnny Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can video your swing all you want, but when old Joe Choke grabs you around the throat, that guy's video is not going to be there to help you. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- Betsy studied and played golf. I played golf, partied and studied a little. --Beth Daniels (on being a college teammate of Betsy King) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I wasn't there long enough to hear them say what they were. --John Huston (on spending two semesters on the golf team at Auburn) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the only sport that a professional can enjoy playing with his friends. Can Larry Holmes enjoy fighting one of his friends? --Chi Chi Rodriguez -------------------------------------------------------------------- How would you like to meet the top 143 people at what you do each week in order to survive? --Bruce Crampton -------------------------------------------------------------------- The rest of the field. --Roger Maltbie (asked what he would have to shoot to win a tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Three holes to go and you need two pars and a birdie to win. --Jack Nicklaus (asked about his most exciting prospect in golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I always look to see what Arnold shot; it's a habit. We will always compete against each other. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've had dinner with three players in 14 years out here. I don't want to get to know these guys. With nine holes to play, I want them to worry about not knowing me. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- I used golf as a Zen exercise....I learned that a person who is able to concentrate and focus con do almost anything. --T Bone Burnett (rock musician) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's a threat to win until his brain turns to tapioca. --Gary McCord (on Fred Couples) -------------------------------------------------------------------- What I want is Fred Couples's face. And I want Fred Couples's body. And Fred Couples's swing. His hair...I want anybody's hair. --Rocky Thompson -------------------------------------------------------------------- They don't build courses for people. They build monuments to themselves. --George Archer (on modern golf architects) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is not a fair game, so why build a course fair? --Pete Dye -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd rather be on a golf course than eat. If I couldn't go and dig some dirt, you might as well put me in a box. --Pete Dye -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like going there for golf. America's one vast golf course today. --Edward, Duke of Windsor -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's not like something from Ireland or Scotland. It's like something from Mars. --David Feherty (on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This place is like one of those hot-air hand dryers in toilets. It's a great idea and everybody uses it once, but never again. It takes too long. --David Feherty (on a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus in Grand Cypress, Florida) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf courses are like children. I have no favorite. --Robert Trent Jones -------------------------------------------------------------------- Every hole should be a difficult par and a comfortable bogey. --Robert Trent Jones -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's like replacing Bo Derek with Roseanne Barr. --Johnny Miller (on Poppy Hills replacing Cypress Point as part of the home for the AT&T Pro-Am) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to win here, stand on the 18th green, and say I'm going to the World Series. --Larry Nelson (on a golf tournament in Disney World) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Some of us worship in churches, som in synagogues, some on golf courses. --Adlai Stevenson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Even the men's room has a double dogleg. --Dave Stockton (on the Poppy Hills course in Pebble Beach) -------------------------------------------------------------------- His courses are like Jack Nicklaus himself; grim and humorless, with sharp edges. --Peter Thompson -------------------------------------------------------------------- His driving is unbelievable. I don't go that far on my holidays. --Ian Baker-Finch (on John Daly) -------------------------------------------------------------------- John certainly gives it a good hit, doesn't he? My Sunday best is a Wednesday afternoon compared to him. --Nick Faldo (on John Daly) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He is just ridiculous with his length. I couldn't hit it where he hits it on a runway. --Fred Funk (on John Daly) -------------------------------------------------------------------- John Daly's in another league. Now that I'm qualified for another league myself, maybe I should stay there. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody cares if John Daly shoots 80. They just want to see him hit a ball. --Gene Sarazan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I just kept wanting to see him take a balt at it. It was like watching a singer or somebody who makes your hair come up on your neck. --Sam Snead (on John Daly) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My caddie dared me to try it, but I didn't think it was worth losing a ball. --Ian Woosnam (after Daly hit a 421-yard shot) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If she used a driver off the tee and kept it in the fairway - the rest of us would be playing for second most of the time. --Nancy Lopez (on the driving skills of Laura Davies) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody else is that stupid. --Rocky Thompson (on how he knew that he was the only player using a 540inch driver) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can airmail the golf ball, but sometimes I don't put the right address on it. --Jim Dent -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll take a two-shot penalty, but I'll be damned if I'm going to play the ball where it lies. --Elaine Johnson (after her tee shot hit a tree and caromed into her bra) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Through the years of experience I have found that air offers less resistance than dirt. --Jack Nicklaus (on teeing a golf ball very high) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Art said he wanted to get more distance. I told him to hit it and run backwards. --Ken Venturi (at a roast for columnist Art Rosenbaum) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've never done that in the heat of battle. Usually, I do it in tournaments where I miss the cut. --George Archer (on hitting an eagle 2 on his way to winning a tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It just happened that the hole got in the way. I was trying to make 4 and I made 3. --Fuzzy Zoeller (explaining an eagle 3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like the way my wallet feels in them --Johnny Miller (asked if he like the line of clothes he endorsed) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Give me golf clubs, fresh air, and a beautiful partner and you can keep my golf clubs and the fresh air. --Jack Benny -------------------------------------------------------------------- I went fishing the other day and I missed the lake with my first cast. --Ben Crenshaw (on his trouble with keeping shots on the fairway) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fifty percent of the fairways we play on today are better than 90 percent of the greens we played 30 years ago. --Jim Ferree -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's a tan like mine. It tells you the player is spending a lot of time out on the fairway and the greens - and not in the trees. --Lee Trevino (on the sign of a good golfer) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's the trouble with Nick. The only time he opens his mouth is to change feet. --David Feherty (on the sometimes controversial Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You look at Faldo and you have to resist the temptation to look at the back for the knobs. --Jim Murray (on the robotlike play of Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's nice to look down the fairway and see your mother on the left and your father on the right. You know that no matter whether you hook or slice it, somebody is going to be there to kick it back in the fairway. --Larry Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know. I've never been anyone else's son. --Gary Nicklaus (asked if it was difficult being Jack's son) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father. --Greg Norman -------------------------------------------------------------------- Winning is only part of the thing. I wanted people to enjoy seeing me, and I figured if I had fun, they'd have fun. --Jimmy Demaret (on his wardrobe) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you don't send me a couple hundred pounds a week, I'm going to start wearing your clothes. --Simon Hobday (a golfer who was not very fashion-conscious, when asked what he wrote in a letter to the manufacturer of Munsingwear, a line of clothes endorsed by many European golfers) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have to much money invested in sweaters. --Bob Hope (on why he will never give up golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't wait until we make an eagle. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on his attractive partner in a mixed-pairs tournament giving him a kiss every time they birdied) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've tried to pay attention and not look around so much. But there's a lot to look at. --Fred Couples (on concentration in golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You must attain a neurological and biological serenity in chaos. You cannot let yourself be sabotaged by adrenaline. --Mac O'Grady -------------------------------------------------------------------- I made $215 - the $200 I figured I'd lose and the $15 I actually won. --Ken Harrelson (on golf hustling) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Never bet with anyone you meet on the first tee who has a deep suntan, a 1-iron in his bag, and squinty eyes. --Dave Marr -------------------------------------------------------------------- Since I don't understand English, I thought they were for me. --Isao Aoki (on cheers for Jack Nicklaus with whom he was paired in the 1980 U.S. Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I wish my name was Tom Kite. --Ian Baker-Finch (on signing autographs) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sure I do. After all, I know Tonya Harding. --Peter Jacobsen (responding to a fan who said he still had a chance to win even though he was several strokes back) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's nice to have people watching. They help me find my ball sometimes. --Jack Nicklaus II (on large crowds around him) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've got a lot of people rooting for me because there are more poor people than rich people. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- I signed Lee Buck Trevino Pit Barbrcue, Albuquerque, Nex Mexico. --Lee Trevino (on an attractive woman who asked Trevino to autograph her body) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, your probably right about the left hand, but the fact is that I take my check with the right hand. --Bobby Locke (on criticism of his left-handed grip) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- It took me 17 years to get 3,000 hits. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course. --Hank Aaron -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes when I look down at that little white golf ball, I just wish it was moving. --Dusty Baker -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was three over: one over a house, one over a patio and one over a swimming pool. --George Brett -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 to go right over second base. --Ken Harrelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- There's so much to learn and always constant practice in golf. I never worked this hard playing baseball. --Ken Harrelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I tell myself that Jack Nicklaus probably has a lousy curveball. --Bob Walk (on how he handles golfing frustration) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I could only hit balls thrown down at my feet. --Tom Watson (on why he didn't pursue a high school baseball career) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I neede 'em both. --Bob Lanier (on playing in a threesome with a doctor and a priest) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They ought to be good. They play more golf than we do. --Fuzzy Zoeller (on several NFL quarterbacks getting birdies at a tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd love to see John McEnroe join the PGA Tour, just so we could kick him out. --Peter Jacobsen -------------------------------------------------------------------- Grass? Give me a bucket of balls and a sand wedge. Sure I like grass. --Ivan Lendl (on claims he doesn't like playing on grass) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't like #4 balls. And I don't like fives, sixes or sevens on my scorecard. --George Archer (asked if he had any superstitions) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Titleist has offered me a big contract not to play its balls. --Bob Hope -------------------------------------------------------------------- I prefer to take out the dog. --Princess Anne (on golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is an expensive way of playing marbles. --G.K. Chesterton -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the cruelest if sports. Like life, it's unfair. It's a harlot. A trollop. It leads you on. It never lives up to it's promises. . . It's a boulevard of broken dreams. It plays with men. And runs off with the butcher. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 are meant to play the ball as it lies, a fact that may help to touch on your own objective approach to life. --Grantland Rice -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like golf 'cause - well, I reckon I jes' love to play the game. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- Diversification is for big companies, not little compainies like myself. I stick with something I know - Golf. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- That gives me the Greater Slam. --Mark Brooks (on the Greater Hartford, Greater Greensboro, and Greater Milwaukee being the three victories of his career) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter broke 11 of the Ten Commandments. --Fred Corcoran (on Walter Hagen) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Worst haircut I've ever seen in my life. And I've had a few bad ones. It looks like he has a divot over each ear. --David Feherty (on a John Daly haircut) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Everytime I look down, I think I'm in the rough. --Jack Lemmon (on growing a mustache) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I cannot find a job that pays me $700,000 a year, so until I do, I'll be right here. --Pat Bradley (asked if she would retire after her automatic entrance into the LPGA Hall of Fame) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have an insane desire to shave a stroke or two off my handicap. --Alister Cooke (on why he was retiring from Masterpiece Theater) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Man blames fate for other accidents but feels personally repsonsible for a hole in one. --Martha Beckman -------------------------------------------------------------------- I used to play golf with a guy who cheated so badly that he once had a hole in one and wrote down zero on his scorecard. --Bob Bruce -------------------------------------------------------------------- A spectator said, "I don't think you understand. You have to hit the hole, not the car." --Mary Dwyer (pro golfer, after hitting the car that would be awarded to any player in the tournament who shot a hole in one) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can explain that shot. Arnold moved his wallet to the other pocket. --Ben Crenshaw (joking about a hook shot Arnold Palmer hit during the Skins Game) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I hate a hook. It nauseates me. I could vomit when I see one. It's a rattlesnake in your pocket. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- You know what we should have done? Take Greg Skiing. --Brad Faxon (on Greg norman easily winning the Tournament Players Championship after Mark Calcavecchia, Phil Mickelson and Mark Wiebe were sidelined by skiing injuries) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you expect a miracle, you should expect to pay for one. --Derek Hardy (Beth Daniels coach who charges $1,000 for one lesson and 13 lessons for $140) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My wife said to me the other day, "My God, you may get to 65 without ever working a day in your life. --John Brodie (after a career as a football player, announcer, and a member of golf's Senior Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm a vice president in charge of special marketing. That means I play golf and go to cocktail parties. I'm pretty good at my job. --Mickey Mantle -------------------------------------------------------------------- No Trevino speaks Mexican. --Seve Ballesteros (asked if he and Trevino speak Spanish when they converse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I learn English from American pros. . . that's why I speak so bad. I call it PGA English. --Roberto de Vicenzo -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Lietzke is talking seriously about retiring from the PGA Tour, which begs the question - How will anyone know? --Steve Hershey (USA Today columnist) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't hurry. Don't worry. You're only here in a short visit so don't forget to stop and smell the flowers. --Walter Hagen -------------------------------------------------------------------- The son of a bitch was able to hole a putt over 60 feet of peanut brittle. --Lloyd Mangrum (on Bobby Locke) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I played so bad, I got a get-well card from the IRS. --Johnny Miller (on a terrible 1977 season) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I kept seeing her ass all day bending over to pick her ball out of the hole. --Hollis Stacy (on Sally Little shooting a last-round 64 to win the Dinah Shore) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I suppose this is a case of woman's inhumanity to man. --Joe Flanagan (fored as director of Woman's European Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is not the Ice Capades. You don't fall on a double axel and get up and smile and everything's OK, you know. --Dottie Mochrie (on her grim demeanor on the Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He'd count the Bangkok Four-Ball if you let him. --Jack Nicklaus (on Gary Player counting many tournaments as majors) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Lloyd could get down in two from off the earth. --Tommy Bolt (on Lloyd Mangrum) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He doesn't have my full aplause because of the fact that he is always running for help for something. If he did it on his own, I would give him all the accolades because of his achievements. --Peter Thomson (on Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They talked me out of polyester golf slacks. --Dave Stockton (on the impact his sons' interest in golf has on him) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I asked my wife, Gill, if she wanted a Versace dress, diamonds or pearls as a present and she said no. When I asked her what she did want, she said "A divorce", but I told her I wasn't planning to spend that much. --Nick Faldo (after winning the Million Dollar Challenge) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have no ambitions, no goals. I just want to maintain enough celebrity status so they'll keep inviting me to golf tournaments. --Leslie Nielson -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --Freddie Couples -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's a miracle. We're nobody from nowhere. We're throw-away people. --Freddie Landers (Wife of Senior rookie Robert Landers) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This sure beats cutting wood. --Roberts Landers -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't care so much about the President. I just want to meet Socks (the Clinton's cat). --Beth Daniel (on her invitation to the White House as a member of the Soldheim Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He [Bill Clinton] told me that he caddied in the same group with me in the Hot Springs Open. That's why I voted for him, becasue he was a caddie. --Tommy Bolt -------------------------------------------------------------------- Twenty-four hours a day on cable. Who came up with this? Dr. Kevorkian? --Jim Mullen (Entertainment Weekly reporter on the new Golf Channel) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We absolutely have to have a former player. If we don't the whole tour is going to fall apart. --Jerry Pate (on who should replace PGA Commissioner Deane Beman) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Buddy Ryan will not be my defensive coordinator. --Lanny Wadkins (Ryder Cup captain on the need for compatability among team members) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We don't want to get into a Ryder Cup situation where there is animosity between the guys, like the situation that occured between Paul Azinger and Seve Ballesteros. That is not the etiquette or the spirit of the game. I don't think it is necessary in golf and it has been to the detriment of the game. --Nick Price (after he and Greg Norman conceded par putts of 15 and 9 feet for a halve during the Alfred Dunhill Challenge) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My great fear is if you break up this kind of success, golf is going to create the Balkans. Golf is going to be facing its own kind of Yugoslavia. Its not going to be pretty and it certainly won't help television. --Dick Ebersol (President of NBC Sports, on the FTC query of the PGA Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I was growing up, they had just found radio. --Arnold Palmer (when asked if he watched much golf on television when he was growing up) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe its the one way I can get on a video with David Leadbetter instead of Nick Price and Frosty and Faldo. --Mike Hulbert (on his one-handed putting style) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I honestly feel in my heart that he's going to have to let Tiger make his own way. Let him see what it feels like to do other things besides golf and then see if that's what he really wants to do. --Lee Elder (advise for Tiger Wood's father, Earl) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You see the practice ground out there? It is an evil place. It's full of so-called coaches waiting to pounce on young guys or players who have lost their form. They just hope they can make money out of them. You can see them . . . waiting to dish their mumbo-jumbo. I feel very sorry for those who are taken in because it can destroy everything that has brought them this far. To hell with coaches. --Ernie Els -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody taught me to play. Nobody paid my way. When you have done something youself, it's a very sweet feeling. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's always good to see Arnie in an event. It means I'm not the oldest one in the field. --Don January (on the two month difference between his age and Arnold Palmer) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Show me a basketball coach who's a good golfer and I'll show you a coach whose team I want to schedule. --Stu Jackson (University of Wisconsin basketball coach) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Flying the ball, I might have him. Rolling it, he might have me. He doesn't hit it as high as me. On a wet course, I'd take him. On a dry course, he might roll it farther. --John Daly (on if he is longer off the tee than Tiger Woods) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The worst thing in the world to do is to go into the (Butler) cabin. We've just finished at a high and all of a sudden this deathly silence because we're down in the catacombs. This presentation has always been so sanitized that you can just hear all the sets clicking off. --Frank Chirkinain (CBS Porducer/Director, on the Master's green jacket ceremony) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The USGA has lost its ability to govern the game, and with what the courts have done to them, I can't blame them for not getting tough. They're in the middle of a lawsuit every time they open their mouth, so what control do they have over what's going on? --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to build a course my mom can enjoy. --Davis Love III (on his philosophy of golf course design) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I always said you have to be really smart or really dumb to play this game well. I just don't know where I fit in. --Beth Daniel -------------------------------------------------------------------- The world's No. 1 tennis player spends 90 percent of his time winning, while the world's No. 1 golfer spends 90 percent of his time losing. Golfer's are great losers. --David Feherty -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Spanish Golf Federation has always been a cancer. Their job has been to maintain a social circle, and we're paying for it. --Seve Ballesteros (on the lack of support for Nova Sancti Petri, for Ryder Cup venue in 1997) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's beating a dead dog. It's a way for men to keep women in their place. Fans out here don't care about what anyone else does in their bedroom. --Amy Alcott (on critical remarks about lesbians attributed to CBS announcer, Ben Wright) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary, is that the first time you've seen azaleas this year? --Gary Kostis (to Gary McCord during the telecast of the Buick Classic) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Retire to what? I already play golf and fish for a living. --Julius Boros (when asked about his retirement plans) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a good way to relax -- For other people. Not for us. --Jesper Parnevik -------------------------------------------------------------------- There's hope for us old farts yet. --Dale Eggeling, 41 (after winning for her first time in 15 years) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You have to have a reason to go out there. It's almost on the way to England. --Davis Love III (on why few tour players are familiar with Shinnecock Hills) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They're already complaining that I'm ruining the driving range. --Vijay Singh (on his move to the TPC at Sawgrass neighborhood) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If he said it, all I want to know is: How in the world does he putt with that big stomach? --Martina Navratilova (on Ben Wright) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I feel like at times if I don't make the Hall of Fame, my family is going to bury me and the LPGA is going to come along and chisel into my tombstone "But she didn't make the Hall of Fame". --Beth Daniel -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no maladies in my golf game. My golf game stinks. --Jack Nicklaus (on the eve of the 1995 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. He missed the cut shooting 71-81) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I got to get into this dude's pelt and crawl around for a few days. Who's the gopher's ally. His friends. The harmless squirrel and the friendly rabbit. --Carl Spackler (Bill Murray, Caddyshack) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This crowd has gone deadly silent, a Cinderella story outta nowhere. Former greenskeeper and now about to become the masters champion. --Carl Spackler (Bill Murray, Caddyshack) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Just be the ball, be the ball, be the ball. You're not being the ball Danny. --Ty Webb (Chevy Chase, Caddyshack) It's hard when you're talking like that. --Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe, Caddyshack) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ye try to hard and ye think to much. Why don't ye go wi' yer pretty swing? Let the nothingness into yer shots. --Shivas Irons -------------------------------------------------------------------- The real key to Jack's [Nicklaus] success was his fantastic ability to score. His drives sometimes went into the rough, but he could plow the ball out of the tallest grass and get it on the green; bad lies simply didn't affect him as they did the others. Jack also got tremendous height with his one-iron and two-iron, which meant that he could stop them better than his rivals. --Gardner Dickinson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Generally speaking, if you find a teacher who talks about "the" golf swing, you'd better get away from him, quickly. On the other hand, pay close attention to the fellow who talks about "a" golf swing. I would be suspicious of anyone who claims there is one way to swing a golf club, because I know it simply is not true. --Gardner Dickinson (Let 'er Rip) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Noo, we'll play six holes for the centered swing, six tae feel gravity. and six tae scoor. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Murphy, ye swing at the grass real purty, hav' a try at the ball. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Guid Shot!. Ha' did ye ken tae hit it thair? 'Tis the best lie tae the green. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Someday perhaps the ba' will na' come down again. Have ye e'er had tha' feelin'? --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Now Michael, ye must timember that ye're in the land where all these rools were invented. 'Tis the only way ye can play in the kingdom. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Noo try willin' it in, it'll never get there in the regular coorse o' things. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael, Ah think 'twas eliven. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- [On negative thoughts] They'll pass, if ye daena' fight 'em. Come back to where'er ye were a minute ago. Wait 'em oot. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- And Murphy, ye shot a 34 comin' in, the same as Mr. Irons, which only proves, that true gravity works on this plane too. --Balie MacIver (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- How do we know! Why, that bad man [Shivas Irons] wouldna' just let ye play an ordinary round of golf! --Agatha McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Let us drink a toast to all theories round, let us sing the praises of gowf. Too Gowf! --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- And I'm goin' to keep this speech very short, for I'm sayin' my farewell to the game. I've suffered enough with it. --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- For each has his peculiar understandin', his peculiar theory, his peculiar view o' the world, his peculiar swing, God knows. Get them here on the links, and all their parts fall oot. --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Gowf id a way o' makin' a man naked. I would say tha' nowhere does a man go so naked as he does before a discernin' eye dressed for gowf. --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, a Rorrshock, that's what a golf links is. On some days I love these links of ours, on others I hate them. And it looks different by God, it looks different dependin' on my mood. Agatha heer says I go through the same kind o' trouble with her, guid woman. Like marriage it is, like marriage. --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Now I've often thought about James the Fourth, how he signed the treaty and bought himself those clubs. Reminds me o' President Eisenhower. It's not a warlike man that loves the game so much. --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In golf our spears -- and my friends, the Scots have some fierce ones -- get beatin into gowfin' sticks. Now we could beat the good earth instead of our fellow man. --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tae me, yer a livin' example o' what the game is all about. What is it but the comin' together of our seperate parts? Ye said it yerself, Peter just a little while ago when ye compared the game to marriage. Our inner parts want to marry too. --Julian Lang (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here, poor gowfin' addicts, drink up and arm yersel's against yer madness. I've said my piece. Ye can see I love the game, have my theories just like you, even my historical understandin's. But I'm leavin' it all behind. --Peter McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the new yoga of the supermind. --Adam Greene (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The thrill of seeing of seeing a ball fly over countryside, over obstacles -- especially over a streatch of water -- and then onto the green and into the hole has a mystic quality. Something in us loves that flight. What is it but the flight of the alone to the alone? --Adam Greene (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Seamus MacDuff is the man who invented the game so long ago. He's workin' on it still, perfectin' it ye might say. And blessin' our town here by choosin' our links to do his special work. And Seamus it is who teaches me most o' what I know about the game. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- For every theory ye propose about the improvement o' the game, I'll show ye how the game is fadin' away, losin' its old charm, becomin' mechanzied by the Americans and the rest o' the world that blindly follows them. --Julian Lang (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I see the distorted swings, the hurried rounds, and now the electric carts tae ruin the courses and rob us of our exercise. I don't think evolution is goin' ahead so much as just goin' along breedin' more unfitness every day. --Julian Lang (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's the only reason ye play the game at all. It's a way ye've found to get togither and yet maintain a proper distance. I know you men. Yer not like women or Italians huggin' and embracin' each other. Ye need tae feel yer seperate love. --Agatha McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- All those gentlemanly rools, why they're the proper rools of affection -- all the waitin' and oohin' and ahin' o'er yer shots, all the talk o' this one's drive and that one's putt and the other one's gorgeous swing -- what is it all but love? Men lovin' men, that's what golf is. --Agatha McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh golf is for smellin' heather and cut grass and walkin fast across the countryside and feelin' the wind and watchin' the sun go down and seein' yer friends hit good shots and hittin' some yerself. It's love and feelin' the splendor o' the good world. --Agatha McNaughton (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- So it is with golf. There's no use playin' if the fascination doesna' take ye. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- And so, my friends, we come to discipline and the loveliness o' rools, the very loveliness of the game o' gowf. Fascination is the true and proper mother of discipline. And gowf is the place to practice fascination. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The game is a mighty teacher -- never deviatin' from it's sacred rools, always ready to lead us on. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- But I winna' speak o' gowf, oh no. I can only tell ye about my teacher, for 'twas he ha showed me the way. 'Twas he taught me a' the graces o' the geeme, to hold my temper when retreatin' from par or bogey, to use the inner eye to make the game a very prayer. --Evan Tyree (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh Peter, see that, d'ye see that? The man [Shivas Irons] steals the women too. Beats us on the course, steals the women, shows us up at philosophizen', a man to be contended with at every turn. --Evan Tyree (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Wha' yer sayin' tells me again tha' the world is na' ready yet for Seamus. To swing his baffin' spoon and still question the man. . . --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- After Pythagoras science turned to magic, naethi'n but superficial powers. And we rely upon our instruments instead o' oursel's. Tha' is why Seamus says we only need a baffin' spoon like his to play a round o' gowf -- If we would e'er ken the world from the inside. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- So ye will na' see me givin' people many tips about the gowf swing lik' they do in all the 'how-to' books. I will na' do it. Ye must start from the inside, lik' I showed ye there. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It gave ye a good swing there, Ah could see. But tha' is just another kind 'o magic -- Seamus's magic. 'Tis no different from the magic o' science and steel-shafted clubs, just another kind. Tha' is why he will na' let me try it on the links heer. Says it's just another diversion. O' course, the members might na' let me use it either. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Now Michael, lad, it'll do ye a world o' good. Come try. Just one shot. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In no other game is the ration of playing field to goal so large. (Think of soccer, American footbal, lacrosse, basketball, billards, bowling.) we are spread wide as we play, then brought to a tiny space. --Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game of blows and weapons. In order that the game continue we must make amends for every single act of destruction. In a golf club everyone knows the player who does not replace his divot. One can only guess how he leads the rest of his life. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It can now be argued that golf was the first human game played on another planetary body. Those two shots Alan Shepard hit with a six iron at the "Fra Mauro Country Club" have brought a certain stature and gleam of the eye to golfers the world over. --Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The thought of Shivas Irons playing golf sometimes strikes me as an utter absurdity. Can you imagine other philosophers and mystics out on the course? Saint Francis, for example, laboring over a 3-foot putt, or Plato slinging a bag of clubs over his shoulder and striding happily down the fairway. --Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have come to think that a person grows in his regard for the rules as he improves his game. The best players come to love golf so much they hate to see it violated in any way. --Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- [About getting better] Aw, niver, niver this shitten-gemme. Tae enjoy yersel', tha' the thing. And beware the quicksands of perfection. I say fuck oor e'er gettin' bitter. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ye're makin' a great mistake if ye think the gemme is meant for the shots. The gemme is meant for walkin'. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ye see, tha' man got to be famous heer for his walkin'. Twas said tha' if ye played along wi' him for very long ye'd get the spirit o' it yersel' and learn to enjoy each and every step. 'Twas said tha' he sometimes forgot his shots, the walkin' got to be so good. Had to be reminded by his caddie to hit the ball. --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I noticed ye hardly pay attention to the walkin' part. Well that's too bad. Not many people do. "tis a shame, 'tis a rotten shame, for if ye can enjoy the walkin', ye can probably enjoy the other times in yer life when ye're in between. And that's most o' the time; wouldn' ye say? --Shivas Irons (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He [Bill Clinton] has a good swing, he hits it hard -- a little erratic, but I understand that. --Gerald Ford -------------------------------------------------------------------- Number 10 is Rush Limbaugh's book and No. 8 is a book on menopause, so I'm somewhere between the right wing and the change of life. --Peter Jacobsen (on his book "Buried Lies" being No. 9 on the Washington Post best seller list) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You play with some guys and they take two hours to watch 60 minutes. But everybody's different. That's why they make wallpaper. I hurry everything. I live in the fast lane. I'm the fastest eating person in the world. In my house, the last one to finish did the dishes, and I never did the dishes. --Chi Chi Rodriguez -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have begun to rate golf courses by the number of balls you need. For instance if a course is a one-ball course, assuming it has all the usual features, I think it's a great course. But a 12-ball course I think is rubbish. That's my basic critism of Jack Nicklaus courses. They are very much like the man himself, very serious and lacking in humor. --Peter Thomson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll get him drunk at high altitude. Or put a pair of skis on him. --Nick Faldo (on facing Nick Price again at the European Masters in Switzerland) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not saying I could do any better. But if the ratings are down, I understand why. --Paul Azinger (on TV golf commentators after spending a year watching them all) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The club pro is my past life. I had a good time as a club pro, but all I do is play out here now. --Jim Albus (on being labeled "The club pro from Long Island") -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- There's more to life than just golf. I'm here for the four years. --Tiger Woods (on how long her plans to stay at Stanford) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's get real. They don't know didly about golf, just like I wouldn't know about football. --Peter Kostis, CBS (on NBC golf announcers Jim Lampley, Bob Trumpy and Dan Hicks who also work NFL games) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tiger Woods is the only person I know who can change the focus in golf from yesterday to today and tomorrow. --John Merchant (USGA Executiuve Committee member) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's sort of the U.S. team playing the team that lives in the U.S. --Hale Irwin, U.S. captain (on why he doesn't expect the fervor that marked recent Ryder Cups at the Presidents Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I still sweat. My guts are still grinding out there. Sometimes I have enough cotton in my mouth to knit a sweater. --Lee Trevino (asked if he still feels pressure) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's nice to get outside. And it's a great thing to do on tour -- especially in cities I've visted so many times I know the animals at the zoo by their first name. --Amy Grant, pop singer and avid golfer (on why she took up golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was the toughest decision I've ever made. I suppose it's like getting divorced and remarried on the same day. --Jay Sigel (on turning professional) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Quite frankly, I'm delighted Lanny isn't playing. --Bernard Gallacher (on the prospect of facing Lanny Wadkins, who has won 20 Ryder Cup matches, as captain of the U.S. team) -------------------------------------------------------------------- How can you get tired of playing golf? --Raymond Floyd (asked if he gets tired at the end of a season) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not opposed to the World Tour but you can't crap on the people who supported you all these years, who put you where you are to begin with. This has to be done right. Personally, I think the public has seen enough greed out of athletes. --Lanny Wadkins (on the proposed World Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you play well, you should be able to qualify to play the tours with your clubs and not regulations. I have always been in favor of the best players playing against each other. I wanted it to happen in America but it didn't. --Jack Nicklaus (on the proposed World Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm most excited about the World Tour project you submitted to me last week. It is the kind of step forward I've been dreaming of for years. Please feel free to use my name as a strong supporter of the idea. --Jose Maria Olazabal (in a fax to Greg Norman) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, I was once interested in being part of an official World Tour but never any unofficial one. A few years ago, such a plan might have appeal but I am in the process of trying to simplify my travel schedule not complicate it. --Nick Faldo (on the proposed World Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In no rocket scientist, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to drain a golf course. --Peter Dye (on his Florida Old Marsh golf course) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I picked Greg [Norman] to have a big year in '94 and he did money wise. But how can a guy average 68.81 and win the same number of tournaments this year as Johnny Miller? That's impossible. You can't average 68-something and win just once. I thought he'd win five or six. --Johnny Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------- By 10 months he went through the exact same waggle as I did and hit the ball right into the net. I've been waiting for him to level out ever since, but he never has. He just keeps getting better and better. --Earl Woods (on his son, Tiger Woods) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I tell him the golf game is a gentleman's game. I point out to him John McEnroe playing Jimmy Conners in tennis and him cursing and throwing his racket. I tell him not to do it, because it will ruin my reputation as a parent. Will not have spoiled child. --Kultida Woods (on her son, Tiger Woods) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think one of the things that will help blacks in golf is Tiger Woods. If he continues on his amateur career, he will bring some young blacks with him. He has inspired young people, mostly white, but some blacks. We have never really had a role model like him before. --Jim Thorpe -------------------------------------------------------------------- I am aware (of the perception of being the Great Black Hope), but the funny thing is I'm mostly Asain. I'm not mostly black, but I have a little black, therefore I am black in this country. --Tiger Woods -------------------------------------------------------------------- The gashes I had given it smiled hideously, it would be impossible to putt. "May I put down another ball?" I asked meekly. Neither of them answered. Perhaps they were too sorry for me to say no. But they were not sorry enough to say yes. I putt the mutilated ball back down on the putting surface. --Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I saw a course you'd really like Trent. On the first tee you take a penalty drop. --Jimmy Demaret (to Robert Trent Jones Sr.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- At a Ryder Cup press conference in 1967 with captain Ben Hogan: Press: "Mr. Hogan, is it true Arnold [Palmer] isn't playing tomorrow?" Hogan: "That's what the pairing says." Press: "Could you tell us why?" Hogan: "I could, but I won't." -------------------------------------------------------------------- It consists in pitting little balls into little holes with instruments ill adapted to the purpose. --Horace Hutchinson (asked to describe the game of golf [He said this 50 years prior to when Churchill got credit for it]) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Carr, the great Irish amateur was having a very bad day of golf at Sligo. Caddies asked Joe: "Have you ever played Rosses Point before, Sor?" Joe Carr: "Oh Yes, Many times." Caddie: "You know they play the West of Ireland championship here, Sor." Joe Carr: "I know, I won it twelve times." Caddie: "It must have been fierce easy to win in those days Sor." -------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the hell's Jane? --Nick Faldo (from in the tree by the 14th green which he climbed to try and find a ball he hit up there during the 1992 U.S. Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- How about a little noise. How do you expect a man to putt? --Babe Ruth (when the crowd got politely quite as he lined up a putt) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bah, That thing'll never flee. --Allan Robertson (on hitting a gutty ball for the first time) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Shall the President or shall he not become a golfer? Shall he allow the thought of a possible lack of dignity to interfere with the restoration to health? --Editorial in the Boston Evening Record (regarding President McKinley taking up golf while recuperating from an illness) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are many ways of performing the operations successfully. I can claim, however, to be in a position to explain how not to putt. I think I know as well as anybody how not to do it. --Harry Vardon -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you're going to miss 'em, miss 'em quick. --George Duncan (on putting) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's the greatest par-3 hole in America. --Ben Hogan (on Riviera's 4th hole) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Never bet with anyone you meet on the first tee who has a deep suntan, a 1-iron in his bag, and squinty eyes. --Dave Marr -------------------------------------------------------------------- Pressure is playing for ten dollars when you don't have a dime in your pocket. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 (on the temper tantrums of modern players) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You're not going to find a golf swing in a book. --Tony Lema, 1966 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Watch out for busses. --Ben Hogan (responding to a question if he had any advise to today's young players, 1990) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I believe this is a tremendous victory for minorities and Jews and women around this country who have been denied the right to join private clubs simply because of their race, religion or sex. It was indefensible for ACOG [Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games] to view the inclusion of golf as inseparable from Augusta National. --Bill Campbell (Atlanta City Council Member, who authored a resolution opposing the Olympic golf proposal) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I joined the tour in 1964, I told my wife I wanted to play five years. Instead, I've played 5 careers. --George Archer (after 25 years on tour, 1989) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That son of a bitch was able to hole a putt over 60 feet of peanut brittle. --Lloyd Mangrum (on Bobby Locke) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This definitely puts my skydiving plans on hold. --Phil Mickelson (on recovering from broken legs he suffered while skiing) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think he [Phil Mickelson] has a huge amount of talent. And I'll give him credit for one thing. When he gets a chance to win, he knows how to do it. He's not afraid of anyone. --Mark Calcavecchia (on Phil Mickelson's 8 point win over him at the 1993 International) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was concerned, because golf -- in its somewhat antiquated and clearly male-dominated state -- has been very good to Amy Alcott. Golf is a game I truly love -- for its places and courses and its people and organizations. I didn't want to seem either unappreciative or unaware. --Amy Alcott (in the forward to "Unplayable Lies: The Untold Story of Women and Discrimination in American Golf" by Marcia Chambers) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My wife thinks "don't hold back" means to keep spending money. --Larry Laoretti -------------------------------------------------------------------- I enjoy the oohs and aahs from the gallery when I hit my drives. But I'm getting pretty tired of the awes and uhhs when I miss the putt. --John Daly -------------------------------------------------------------------- If your looking for a key to the United States' convincing Ryder Cup victory [in 1993] you'd have to start with the off-the-bench performance of John Cook and Chip Beck on Saturday. --Johnny Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------- Are you kidding? The only big word I know is delicatessen; and I can't even spell it. --Lloyd Mangrum (on being asked if he was interested in writing) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know the traffic regulations of every city I get to either, but I manage to drive through without being arrested. --Lloyd Mangrum (on being assessed many violations as a result of not knowing the rules) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Rosa Parks was told to go to the back of the bus. I was thrown off the bus. --Millie Rech (who was banished from her country club when she was divorced) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He told me to keep the ball low. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on the advise his caddie gave him on a crucial putt) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think it would be intimidating as hell if 12 guys showed up at the Ryder Cup with shaved heads. People think I'm crazy for shaving my head. Can you imagine all 12 guys doing it? God, it would be great. Mickelson, I don't know, he puts that mousse on his head. I don't know if he'd let me do it. --John Daly I think most of the guys are happy with their personal barbers. I don't want any part of John's barber -- not that it doesn't look good on John. --Lanny Wadkins (responding to John Daly's offer to shave the Ryder Cup team's heads) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is one of my favorite golf courses. I felt comfortable and the greens were perfect.'' --Ernie Els (on the International Golf Course at Castle Pines) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's just a long, hard golf course. I wouldn't have thought this course suits me at all and it didn't at first. Leading here is like finding money. --Jay Haas (after the third round at the '95 International) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I'd done this last week there wouldn't be a controversy. If I was such a lock to be on the Ryder Cup team, I should have made it by myself. I've got no one to blame but myself. --Lee Janzen (on winning the '95 International the week after Ryder Cup captain Lanny Wadkins named Curtis Strange and Fred Couples as his captain's pick) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sure, we will win the Ryder Cup. The Americans are just bringing the Cup over here to where it belongs. --Seve Ballesteros (prior to the 1993 Ryder Cup matches at The Belfry) -------------------------------------------------------------------- All four days I didn't think. I just hit. Squeaky [his caddie] said kill and I killed it. --John Daly (on coming from nowhere to win the 1991 PGA) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm about as concerned as Jack would be if he read that I was practicing to compete in the Masters. --Mark McCormack (superagent and owner of a sports management firm, on Jack Nicklaus's new sports management firm) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Most people play a fair game of golf -- if you watch them. --John Adams -------------------------------------------------------------------- The problem with golf is I have to deal with a humiliation factor. --George H.W. Bush -------------------------------------------------------------------- The penalty incurred when a ball is lost out-of-bounds is without question the most unfair, illogical and harsh penalty ever conceived by the U.S. Golf Association and Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. --Cary Middlecoff, 1987 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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, 1940 -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I'd done this last week [win], there wouldn't be a controversy, would there? If I was such a lock to make the Ryder Cup team, I should've made it on points. So I've got no one to blame but myself for not making the team. --Lee Janzen -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can't just say, "Hey Bob, you're away" or "Bob, you're going to be matched with Bob Jones here". --Bob Jones (on a tournament in Detroit featuring only players with the name Bobby Jones) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no doubt this is one of the prettiest pieces of land that has ever been butchered. It is a beautiful piece of land. Robert Trent Jones, Sr., has done some real nice courses, but this isn't one of them. --Lanny Wadkins, 1990 (on Spyglass Hill) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Never since the days of Caesar has the British nation been subjected to such humiliation. --Lord Northbourne (at the presentation ceremonies after Walter Travis became the first American to win the British Amateur, 1904) -------------------------------------------------------------------- John [Daly] certainly gives it a good hit, doesn't he? My Sunday best is a Wednesday afternoon compared to him. --Nick Faldo -------------------------------------------------------------------- Running through the Rules are underlying principles, that, like the steel rods which lie below the surface of reinforced concrete, serve to bind together the brittle material and to give it strength. --Richard S. Tufts, 1960 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's like a cold slap in the face. You're mad and you're not trying to protect anything out there anymore. --Mark McCumber (on the effects of a quadruple bogey) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The rules are based on three fundamental principles: That the golfer must play the ball as it lies, play the course as he finds it, and finally, where neither of the first two principles can apply, settle all questions by fair play. --Joseph C. Dey, Jr., 1956 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Great. I opened my locker and there were a dozen new shirts, boxes of balls and two pair of golf shoes. Now that I can afford them, they give them to me. --Paul Azinger -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bobby [Jones] was playing some good golf in spots. He's got everything he needs to win any championship, except experience -- and maybe philosophy. But I'll tip you off to something -- Bobby will win an Open before he wins an Amateur. --Walter Hagen, 1921 (Jones won the 1923 U.S. Open, his first major title) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Rules of Golf are debated and discussed everywhere the game is played -- and often are the subject of conversation when the weather prevents the game from being played. --Janet Seagle, 1989 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never exaggerate. I just remember big. --Chi Chi Rodriguez -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know. I've never been anyone else's son. --Gary Nicklaus (asked if it was difficult being Jack's son) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The most abysmal advice ever given by the ignorant to the stupid. --Tommy Armour (on keeping your eye on the ball) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you can get the ball in the hole regularly by standing on your head, then keep right on -- and don't ever listen to advise from anyone. --John Jacobs -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you expect a miracle, you should expect to pay for one. --Derek Hardy (Beth Daniel's coach who charges $1,000 for one lesson and 13 lessons for $140) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Forty-one rules aren't so many -- St. Benedict had 73 to keep the brethren on the straight and narrow. --Colman McCarthy, 1977 -------------------------------------------------------------------- They have been playing golf for 800 years and nobody has satisfactorily said why. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- For every game of golf is an open exhibition of overweening ambition, courage deflated by stupidity, skill sourced by a whiff of arrogance. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- The best thing about Eisenhower's Presidency was his Jeffersonian conviction that there should be as little government and as much golf as possible. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Golfers] are a special kind of moral relist who nips the normal romantic and idealstic yearnings in the bud by proving once or twice a week that life is unconquerable but endurable. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- I hasten to say to snobs from the Surrey pine-and-sand country that no invention since the corn plaster or the electric toothbrush has brought greater balm to the extremities of the senior golfer than the golfmobile, a word that will have to do for want of a better. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- It rose slowly like a gull sensing a reckless blue fish to close to the surface, and then it dived relentlessly for the green, kicked and stopped three feet short of the flag. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sir Guy Campbell's classic account of the formation of the links, beginning with Genesis and moving step by step to the thrilling arrival of 'tilth' on the fingers of coastal land, suggests that such notable features of our planet as dinosaurs, the prairies, the Himalayas, the seagull, the female of the species herself, were accidental by-products of the Almighty's preoccupation with the creation of the Old Course at St. Andrews. --Alister Cooke (Forward to The World Atlas of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Americans are less mystical about what produced their inland or meadow courses; they are the product of the bulldozerm rotary ploughs, mowers, sprinkler systems and alarmingly generous wads of folding money. --Alister Cooke (Forward to The World Atlas of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When that happens [the demise of golf], old men will furtively beckon to their sons and, like fugitives from the guillotine recalling the elegant orgies at the court of Louis XV, will recite the glories of Portmarnock and Merion, of the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the sixth at Seminole, the eighteenth at Pebble Beach. They will take out this volume from its secret hiding place and they will say: "There is no question, son, that these were unholy places in an evil age. Unfortunately, I had a whale of a time." --Alister Cooke (Forward to The World Atlas of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- More than anything else, though, to anyone who would write about it, golf offers a four-hour drama in two acts, which becomes memorable even in the tape-recorded reminiscenses of old champs, and which -- in the hands of someone like Herb Wind -- can become a piece of war correspondence as artfully controlled as Alan Morehead's account of Gallipoli. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the most marvellous game. When I was at my tennis peak, there were half a dozen, say a dozen, guys who could give me a game. In golf, I can play against all but the most abject hacker and have a tough time. --Ellsworth Vines -------------------------------------------------------------------- For many years I had an impression of my golf swing, which was: that I vividly resembled Tom Weiskopf in the takeaway and Dave Marr on the downswing. Unfortunately, there came a day when I was invited to have my golf swing filmed via a video camera. Something I will never do again. When it was played back, what I saw -- what you would have seen -- was not Weiskopf and Marr but a man simultaneously climbing into a sweater and falling out of a tree. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- It became slowly but painfully apparent that playing a different sized ball in the championship matches of each country would present a problem, if not an ultimatum. The R & A followed the usual practice of British diplomacy. They thought a sensible compromise was possible, in the shape of a ball somewhere in between. They manufactured two experimental balls, 1.65 and 1.66 inches in diameter respectively. They were offered to the Americans as a proud solution. The Americans, however, remembering Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase (which was unconstitutional, and sneaky, but worked), had a better idea. Why not compromise, they suggested, by using our ball. And so it was. The bigger American ball is now compulsory in all R & A championships and in British professional tournaments. --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- So the British, of all ages, still walk the course. On trips to Florida or the American desert, they still marvel, or shudder, at the fleets of electric carts going off in the morning like the first assault wave at the Battle of El Alamein. It is unlikely, for some time, that a Briton will come across in his native land such a scorecard as Henry Longhurst rescued from a California club and cherished till the day he died. The last on its list of local rules printed the firm warning "A Player on Foot Has No Standing on the Course." --Alister Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------------- I particularly regretted winning at the nineteenth hole by the aid of a stymie which was almost impossible to negotiate. --Bobby Jones (writing about his victory over Cyril Tolley in his only victory of the British Amateur, 1930) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The grounds on which golf is played are called links being the barren, sandy soil from which the sea has retired in recent geological times. In their natural state links are covered with long, rank, benty grass and gorse. . . links are too barren for cultavation; but sheep, rabbits, geese and professionals pick up a precarious livelihood on them. --Sire W.G. Simpson, 1892 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I had dreamed of walking up the 18th to win a tournament, but for it to be the British Open is unbelievable. A lot of people at home will be shocked, but happily shocked. The last few holes were the most nerve-wracking. --Karrie Webb (on her victory at the 1995 Weetabix Women's British) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mediocre players are just out there messing up the sand traps. --Lloyd Mangrum -------------------------------------------------------------------- Id I win [1995 U.S. Women's Open at the Broadmoor] I'm going to name it Broadmoor. --Dawn Coe Jones (Who shared the lead after 2 rounds of the U.S. Women's Open, while 7-months pregnant. She didn't, finishing tied for 7th) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Putting is a fascinating, aggravating, wonderful, terrible and almost incomprehensible part of the game of golf. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- When all is said and done, and whatever the method and whoever the man, successful putting surely must be a matter more of nerve than technique. --Pat Ward-Thomas, 1936 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Allen [Geiberger] looks like the world's longest chimney sweep. He's around 7 feet tall and could use his wedding ring for a belt. A two iron that talks. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm at a loss of words, a loss of explanations. We were simply outclassed. In everybody's opinion, this was the best GBI could bring. You gave us a real whipping. --George Macgregor (Britian and Ireland Walker Cup captain after his team lost to the USA 19-5 in 1993) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a dumb game. Hitting the ball is the fun part of it, but the fewer times you hit the ball the more fun you have. Does that make any sense? --Lou Graham -------------------------------------------------------------------- Greg was not within 15 feet of me. I picked up a black fly -- or whatever you call them up here -- right off the green. I missed the putt and nothing was said. What Greg thought he saw is not what happened. I removed a bug from my line. From his viewpoint, he thought it was a piece of grass. People can be wrong. --Mark McCumber (responding to Greg Norman's claim he cheated at the 1995 NEC WSOG) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Who does Norman think he is, God? --Mark McCumber (on the World Tour proposal) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a game of ethics, a game of integrity. I can't play with an individual who thinks otherwise. I believe what I believe; he believes what he believes. It's his word against mine, but the integrity of the game has more value to me than that. --Greg Norman (on the incident between McCumber and Norman at the 1995 NEC WSOG) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I made the comment standing on the 13th tee Thursday with Allen Doyle close to finishing and the other matches well in hand that, "This could be ugly". --Vinnie Giles III (captain of the 1993 Walker Cup team on his teams chances. They beat Great Britain and Ireland 19-5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the man who won the Lunar Open, and his closest competition was 250,000 miles away. --Gene Cernan (on Alan Shepard) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- While the course [Edgewood] is beautiful, and the location, breathtaking, the course is not worth the rude treatment of yourself and your employees. I will not be coming back and I will encourage other golfers I know to never frequent your golf course. --Dan King (in a letter to Edgewood head pro, Lou Eiguren) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In 30 years, we're going to be in our 90s. We're going to play three-hole tournaments for $900,000 and the one who remembers his score wins. --Bob Bruce -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've never hit a 7-iron 190 yards in my life. That's how furious I was. --Greg Norman (after claiming Mark McCumber illegally touched his own line on the 7th hole at the 1995 World Series of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The smaller the ball used in the sport, the better the book. --George Plimpton (on why books about golf and baseball are better than books about football and basketball) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't thank the game enough for what it did for me. I've been different all my life and the game let me be myself. I did it my way. --Moe Norman (On being inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I am sure there is no body of professional games players who so cheerfully know so little of the rules of their game as do professional golfers. --Henry Longhurst, 1959 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The name Pebble Beach might suggest a seaside course in the manner of the links of Britain. But it is far from that. I can think of no approximate parallel. --Pat Ward-Thomas, 1966 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Why don't you aim more to the right? --Ben Hogan (to a player asking for advise on why he always hits his shots to the left) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that I always adhere to my old theory that a controlled shot to a closely guarded green is the surest test of any man's golf. --A.W. Tillinghast -------------------------------------------------------------------- If some hole does not possess striking individuality through some gift of nature, it must be given as much as possible artificially, and the artifice must be introduced in so subtle a manner as to make it seem natural. --A.W. Tillinghast -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is really a great thing to know that although a man can be paid for playing a game he loves he can at the same time play for the honor of his team and his country. --Samuel Ryder, 1931 -------------------------------------------------------------------- But there's something about the Ryder Cup that brings out the team spirit in golfers. Maybe it's the prospect of beating the Americans, who for so long have been the kings of golf. Maybe it's a throwback to their school days when team sports, and not individual sports, were the most important aspect of games. --Henry Cotton -------------------------------------------------------------------- I told [Ben] Crenshaw last night, "Ben, I don't want you getting too excited when you see the greens. They're going to be that way all week." I didn't want him salivating, drooling on the greens, things like that. --Lanny Wadkins (on condition of Oak Hill's greens prior to the 1995 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When you look at the American team I don't think we've got anything to be scared of. --Bernard Gallacher (captain of 1995 European Ryder Cup team prior to the matches) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think when we leave here next September, I'd rather see golf as the main winner and both teams leave on an upbeat and positive note. I think we're very, very fortunate to be playing on such a wonderful golf course as Oak Hill. --Lanny Wadkins (1995 U.S.A. Ryder Cup captain) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think the great thing about the Ryder Cup is that the players are really playing for their countries and not playing for money. I think that is the important essence of the Ryder Cup. --Bernard Gallacher -------------------------------------------------------------------- Lanny Wadkins epitomizes a team leader throughout his marvelous Ryder Cup record, He has faced the utmost pressure as a player in eight competitions, and earlier this year displayed one of the great gestures of sportsmanship in volunteering to sit out the final day singles to give other teammates a chance to lift the American team. Lanny will once again be a great leader as Captain in 1995. --Gary Schaal (PGA of America President, on the announcement of Lanny Wadkins as 1995 U.S.A. Ryder Cup captain) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If a Captain makes the right or wrong pairings, he has a heck of a lot of impact on the outcome. I haven't played on a Ryder Cup Team when the Captain didn't have an impact. --Lanny Wadkins (1995 U.S.A. Ryder Cup captain) -------------------------------------------------------------------- First of all, you're not into a string. It's like a guy winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. He didn't go out there to kill 30 Germans. He was just trying to survive. But Byron liked to win money. --Jackie Burke Jr. (on Byron Nelson's streak of 11 consecutive wins) -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Deane] Beman's insistence -- some might say arrogance -- in defending himself to death against the Ping lawsuit was a tragic example of egomania leading to excess and waste. The record is replete with examples of Beman's making critical decisions on the lawsuit without informing either the players or the full board... --Gardner Dickinson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I miss the hole, I miss the hole, I miss the hole, I hole it. --Seve Ballesteros (answering a question on how he four-putted the 16th at the 1988 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When women in America first began to play golf, they were allowed at many of the big clubs to use the links only at certain hours on certain days when it was thought their presence would not incommode the Lords of Creation. --Genevieve Hecker (in Golf, the official USGA Bulletin, 1902) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't exactly describe it, but as I looked at the putt, the hole looked as big as a wash tub, I suddenly became convinced I couldn't miss. All I tried to do was keep the sensation by not questioning it. --Jack Fleck (on the final round of the 1955 U.S. Open at Olympic club, where he tied Ben Hogan, and went on to beat him in the playoff the next day) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's [Peter Jacobsen] had Arnold as a partner and done very well with Arnold. If he can carry Arnold, he can carry damn near anybody. --Lanny Wadkins (on Peter Jacobsen at the 1995 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I cleaned all the rough and all the branches on the course, I'm sure the members at Oak Hill won't be losing any golf ball this week. --Seve Ballesteros (after only hitting 3 fairways in his 3 1995 Ryder Cup matches) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Ryder Cup team of Americans was comprised of 11 nice guys and Paul Azinger. --Seve Ballesteros (on the 1991 American team) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm still not as comfortable in them [soft spikes] as I was in metal spikes, but I'm making a few more putts. What people at Riviera are talking about, though, is how much better the greens are since we stopped wearing metal spikes. --Geoff Shackelford (Riviera member on the courses no-metal spike rule) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think they [soft spikes] are dangerous and people shouldn't use them. --Tom Watson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll be fine when I'm out on the golf course. It's when I'm alone that this will hurt the most. I'm going to beat myself up over this for a long, long time. --Curtis Strange (responding to his loss at the 1995 Ryder Cup in singles to Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I knew what would happen if I didn't perform. However badly they beat me up, it won't be half as bad as I beat myself up. --Curtis Strange (after the 1995 Ryder Cup that the U.S. lost to Europe and Strange went 0-3, losing a critical match to Nick Faldo 1-up) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We needed good performances from the whole team and we got them. All the team played majestically. It's getting almost to much to bear, this Ryder Cup. --Bernard Gallacher (on Europe's 1995 Ryder Cup victory he captained) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Europeans played inspiring golf. We didn't play as well as we could play. The Europeans played awfully well. Sometimes, you just have to hand it to the other guys. --Lanny Wadkins (on U.S.'s 1995 Ryder Cup defeat he captained) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This has been a terrific achievement. There's nothing between these teams -- I've been saying that for three Ryder Cups. It's the team that's on the day of the match. --Bernard Gallacher (on Europe's 1995 Ryder Cup victory he captained) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah, but I'll be working as a marshal. I'll be helping your team find all the balls they drive into the rough. --Seve Ballesteros (when Peter Jacobsen said "see you in Valderrama" following the '95 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's not possible. These days, the Ryder Cup is to much to do -- the jobs are incompatible. --Seve Ballesteros (on the possibility of being a player/captain at the 1997 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've always said the captain's job is very overstated. People think you can only be a Ryder Cup captain if you've been a former Open champion or something like that. I don't think that has anything to do with it. You just need to keep the pressure off the players, free them up so all they ahve to think about is golf. It's not that complicated. --Bernard Gallacher (three time European Ryder Cup Captain) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Its hard to be famous when no one recognizes you. --Costantino Rocca -------------------------------------------------------------------- I had cancer too, and he still couldn't beat me. --Paul Azinger (said off air about Faldo halving the singles match with him at the 1993 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't even bother with Tony Jacklin. I mean, Tony Jacklin lives in America now. He's an American. --Bernard Gallacher (responding to critizism of the European Ryder Cup selection panel) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They ought to invoke the same-day rule. --Paul Azinger (on the slow play of the Langer/Faldo team at the 1995 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We get worn out, too. We get excited. We're not automatons. To me it's fun work, but definitely w-o-r-k is in there. And there is a lot of pressure on us to cover, and it's a hellacious effort to get the scoring right by Sunday. --Johnny Miller (on the 23 1/2 hours of coverage NBS did of the 1995 Ryder Cup matches) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't control other people. I can only control what I do. I have lived my life by certain standards, both off the golf course and lot more on it. I have been committed to certain beliefs on the golf course since I was 6 years old. Those beliefs have not changed. --Mark McCumber (responding to Greg Norman's charge that he touch the line of his putt at the 1995 NEC WSOG) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In the end it didn't come down to a faulty U.S. selection system, Lanny's picks, his Sunday strategy or a post-chip let down. This was very simply Europe's year. The Europeans never quit and they made good things happen. --Johnny Miller (on the European victory at the 1995 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The chief object of every golf architect or greenkeeper worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- No golfer ever gets so consistently good that he can't use some constructive advise. No matter how many trophies he may win, he can't analyze and remedy his own faults. --Byron Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- The best thing we can do is 50 years from now look back on our lives and say, "We're good fathers". I don't care how many tournaments we win and how much money we make. If we aren't a good dad, we leave the world a bad place. --Brad Bryant -------------------------------------------------------------------- Having never been there, I guess I can't say anything good or bad about the Masters, so don't get me wrong. I've dug myself a hole with the people at the Masters. If I do get to the Masters, maybe I should let Gary McCord caddie for me. --Brad Bryant -------------------------------------------------------------------- The top-10 was on my mind, but I was trying to just go for the win and to ignore that part of it. --Emlyn Aubrey (who's second place finish in the '94 Nike Tour Championship got him an exemption on the PGA Tour for 1995) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I knew I could win out here, but I didn't think it would come this soon. When I turned pro I honestly thought I could win because I've played a lot of these guys before and beaten some of them. I don't want to sound cocky, but when you make the decision to go pro, you have to feel like you can win or you have no business being out there. --Allen Doyle (on winning the Nike Mississippi Gulf Coast Classic 5 weeks after turning professional) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like the pressroom because you can always get something good to eat and drink there. --Rocky Thompson (on why he enjoys talking to the media) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I wouldn't know him if he came up and bit me. --Payne Stewart (on his '93 Ryder Cup opponent, Joakim Haeggman) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The best architects feel it to be their duty to make the path to the hole as free as possible from annoying difficulties for the less skillful golfers, while at the same time presenting to the scratch players a route calling for the best shots at their command. --Robert Hunter, 1926 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I knew if I could play 25, 30 tournaments, I'd show up with a chance to win; you have to have that confidence. I don't know if that's brash, but I always felt I had the capability to play well out here. I can hit any shot anyone else can hit. The question is, can I do it when it needs to be done? --Woody Austin (prior to winning the '95 Buick Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He thinks he'll make enough points in the PGA [Championship]. --Rick Smith (Lee Janzen's coach on why he skipped the Buick Open when in 14th place on the Ryder Cup list) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In 1960, Sports Illustrated chose Arnold Palmer as its "Sportsman of the Year" and I went to West Virginia, where he was playing in the West Virginia Open, to interview him for the story. It was a good place to talk, because there wasn't much pressure in the tournament and not much competition for Arnold's attention. And, I'll never forget; we were in a diner. Arnold was eating a hamburger. There was a bottle of ketchup on the table, and Arnold said to the waitress, "You shouldn't use this kind of ketchup; Heinz is better." After she left, I asked him, "What's with the ketchup?" And he told me, "I have a ketchup contract." But that's the way Arnold was. He really thought that, because he had a contract, he had an obligation to be out there selling Heinz ketchup 24 hours a day. --Ray Cave, Sports Illustrated -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold's [Palmer] place in history will be as the man who took golf from being a game for the few to a sport for the masses. He was the catalyst who made that happen. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold [Palmer] is the greatest role model that any sport ever had. When a young fellow comes on the tour today, sooner or later one of the old timers like myself will take him aside and say, "Study that man. Look at the way he loves the game, conducts himself, and treats other people. Arnold Palmer is the one you want to be like. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- All good things come to an end, so someday Arnold [Palmer] won't be playing golf anymore. And that will be a very sad day for all of us, when we don't see Arnold on the golf course. He's our foremost ambassador to the world and the international symbol of excellence in golf. --Gary Player -------------------------------------------------------------------- All America had this image of Palmer taking a cigarette out of his mouth, throwing it on the green to putt, and then sticking it back in his mouth again. It was golf's equivelent of Bogart and Bacall. And it seems odd now to think of a cigarette as an athletic totem, but back then it was sexy. Palmer with a cigarette was like those old convertible ads with a beatiful woman sitting in the front seat and her scarf blowing in the wind. --Frank Deford -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam Snead will fly anywhere in my plane with me. Sam's not as worried about the danger as he is about saving money. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- If someone wants to compare the distractions and the pressure on golfers with what goes on for other athletes, that's fine by me. A baseball player strikes out four times in a game, and he still gets paid. A golfer gets nothing if he plays poorly. We get nothing if we are out with an injury. Nobody puts us on a train or plane and gives us a ticket to get to the next stop. Do you understand what I'm saying? Can you imagine what would happen if Barry Switzer told the Dallas Cowboys, "Okay guys, I want you to be in San Francisco next Friday. Get there on your own." How many of them do you think would make it. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- One thing I've learned over time is, if you hit a golf ball into water, it won't float. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- I remember one particular incident at the Jackie Gleason Inverray Classic. I was covering the 15th hole for CBS, which was a par-5 dogleg to the left. On Palmer's second shot, as was typical, he was trying to reach the green, but his ball went to the right and hit a woman in the head. It was a long shot, so it took him a while to reach the green. When he got there, the medical staff was attending to the woman. She was lying on a blanket, and an ambulance was en route. I was looking down from the tower, and it seemed she was seriously hurt. Then Arnold came striding up, went over to the blanket where the woman was lying, knelt down, and kissed her on the forehead. And the woman came up off the blanket like she'd been healed. It was as though the Messiah had healed her. And she stayed to watch the rest of the tournament. --Pat Summerall -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd known I'd always play golf; not as a club pro, but in some other capacity. I guess, in some vague way, I pictured myself as a businessman competing in all the top amateur tournaments. But winning the national amateur championship gave me the confidence to do what I really wanted to do with my life. Not only was it one of my produest moments; it led directly to me going out on tour as a professional golfer. And obviously, that led to everything afterward. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- The first time I saw Arnold Palmer was at a tournament in Tijuana in 1955. My wife said to me, "I saw the most exciting golfer I've ever seen today; a fellow named Palmer." I thought she meant Johnny Palmer; a short guy with rosy cheeks and bushy black har. She said, "No, this guy looks more like a middleweight fighter." So I was puzzled, but the next day on the course I saw a young guy with his shirt hanging out, whacking the heck out of the ball, and sometimes it landed in the fairway, and sometimes not. And that was Arnold Palmer. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold [Palmer} has what I call an 'Eisenhower smile'. Those two men, they'd smile and their whole faces would look so pleasant; it was like they were smiling all over. --Byron Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I was in college, I thought about becoming an attorney. But I wasn't smart enough; I hate being cooped up indoors; and I'm too nice a guy. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold Palmer is the most aggressive player in the history og golf. Some guys, if they're behind six or seven strokes, they start playing for fourth place. Arnold could be behind six or seven strokes and the last day he'd go out and try to shoot zero. --Charlie Sifford -------------------------------------------------------------------- The only really unplayable lie I can think of is when you're suppose to be playing golf and come home with lipstick on your collar. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't look at it as a gamble, really. I just look at it as a harder shot. Why hit a conservative shot? When you miss it, you're in just as much trouble as when you miss a bold one. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- Trouble is bad to get into but fun to get out of. If you're in trouble, eighty percent of the time there's a way out. If you can see the ball, you can probably hit it; and if you can hit it, you can move it; and if you can move it, you might be able to knock it in the hole. At least it's fun to try. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold embarrassed a lot of guys on the tour into signing autographs. A lot of players used to snub fans. They'd give some kind of excuse about being busy and run on, and Arnold was so wonderful about it, so patient with fans, that the other guys had on choice but to follow his example. --Dow Finsterwald -------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe it's because I'm in the rough so much that I get to know them all personally. --Arnold Palmer (on the relationship with his army) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like playing in front of the Army. It was wild at times. When Arnold teed up his ball, they cheered. And if I'd walked on water, they wouldn't have noticed. But I enjoyed the excitement of all those people, and I think the Army was good for golf. --Dave Marr -------------------------------------------------------------------- I played the British Open in 1937. It took a week to get there and a week to get home. I was the low American; finished fourth or fifth. And what it came down to was, I lost a good part of my summer, won $185, and spent $1,000 on boat fare alone. --Byron Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is doubtful that there was a man present at Birkdale [1961 British Open] who wanted Palmer to lose. It's impossible to overpraise the tact and charm with which this American has conducted himself on his two visits to Britain. He has no fancy airs or graces; he wears no fancy clothes; he makes no fancy speeches. He simply says and does exactly the right thing at the right time, and that is enough. --Henry Longhurst -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold Palmer invented pro golf as it exists today. Ben Hogan didn't make golf popular. Hogan was as much fun to cuddle as a porcupine. Nicklaus didn't do it. It was all going on th tour by the time Nicklaus got there. Palmer's the King. He's the one who made it all possible. --Rick Reilly -------------------------------------------------------------------- There's a tale that's told, presumably apocryphal, about a round of golf that Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan played in 1960. On the first hole, Hogan scored a textbook par-3. Palmer's drive came to rest in a tree stump; his second shot made it to the edge of the green; and he holed a 40-foot putt for par. On the second hole, Hogan's drive split the fairway; his second shot was on the green; and he two putted for another classic par. Palmer's tee shot landed in three inches of water; he blasted his second shot out onto the fairway; his third shot came to rest several feet beyond the green; and he chipped in for par. On the third hole, Hogan executed four more near-perfect precise shots for his third par in a row. Meanwhile, Palmer's tee shot landed in the rough; his second shot landed in a bunker; and his third shot bounced into the hole for a birdie. Whereupon Hogan turned to Arnold and demanded, "Look dammit; we're here to play golf. Stop fooling around." --Jerry Izenberg -------------------------------------------------------------------- We don't want to get anybody killed. Of course if we could pick which ones, it might be a different story. --Hord Hordin (Former Augusta National Chairman on lightening that postponed the 1983 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd have to shoot 68 to make the cut. I couldn't shoot 68 if they let me walk in after 14. --Sam Snead (on withdrawing from the 1983 Masters after shooting 79 in the first round) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The U.S. Open flag eliminates a lot of players. Some players just weren't meant to win the U.S. Open. Quite often, they know it. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Seve [Ballesteros] owns Spain and Greg [Norman] just bought a house at Bay Hill and a $73,000 Ferrari, and here I am worrying about making my next rent payment. --Mike Nicolette (after beating Greg Norman in a playoff at the 1983 Bay Hill with Seve Ballesteros in contention) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I looked up and there was a streaker on the course, running back and forth on the green, dodging the cops. When he turned and ran toward me, I just nailed him -- I did my great Jack Lambert imitation. --Peter Jacobsen (on tackling a streaker on the 18th green at the 1985 British Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- At Augusta I have a big advantage because I can carry all the hills and get an extra 20 or 30 yards roll. If things start to flow, I could be a runaway winner at the Masters. --Greg Norman, 1987 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Just because a course is 7,000 yards long, it's not great. --Frank Hannigan -------------------------------------------------------------------- The old style courses were designed to make a player hit a variety of shots -- high, low, draw, fade, bump and run, floating chips. Now with a lot of the new courses, our only choice is to hit it high and soft. --Corey Pavin -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's a man in full flight. Striking the ball, I'd say he's been as good as anyone since Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. God, he's magificant to watch. --Ben Crenshaw (on Nick Price when he won the 1994 PGA Championship at Southern Hills by 6 shots) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The first purpose of any golf course should be to give pleasure. --Robert Trent Jones, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have now made it a lifelong goal of somehow, someday, saying something that ends up in a Dan King signature. Might be easier than trying to break 80. Or not -- I'm getting close. --Thor (David Thor Collard) thor@alta-oh.com, October 25, 1995 -------------------------------------------------------------------- many good golfers consider the second nine holes at Pasatiempo the finest in existence. The short holes are specially good, and I think the sixteenth hole is the best two-shot hole I know. I certainly do not know of any hole which gives so great an advatantage for length and accuracy. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- So how did Nicklaus win so much? Because he could finish a hole better than anybody else. As a player he's the greatest of all time, but as a golfer I can't even put him in the first fifty. Hogan had the greatest swing -- not Snead -- because Hogan had a more sideways movement. --William "Wild Bill" Mehlhorn -------------------------------------------------------------------- Why didn't I win more? I was the world's worst putter. If I had thought on the Putting green the way I did for the rest of the game, none of these guys would have won a tournament. Everybody tried to help me, even some of my enemies. They felt sorry for me. Some of the guys would say they don't know how Mehlhorn could go out and play the next day after the way he putted. --William "Wild Bill" Mehlhorn -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was playing a pro-pro event right here in Miami. Earl Holland was my partner... put it ten feet from the cup on the next hole, and I told Earl to pick up his ball, I wouldn't need him. Then I took six putts. And I never hit a careless one, except the sixth. After the first putt I was never over eighteen inches from the cup. I walked off the green twice. The sixth putt I just hit with the back of my putter. The only careless putt I hit went in. --William "Wild Bill" Mehlhorn -------------------------------------------------------------------- The idea for the sand iron came when I was taking flying lessons while I was living in Florida. I used to pal around with Howard Hughes, we played a lot of golf together. Hughes was a good golfer, by the way, about a three handicapper. Anyway, when I took off in the plane I pulled the stick back and the tail went down and the nose of the plane went up. Something flashed in my mind, that my niblick should be lowered in the back. --Gene Sarazan -------------------------------------------------------------------- My most satisfying achievement as a player? Winning all four of the modern major championships -- the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA and the British Open. I was the first one to do that. Ben Hogan was the next to do it when he won the British Open in 1953. --Gene Sarazan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought golf was a great thing, but if I stayed on the tour seven or eight years, that would be enough. I never regretted not playing more. I won twenty-seven tournaments. No, I thought there were other things in life besides golf. And I still think the same way. --Henry Picard -------------------------------------------------------------------- My nickname? Lighthorse? Damon Runyon put that on me in 1926 at the Los Angeles Open when I won the first $10,000 Open. George Vol Elm and I played the last round in tow hours and a half with 5,000 people following us. --"Lighthorse" Harry Cooper -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was born in England, and that led to one of my biggest disappointments. You see all the years I played on the tour I qualified for the U.S. Ryder Cup team, but I wasn't eligible because I was not a native-born American. Same thing with Tommy Armour. He certainly should have been on the Ryder Cup team. And Bobby Cruickshank. Neither of them was eligible either. --"Lighthorse" Harry Cooper -------------------------------------------------------------------- [On playing the British Open] I never did, because it wasn't economically feasable. It took a week to go over on the boat, a week to come back, and a week to play. Well, on any weekend here I could make $500 playing an exhibition, so there wasn't any point in going over there... A lot of boys wouldn't have gone over if it hadn't been for the Ryder Cup team, because they had all their expenses paid when the matches were over there, and they just stayed to play the British Open. --"Lighthorse" Harry Cooper -------------------------------------------------------------------- If there's something I know now that I wish I knew earlier in my career, it would be that I wish I hadn't been in such a hurry to play, had learned to wait, to be more patient. But that wasn't my nature. --"Lighthorse" Harry Cooper -------------------------------------------------------------------- Cyril Walker played so slowly they asked him to hurry up, and he became abusive. He said, "Who the hell are you? I'm, an ex-U.S. Open Champion." This was about 1931, he won the Open in 1924. He said he came out 3,000 miles to play in their diddy-bump tournament (L.A. Open), and they couldn't kick him out, he'd play as slow as he damn well pleased. Well, when he came ot the ninth hole, they told him he was disqualified and he said, "The hell I am! I came here to play and I'm going to play." So these two officers picked him up by the elbows and I can still see him being carried up the hill, kicking his legs like a banty -- he was a small man. --Paul Runyan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've taken some pleasure out of being the little guy who has beaten the big fellows. At match play, don't think that isn't an advantage, because a big guy would rather lose to a big guy. --Paul Runyan -------------------------------------------------------------------- For dollar nassaus in practice rounds, Harry Cooper would beat me nine out of ten times, but when the tournament started I beat him three out of four. Harry threw away more tournaments than anybody because he was too excitable. And he believed everybody was lucky and he wasn't. --Paul Runyan -------------------------------------------------------------------- If there is one secret to the game, one thing I would tell a beginner to do to become a good player, it's to do as many things as possible with the left hand. Learn to eat with the left hand, take the club out of the bag with the left hand, and between shots carry the club in your left hand and rotate it counterclockwise, from left to right. --Frank Walsh -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I could have shot 69 in the last round every time, I would have won nine U.S. Opens. Nine! --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- But, no, I don't feel my career has not been fulfilled because I didn't win the U.S. Open. It's like the guy said: you going to crucify a man because he missed a putt to win a tournmaent? Does a three-foot putt mean his whole life? Another guys said, well, he couldn't win the big one. Well, Jesus, what do you call those others? What's big and what's small? --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- I tend to be a nervous, anxious player in the first place, so I've found that if I just think about taking the club back away from the ball very slowly it helps focus my attention and improves the pace of my swing. --Russ Cochran -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you're left-handed and play right-handed you will probably not be able to turn the right side away as well on the backswing, because your natural coordination in not that way. You can handle it when your younger, you can adapt and force against nature, but as you get into middle age it becomes harder to do. Because the body loses flexibility. Which is why Johnny Miller went into his slump. --Johnny Bulla -------------------------------------------------------------------- I know and you know we're going to play in the tournaments. We all know it's coming. So if you like golf like you say you do, and I do, I think we should make am agreement so we can play without all the adverse publicity. And take this Caucasians-only clause out so we can have the opportunity to get jobs as pros at clubs. --Bill Spiller (to Horton Smith, PGA President at a PGA meeting in San Diego in 1953 after the meeting, the PGA allowed Blacks to play, but not as members of the PGA. The PGA ammended it's constitution to include Approved Entries, which could play only on sponsors exemptions. The Caucasian-only clause wasn't lifted until the PGA was forced to by the California DA in 1961.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sing us a hillbily lyric again, Part of the mountain breed. Sing us a roundelay, born of the fen, Focused on Samuel Snead -- Sammy the golfer, who came from the hills, Socking the cover off far flying pills, Sammy, the maker and builder of thrills, Tell us of Samuel Snead. Sam was a caddie who picked up a swing, Sam was a hillbilly kid -- Sam took a wallop at par -- and his fling Gave him an opening bid; After Sam's wallop, the pellet careens, Sam has the touch of the satiny green, Sam's grabbing headlines from Braddocks and Deans -- Good luck to Samuel Snead. --Grantland Rice -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm going to go down in history books not so much for the 165 [135 official] tournaments I've won -- including the Masters, three times, the PGA National three times and the British Open once -- but for the one tournament I never won. I'll tell you a little secret though, I think the fact I never won the U.S. Open kind of endears me to golf fans. Some anyway. They'd come out and root for me, bless them, and my impossible dream in a way became theirs too. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- The fact that Slammin' Sammy couldn't win the Open made it all the more valuable for the players that did win. Gave it a special quality. I'd say a part of the sheen on that trophy cames from my sweat. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- Winged Foot has the toughest 18 finishing holes in golf. --Dave Marr -------------------------------------------------------------------- You see Nancy Lopez and Betsy King and Pat Bradley, and think you have to be a Superwoman [to win]. Then boom! You're there. --Annika Sorenstam (on her success in 1995, leading both the European and U.S. LPGA at the end of the year) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been playing with a white golf ball for 20 years, and I'll keep playing it -- Unless somebody comes up with the right numbers. For $50,000, I'd paint my driver pink. --Andy Bean (on using colored golf balls) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have always wanted to live where one could practice shots in one's pyjamas before breakfast, and at Santa Cruz the climate is so delightful that one can play golf every day in the year, where it's never to hot and never too cold, and if it should rain it usually does it at night. --Dr. Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- I told him he was one year away from the Tour and next year he'll be two years away. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on the potential of an amateur) -------------------------------------------------------------------- A few miles up the coast of Sutherland from Dornoch, far and away the best course that is not on a championship rota and one of the first places where golf was played in Britain, lies the little town of Golspie between Ben Bhraggie and the sea. Though not as well known as Dornoch, Golspie is not to be missed either. --Donald Steel -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's been my observation that those guys who have big, fluid swings, the ones who go past parallel on the backswing and are very slow and deliberate about it, are those who seem to have trouble and seem to become erratic drivers when the heat is on. They become erratic because they swing so loosly and so slowly. A guy who is a little quicker usually has a shorter and more compact swing -- with his haster swing speed he couldn't have all that loosness. --Ray Floyd, 1982 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I know I made a lot of money, finished second on the Order of Merit, won three times, won the Ryder Cup, won the Dunhill Cup, but I was still very pissed off on Sunday, and I still am. --Sam Torrance (on finishing -------------------------------------------------------------------- The most beautiful of all courses we have made is Cypress Point, and at the same time it is also the most difficult of all our courses. When we constructed Cypress Point we expected we should be snowed under by hostile criticism. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- Machrihanish was not a grueling course, but any legitimate scratch golfer who went around in level fours would be extremely delighted. And yet I don't think a twenty-handicapper would ever struggle to break a hundred there. Machrihanish was fun, yet challenging, a combination that is suprisingly rare. --Michael Bamberger -------------------------------------------------------------------- Talking of two-shot holes, I recently ran across Tom Webster the cartoonist and Leo Deigel, who hailed me with the remark "Here comes old Two-Shotter." The allusion did not register and so I asked him to explain it. "Don't you remember" they said, "playing with us and Max Behr at Alwoodley? At the fourth hole you said to Max 'Here's an excellent two-shotter.' When you had both played half way you were in the rough on one side and Max on the other. You called out to him 'How many have yo had Max?' He answered 'Six, how many are you?' 'Seven' was your reply." --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- What's entered my mind more than anything else is guys like Curtis Strange and Hubert Green missed their first time. It's kind of like, if you're ready for it, you'll get through with no problem, and if you're not, you won't. --David Duval (on missing the cut at the 1993 PGA Tour Qualifying School) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's the stupidest rule in golf. --Payne Stewart (on Rule 16-1c regarding when the line of the putt can be touched) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Something very drastic ought to have been done years and years ago. Golf courses are becoming far to long. Twenty years ago we played three rounds of golf a day and considered we had taken an interminably long time if we took more than two hours to play a round. Today it's not infrequently takes over three hours. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- My father was in love with golf. He played seven times every week and talked about the game as if it were a science that he was about to figure out. "Cut through the outer rim for a high iron," he used to say at dinner, looking out the window into the yard while my mother passed him the carved-wood salad bowl. Or "In hot weather hit a high-compression ball." When conversation paused, he made little putting motions with his hands. --Ethan Canin (The Year of Getting to Know us) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When people ask me where I get my length from, I readily admit that I can't really explain, because it's always been natural for me. I was a long ball hitter as a kid in baseball, and had a strong pitching arm, making All State in my senior year. I never had to work on speed or power. --Dan Pohl -------------------------------------------------------------------- Like unhitching a horse from a plow and winning the Derby. --Jim Murray (on Orville Moody's improbably win at the 1969 Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I kept looking at everybody [in the Els group] thinking they would ask me to move, but nobody said a word. I could have moved the vehicle or dropped the boom. I was just sitting there, idling, then the cameraman told me to cut the engine. --David Skriver (U.S. Open Crane Operator at the 1st hole on Sunday of the '94 U.S. Open. The Crane was a movable obstruction, however, USGA Rules official, Trey Holland, gave Ernie Els free relief from it believing it was an immovable obstruction) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I got out of the service late in '44 and I was so anxious to get back to the tour. I won the first tournament in Los Angeles, and three in a row a little later ([at Gulfport in a playoff with Nelson], and at Pensacola and Jacksonville) but then. . . then it was Byron's year. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- Another erroneous idea which is prevalent is that beauty does not matter on a golf course. One often hears players say they "Don't care a tinker's cuss" about their surroundings, what they want is good golf. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody likes to make a mistake, especially like this. But it's exactly what happened. --Trey Holland (USGA Rules official, who gave Ernie Els relief for an immovable obstruction from a crane which was a movable obstruction) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Player's don't get relief from divots in fairways or footprints in bunkers. Why should they get relief from spike marks on greens? --Jeff Hall (USGA Spokesperson) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In the takeaway, key on low, slow and inside, the shoulders and hips turning together and the club an extension of your left arm and shoulders. --Dan Pohl -------------------------------------------------------------------- More significantly, balls on the softspiked plot rolled even as they slowed, but on the metal spiked grass, the ball was more apt to vary in it's course, especially as ball speed decreased. --1994 Ohio State University Green Study -------------------------------------------------------------------- They looked as if they had trees growing out of them. --Tom Kite (on the Spike marks on Riviera greens during the '95 PGA Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I sent Gary [Player] a telegram recently, I asked him if he turned over a new leaf. --Tom Watson (on accusing Gary Player of illegally uncovering a ball from a leaf during the Skins game) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Even Bobby Jones, who for perhaps the only time in his golfing career picked up his ball at the 11th hole at St. Andrews, was inclined to condemn it is unfair. Today, however, his greater knowledge ands experience of the course has convinced him that it is the best of all golf courses. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- Many people consider a complete island short hole a good one, but holes of this type can never be considered completely satisfying, as only one shot is required, namely the monotonous pitch. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- Short putts are missed because it is not physically possible to make the little ball travel over uncertain ground for three or four feet with any degree of regularity. --Walter Hagen -------------------------------------------------------------------- The heart of golfer Ted Jorgensen's delightful book lies in his analysis of the swing...and how you, he and I might all swing the club better and play better golf...accessible to the casual reader while satisfying the critical student. --Robert K. Adair (author of "The Physics of Baseball" on Jorgensen's "The Physics of Golf") -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think you will play to a level commensurate with the setup and the talent. And if the standard is raised, I think these guys are capable of handling it. I have great respect for the golfers who made the senior tour what it is, but we have to look and see if we are doing the right thing for golf. --Hale Irwin (on the easy course setup on the Senior Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The course [Crooked Stick] is so long I had to take the curvature of the Earth into consideration. --David Feherty, 1991 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I expect to continue to play golf, but just when and where I cannot say now. I have no definite plans either to retire or as to when or where I may continue in competition. I might play next year and lay off in 1932. I may stay out of the battle next season and feel like another tournament the following year. --Bobby Jones (after winning the 1930 U.S. Amateur. 2 months later he announced his retirement) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I always thought Tom was a good player and a good man. I don't think it took a major to make him one. --Tom Kite, Sr. (after his son won his first major, the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach) -------------------------------------------------------------------- To tell the truth, I caught Nixon once myself [cheating]. He'd landed in some really bad rough no one could shoot out of unless you had a bazooka. I was watching him from the fairway when he disappeared into the thicket. Hell, I figured he was going to drop another ball, take his loss like anyone else in that situation and play on. But hell no -- out comes his ball flyin' high onto the fairway. Then Nixon comes out looking real pleased with himself. I knew he threw it out, but I didn't say anything. What could I say? He was the President. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- People think growing up in the hills was a handicap I had to overcome. In a lot of ways it gave me a big advantage that has lasted me to this day. Just like with that stick, I'd have to overcompensate for just about everything; sticks for clubs, acorns for balls. When I finally got my hands on the real things, the regulation stuff seemed like a dream. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- He'd be in sneakers and wearing a dirty sweatshirt, and when we finished, he'd take me to the grubbiest, most awful restaurant you can imagine. --Gene Sarazan (on playing golf with Howard Hughes) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Until you win a tournament, you're just a day laborer, really working hard trying to get there. Until you win a tournament, it is easy for people to attach a label to you -- that you make a lot of money but don't want to win. It was starting to bother me that couple of years. --Loren Roberts (on being the leading money winner without a voctory prior to his win at Bay Hill in 1994 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow the Sun opened in March 1951, about the same time that Hogan was returning to my home course of Greenbrier, where he had beaten me the previous year. I think the local Hot Sulphur Springs movie theater struck just the right balance of hospitality and hometeam pride when they booked the film that week so Hogan could see it on the marquee as he drove into town. The marquee read: FOLLOW THE SUN STARRING SAM SNEAD --Sam Snead (who had a bit part playing himself in Follow the Sun) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I could have putted like this years ago, I'd own a jet instead of a Toyota. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on his play on the Senior Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Then Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus come in. I'll caddie for Jack. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (after saying he has three good years left on the Senior Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When Lee and Jack win, it is good for golf. When I win, it is better. --Chi Chi Rodriguez -------------------------------------------------------------------- I read the greens in Spanish, but putt in English. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on his putting problems) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Goldfinger came up. His face was glistening with triumph. 'Well, thanks for the game. Seems I was just too good for you after all.' 'You're a good nine handicap,' said Bond with suufficient sourness. He glanced at the balls in his hand to pick out Goldfinger's and hand it to him. He gave a start of surprise. 'Hullo!' he looked sharply at Goldfinger. "You play a Number One Dunlop don't you?' --Ian Fleming, Goldfinger, 1959 -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Toss for honour?" Goldfinger flicked a coin. "Tails." It was heads. Goldfinger took out his driver and unpeeled a new ball. He said, "Dunlop 65. Number One. Always use the same ball. What's yours?" "Penfold. Hearts." Goldfinger looked keenly at Bond. "Strict Rules of Golf?" "Naturally." "Right." Goldfinger walked on to the tee and teed up. --Ian Fleming, Goldfinger, 1959 -------------------------------------------------------------------- We think that we shall never see A tougher course than Pine Valley Trees and traps wherever we go And clumps of earth flying through the air This course was made for you and me, But only God can make a THREE. --Jack McLean and Charlie Yates (members of the British and American Walker Cup teams, after the 1936 matches) -------------------------------------------------------------------- As we sit here, just a few yards away some of the greatest golfers in the world -- and the best in women's golf -- are playing the game with consummate skill. But we aren't out there watching. We aren't out there learning and laughing and cheering. We are in here dealing with this absurd and ugly charge that lesbianism is stunting the growth of the LPGA Tour. --Charles Mechem (LPGA Tour CommissMy wife would also like to do some horse riding if anyone knows of a place for that.ioner responding to comments allegedly made by Ben Wright prior to the 1995 LPGA Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Lesbian-baiting is just another way to keep women from being the best at what they do. It's saying that heterosexual women can't be what lesbians are -- strong and successful. It's saying, 'Back off', don't be strong or we'll call you a bunch of lesbians. It's been used against women in the military and in sports when they show their political power and strength. I hope women, and especially the LPGA, don't get defensive. And I would hope CBS would take action. --Rosemary Dempsey (Vice President of the National Organization for Women on Ben Wrights alleged comments about lesbianism on the LPGA Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I look for swings. He had a good swing as a youngster. At 17 or 18 years old, he got a little overweight when he found out what life was all about. He's a delightlful young man. He has always been a very good driver of the ball. He's a very good player, but I don't think he has been tested enough to win here. --Tim Treacy (of Wellington, New Zealand on his price pupil, Michael Campbell) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You have to take this game through so many labryinths of the mind, past all the traps -- like will my maculinity be threatened if I hit the ball well and still shoot 72? --Mac O'Grady -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam Snead has more money buried underground than I ever made on top. He's got gophers in his backyard that subscribe to Fortune magazine. He's packed more coffee cans than Brazil. --Arnold Palmer -------------------------------------------------------------------- They say golf came easy to me becasue I was a good athlete, but there's not any girl on the LPGA Tour who worked near as hard as I did in golf. It's the toughest game I ever tackled. --Babe Zaharis -------------------------------------------------------------------- I am disgusted at the pack of lies and distortions that were attributed to me in the newspapers. I have been a supporter of women's golf for more than 40 years....It is regrettable the the News Journal dishonest tactics have resulted in this terrible scandalous incident." --Ben Wright (responding to an interview with Valerie Helmbreck of the News Journal) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I used to think pressure was standing over a four-foot putt knowing I had to make it. I learned that real pressure was 65 people waiting for their food with only 30 minutes left on their lunch break. --Amy Alcott (on a part-time job she had as a waitress early in her career) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The beautiful thing about this golf course [Granite Bay] is that it evokes without trying to copy. Consider the 212-yard par-three 14th, with its carry across a ravine to a green perched above two hungry bunkers. It seems to suggest the famed par-3 fifth at Pine Valley. Or does it share more in common with one of Stanley Thompson's par-3s in the Canadian Rockies? This is an intellectual golf course, and yet playing it is loads of fun. --Bradley S. Klein (writer for Links Magazine in February 1996 review of Granite Bay golf Course in Roseville, Ca.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- And they all play on the golf course and they drink their martinis dry And they all live in little boxes, little boxes And they all look just the same. --Malvina Reynolds (a 1960 folk song called "Little Boxes" that was popularized by Pete Seeger) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Much of the fire with him [Ben Hogan] was lit by Byron Nelson, who came from the same town -- the same caddie yard -- and achieved fame and fortune several years ahead of Ben and who, as a kid, had always been popular and better liked than Ben. No puzzle at all. --Dan Jenkins -------------------------------------------------------------------- You hear stories about mt beating my brains out practicing, but the truth is, I was enjoying myself. I couldn't wait to get up in the morning, so I could hit balls. When I'm hitting the ball where I want, hard and criply -- when anyone is -- it's a joy that very few people experience. --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I am embarrassed to get before people and putt. Hell, I'm embarassed to putt when I'm alone, but the only way to beat this thing is to play. I hear children and ladies saying, 'For God's sake, why doesn't he hit it faster?' So I say yo myself, 'You idiot. You heard them. Why don't you hit it faster?' --Ben Hogan -------------------------------------------------------------------- To my mind, Moe Norman is in the same league as Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones and Byron Nelson as a ball-striker and deserves the same kind of respect. --Wally Uihlein (CEO of Titleist after it was announced his company would pay Moe Norman $5,000 a month for the rest of his life.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You are entirely right, I can't play golf and I can't lay an egg, but I am a better judge of an egg omelet than any hen you ever saw. --O.B. Keeler -------------------------------------------------------------------- An abundance of wildlife can be found at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, especially bird life. To date, 104 (and counting) bird species have been inventoried, with at least 48 species nesting on the course. The staff of Robert Trent Jones Golf Club has proved that a top quality playing surface, capable of hosting international tournaments, can be achieved while adhering to ecologically sound management practices. --Catherine B. Waterhouse (Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Coordinator) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a morning when all nature shouted "Fore!". The breeze, as it blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and cheer, whispering of chip shots holed and brassies landing squarely on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky. --P.G. Wodehouse (Heart of a Goof) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the Great Mystery. Like some capricous goddess, it bestows its favours with whatwould appear an almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination. On every side we see big two-fisted he- men floundering round in three figures, stopping every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock-knees and hollow cheeks, who are tearing up snappy seventy-fours. --The Oldest Member (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Men capable of governing empires fail to control a small white ball, which presents no difficulties whetever to others with one ounce more brain than a cuckoo clock. --The Oldest Member (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I wish to goodness I knew the man who invented this infernal game. I'd strangle him. But I suppose he's been dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave. --Ferdinand Dibble (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you ever felt that you would like to bang a man on the head with something hard and heavy? With knobs on? --Barbara Medway (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Many bad golfers marry, feeling that a wife's loving solicitude may improve their game. But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and introspective. --The Oldest Member (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is one of the chief merrits of golf thet nonsuccess at the game induces a certain amount of decent humilty, which keeps a man from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs he may achieve in other walks of life. --The Oldest Member (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- At the hotel there [Marvis Bay] he would find collected a mob of golfers -- I use the term in the broadest of sense to embrase the paralytics and the men who play left handed -- whom even he [Ferdinand Dibble] would be able to beat. --The Oldest Member (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The fact is, 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 topnotchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro? --Ferdinand Dibble (Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a well known fact that when golf is faultless there is next to nothing to write about. The golfing reporter may say that So-and-So pushed his drive and pulled his second; but the real fact is that the great S0-and-So was on the course with his tee shot, on the green with his second, and down in two putts -- and kept on doing it. This is all a reporter need have said, but he says more because he has his living to earn. --Bernard Darwin (The Wooden Putter) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf took young kids like Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and myself out of the caddie ranks and gave us money and a little bit of fame and let us live in the tall cotton. --Jimmy Demaret -------------------------------------------------------------------- I want him [Tiger Woods] to stay [in school] for four years. But the way they're [the NCAA] treating him is not right. --Kultida Woods (mother of Tiger Woods, on Tiger being suspended from the NCAA over minor violations) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Dream golf is simply golf played on another course. We chip from glass tables onto moving stairways; we swing in a straightjacket, through masses of cobweb, and awaken not with any sense of unjust hazard but only with a regret that the round can never be completed, and that one of our phantasmal companions has kept the scorecard. --John Updike -------------------------------------------------------------------- I assume my stance, and take back the club, low, slowly; at the top, my eyes fog over, and my joints dip and swirl like barn swallows, I swing. There is a fruitless commotion of dust and rubber at my feet. "Smothered it," I say promptly. After enough lessons the terminology becomes second nature. --John Updike -------------------------------------------------------------------- Watching Chip Beck play the last four holes of the Masters, one sensed he was trying to win the tournament's coveted Green Vest. --Ray Ratto (San Francisco Examiner columnist, on Beck playing cautiousily in the last few holes of the 1993 Masters despite being only a few shots behind eventual winner Bernhard Langer) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was low Mexican last week. Since Lee [Trevino] won so much money last year, he became Spanish. He's not a Mexican anymore. --Homero Blancas, 1970 -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you want it, get it and spend it. It's only money, not something to worship. If you run out, go out and get some more. --Mark Calcavecchia -------------------------------------------------------------------- Shoot a lower score than everybody else. --Ben Hogan (asked the secret of winning the U.S. Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Al Geiberger should have to take a test to prove he's a member of the human race. --Lee Trevino (after Geiberger shot a record 59 at the Danny Thomas Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Lema in reply to a report who asked him how much he drinks: Tony Lema: "Not as much as you." Reporter: "How do you know that?" Tony Lema "Because only a drunk would ask such a question." -------------------------------------------------------------------- Twenty-five million people saw Roberto birdie the 17th hole. I think it would hold up in court. --Jimmy Demaret (on Roberto de Vicenzo being placed second to Bob Goalby in the 1968 Masters because his partner wrote a 4 instead on birdie 3 on the 17th hole) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They keep trying to give me the championship, but I won't take it. --Leo Diegel (on choking in the last round of the 1933 British Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- War and Peace as per usual :-) --Zinger the Kool Kat (zinger@dial.pipex.com) (commenting on one of Dan King (djking@netcom.com) much to verbose posts) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Now that I've seen it, Pasatiempo is perhaps the closest of all his [Alister MacKenzie] works to remain both authentic and to provide his 'pleasurable excitement' to the public at large. --Michael Wolveridge (of the golf architect firm of Thomson, Wolveridge, Fream and Associates in the 1979 Wolveridge Report on Pasaitiempo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Double or nothing down the last hole? --Greg Norman (to Fuzzy Zoeller on the 18th tee at Winged Foot during the playoff for the 1984 U.S. Open when Greg was down 7 shots to Fuzzy) -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Seve Ballesteros] is not as long off the tee but much straighter. Let's face it, the boy is magic. Seve now comes to being the complete golfer as anyone I've ever seen. --Ben Crenshaw,1984 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I feel great to beat the best man in the world and at the home of golf, St. Andrews. --Seve Ballesteros (after beating Tom Watson at the 1984 British Open at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You learn to accept defeat graciously in golf. Unlike other sports, the game itself is a constant opponent. It never stops. A golfer is fortunate to win a few times. We spend our whole lives trying to conquer something, and we lose a lot more than we win. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- My short game has to be there for me to win the Masters. Seve and Jack and Tom don't have to play real well to win. The only way for someone like me to win is if I have a good week and they have a bad week. If they have a good week they're going to win. They're much better than the resty of us. --Ben Crenshaw, 1984 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ben [Crenshaw] has had a tremendous career. He's won 10 times in 11 years on tour. They're aren't many people in the history of the game who have done that. Obviously, Ben wants to be better. I want it too be better for him too -- but not at my expense. --Tom Kite (after losing to Ben Crenshaw at the 1984 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Greg Norman looks like the guy they always hire to kill James Bond in the movies. --Dan Jenkins, 1984 -------------------------------------------------------------------- As a rookie, you have doubts about your ability until you actually get in there. Now that I've won and had a good year, I'm certain I'll do all right. --Corey Pavin (when he won rookie of the year on the US PGA Tour in 1984) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I knew then that if my drive was in the fairway I was going to hit that 1-iron as hard as I could. They were two of the most solid shots I have ever hit. --John Daly (on his two shots to reach the un-reachable 630 yard par-5 17th hole at Baltusrol Lower Course during the 1993 U.S. Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- What in the world am I doing in a golf course where guys shoot 61? --Ben Hogan (on trailing two obscure golfers who shot 61s in the first round of a tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can honestly say in my entire career, I've never gone around a golf course and not mis-hit a shot, but today I never missed a shot. I hit every driver perfect, every iron perfect. I'm in awe of myself. --Greg Norman (in reference to his final round 64 in the '93 British Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is how the Australopithecus felt, one or two million years ago, when he first hit something with a stick. Puny homanoid muscles were amplified by the principals of mechanics so that a little monkey swat suddenly became a great manly engine of destruction able to bring enormous force to bear upon enemy predators, hunting prey, and the long fairway shots necessary to get on the green over the eary Pleistocene's tar pit hazard. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The smooth, long, liquid sweep of a three wood smacking into the equator of a dimpled Titleist...It makes a potent but slightly foolish noise like the fart of a small, powerful nature god. The ball sails away in a beautiful hip or breast of a curve. And I'm filled with joy. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hitting things with a stick is the cornerstone of civilization. Consider all the things that can be improved by hitting them with a stick: veal, the TV, Woody Allen. Having a dozen good sticks at hand, all of them well balanced and expertly made, is one of the reasons I took up golf. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I now know for certain that Quayle is smarter than his critics. He's smart enough to prefer golf to spelling. How many times has a friend called you on a Sunday morning and said, "It's a beautiful day, Let's go spell potato"? --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is so casual. You just got to the course, miss things, tramp around in the briars, use pungent language, and throw two thousand dollars worth of equipment in a pond. Unlike skydiving or rugby, golf gives you leisure to realize it's pointless. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The great thing about starting golf in your forites is that you can start golf in your forties. You can start other things in your forties but generally your wife makes you stop them, as Bill Clinton found out. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm already a fool, I don't want to look the fool besides. I want my secretary to walk into my office and find me putting into an over-turned highball glass. That's stylish. I don't happen to have an office. But I might get one and what would my secretary think if she walked in and found me batting grounders into the kneehole of my desk? --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can golf first thing in the morning. I've noticed for men my age, more and more of the important things happen at that time of the day: golf, heart attacks, delivery of the Wall Street Journal, and intermittently -- erections and bowel movements. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can smoke or drink on a golf course without interrupting the game, and you can take a leak -- something you can't do on a squash court and shouldn't do in a swimming pool. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Would beach vollyball say much about proposals for federal health care reform? Could I use mumblety-peg comparisons to explain the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations? Golf, however, is ideal for these purposes, "Christian fundamentalist put a wicked slice in the Republican party platform," "Somebody should replace the divot on the back of Al Gore's head." "Let's go hit Congress with a stick." --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- All truly American sports are equipment intensive. Basketball was strickly for hoop-over-the-barn-door Hoosiers and Jersey City Y's until two-hundred-dollar gym shoes were invented. And synchronized swimming will never make it to network prime time because how often do you need new nose plugs? --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sports gear purchases are about all that's keeping the fragile U.S. economy alive, and you'd have to get into America's Cup yachting or cross-country airplane racing to find a sport that needs more gear than golf. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- As a middle-aged affluent Replublican, it was beginning to look wierd that I didn't play. People were casting aspersions on my sex life. What with not being out on the golf course at the crack of dawn and not being soused at the 19th hole until all hours of the night -- I might have one. Where I live in New Hampshire, if that kind of thing gets around, you can be drummed out of the local GOP and lose your Magic George Bush Decoder Ring. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is another thing I like about golf, the exclusiveness. Of course most country clubs exclude the wrong kinds of people, such as me. But I hold out the hope that somewhere there's a club which bans first wives, people in twelve-step programs, Sting, the editorial board of the Boston Globe, and Ross Perot. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's one more swell thing about golf, it provides ammunition for the social bore. Who doesn't love cornering others with tales of action and adventure starring the self? But racquetball, for instance, has limits in this regard: "I hit it. She hit it. I hit it. She hit it really hard." And so on. Golf on the other hand is picaresque. A good golf bore can produce a regular Odyssey of tedium. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- All the important lessons of life are contained in the three rules for achieving a perfect golf swing: 1. Keep your head down. 2. Follow through. 3. Be born with money. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There's a fine camaraderie on a golf course -- lumbering around with your fellow Republicans, encompassed by a massive waste of space and cash, bearing witness to prolific use of lawn chemicals and countancing an exploitive wage scale for the maintenance employees. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf courses are beautiful. Many people think mature men have no appreciation for beauty except in immature women. This isn't true, and anyway, we'd rather be playing golf. A golf course is a perfect example of Republican male aesthetics -- no fuzzy little flowers, no stupid ornamental shrubs, no exorbitant demands for alimony, just acre upon acre of lush green grass that somebody else has to mow. --P.J. O'Rourke (Men's Journal, 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I walked 50-60 yards past Chip and he still hadn't decided. My caddie said, "If he is going to have any chance at all to win, he has to go for it." I said, "I totally agree. But I don't mind it if he lays up." I was surprised he did. You never know. It easy to say afterwards. I wasn't in his shoes. --Bernhard Langer (on Chip Beck's lay-up on the par-5 15th hole at the 1993 Masters when down by 3 shots to Langer.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, I three-putted the second playoff hole, but you have to lose some way. I can tell myself I'm back in contention. I played well all week. I played solid. If I'd shot 72 today, I would have reason to be disappointed. I tied for the championship. That's very important to me. --Greg Norman (at the 1993 PGA Championship were he lost to Paul Azinger on the second playoff hole) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The World Cup was founded to generate international goodwill through golf. Friendship and conviviality are therefore supposed to be essential ingredients of the tournament and Christy O'Conner had a powerful talent for friendship and conviviality. Indeed many good judges are convinced that O'Conner's genius for hitting a golf ball would have won him several Open Championships if only nature had endowed him less liberally with the conviviality. --Peter Dobereiner -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Crudin Bay] A great personal favorite of mine which I hated to leave out of my Gourmet's Choice; but I couldn't list it as superior to Simpson's Ballybunion. Cruden Bay is more of a "cult" course, thanks to it's huge sandhills, superb views, great and terrible holes, and relative anonymity. --Tom Doak (The Confiedential Guide to Golf Courses) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The winds were blowing 50 mph and gusting to 70. I hit a par-3 with my hat. --Chi Chi Rodriguez (on the winds in Scotland) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Do ye na' ken ye're flyin' heer like a kite -- wi' nae mair than a threid holdin' ye? We are all kites in that wind. --Shivas Irons -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Tis amazin' to me how these forms, these bodies, these ideas float in this emptiness . . . strange gravity. Just kites in the wind. --Shivas Irons -------------------------------------------------------------------- The U.S. hasn't gone into an international team match as a bigger underdog since 1929, the first time Walter Hagen rounded up Gene Sarazen, Leo Diegel and the boys and sailed to England to play a Ryder Cup. Not even when the Europeans were going 2-0-1 against us in 1985-87-89 did a Ryder Cup team appear as outmanned as Hale Irwin's Presidents Cup squad does this year. --Tom Gaffney (GolfWorld writer on the eve of the 1994 Presidents Cup. USA ended up winning 20-12.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Kite has always been on of those golfers who has to understand everything about his swing. He needs to reassurance that knowledge brings if he is to play well. Not for him the freewheeling style of Fred Couples or Seve Ballesteros. --Harvey Penick -------------------------------------------------------------------- Whether he was winning or losing, coming close or straggling back in the pack, Gene Sarazen has always been an enchanting player to watch and one of sport's most attractive personalities. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't think about what I said at the time. It was just a slip. It was wrong, but it happens occasionally in tournament rounds in which friends are playing. The rule is equitable because it gives one player an advantage over another in a tournament. --Tom Watson (on receiving a 2-shot penalty at the 1980 Tournament of Champions when he gave playing partner Lee Trevino swing advice) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The work ethic instilled during those early years has stayed with [Tom] Kite. He has had more teachers and taken more lessons than perhaps any other top player. --Harvey Penick -------------------------------------------------------------------- The strange thing is that I am actually left-handed. In any two- handed game I bat left-handed. But when we started playing golf we had but one left-handed club. And later, when it was time to get our second set of clubs, the bug had really got hold of both of us, Tim talked me into playing right-handed. Mainly because he knew that my mum would probably split up a set of clubs. --Nick Price -------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Auchterlonie, a warm man who expresses his thoughts with an easy clarity and is also one of the best listeners in the world, has always been in a class by himself in enlarging his friends' knowledge and love of the game. --Herbert Warren Wind -------------------------------------------------------------------- On her days off, she [Marion Hollins] was searching the Monterey Bay area restlessly, looking for the perfect site where she could build the golf course and sports center of her dreams. She found it that day on her horesback ride to Carbonero Ridge, in the rolling foothills several miles north of Santa Cruz on a portion of the historic 1838 Mexican Land Grant, Rancho Carbonero. --From The Pasatiempo Story -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm disappointed to lose the U.S. Open two days in a row. --Scott Simpson (on blowing a two-shot lead in the fourth round and then losing in a playoff to Payne Stewart at the 1991 Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's not whether you win your lose -- but whether I win or lose. --Sandy Lyle -------------------------------------------------------------------- I call that my spring training. I'm not a cold-weather player. --Lee Trevino (on not playing well in some spring tournaments) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This may be embarrassing. I've played in Japan. Is that anywhere near Asia? --Fred Couples (when asked if he had ever played in Asia) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I disagree. I wait for the day when the sponsors/tournament directors put up some kind of clause where a player won't get paid unless it looks clearly like he's giving his all (to win, or at least finish as highly as possible). If someone goes out and shoots four 73's but were trying their hearts out, good luck to them -- pay them. --Shea Bennett (sgb@trend-analysis.co.uk) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Right from the outset I loved this ancient links, [St. Andrews] where some form of the game, however, rudimentary, has been played for about 500 years, but I was utterly baffled by it: the vast double greens; the corresponding "double fairways"; the ferocious sandpits rearing their revetted faces in the most unexpected spots (such as the middle of the fairway); the heather and the gorse, and above all, the rippling, heaving, hummocky terrain. --James W. Finegan -------------------------------------------------------------------- A course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, which I cannot recommend under any circumstances. Reserved for courses that wasted ridiculous sums of money in their construction, and probably shouldn't have been built in the first place. --Tom Doak (in his Confidential guide, explaining his lowest rating) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --Louise Suggs -------------------------------------------------------------------- Women should rely upon their woods more, without fear of being criticized. We're after results and whatever club will put us where we want to be is the club to use. --Mickey Wright -------------------------------------------------------------------- The arc of your swing doesn't have a thing to do with the size of your heart. --Carol Mann -------------------------------------------------------------------- My swing is no uglier than Arnold Palmer's, and it's the same ugly swing every time. --Nancy Lopez -------------------------------------------------------------------- We were always taught to swing slow with good tempo. But you have to have some acceleration throughout the swing. I think that's where a lot of women go wrong. They should try to whack it a few times and see what happens." --Helen Alfredsson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think we need to get the message out to women that it's okay to be an athlete. You can do other things too. But it's a tough balancing act out here. It's hard trying to be feminine, trying to be skinny, trying to have your hair done nice, having long nails- then hitting the ball 300 frigging yards. I mean, put that equation together. It does not work. --Helen Alfredsson -------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't want to throw the tournament away with one shot. I'd played so well. I felt I could make birdie with a wedge. i needed 10 more yards. If I had 10 more yards, the risk would've been well worth it. It was marginal. I felt I could make birdie with my wedge. I don't regret that at all. I'm happy with my decision. --Chip Beck (on chosing to lay up on the 15th hole at the '93 Masters when Bernhard Langer had a 3-shot lead.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't need knowledge of any sporting event, person or statistic that occured 40 years ago to give an opinion on its depth and relevance compared to the present day. --Shea Bennett (sgb@trend-analysis.co.uk) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Come back to me when you have something worthwhile to say. --Shea Bennett (sgb@trend-analysis.co.uk) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The lad [Tom Kite] has such great balance, that's what makes him so consistent despite conditions. He's at a point right now where Tom Watson was some five years ago. Watch him go. --Laurie Auchterlonie, 1982 -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I woke up Sunday morning at the Open and stepped outside and felt the wind and rain in my face, I knew I had an excellent chance to win if I just took my time and trusted myself. --Tom Kite (On his 1992 U.S. Open victory) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I love it [Practicing in Texas]. You can find anything. You can practice rain, you can practice wind, you can practice on hard pan, you can practice on lush gold courses, you can find all the conditions you will ever encounter in Texas. --Tom Kite -------------------------------------------------------------------- You cannot ground your club in addressing the ball, or move anything, however loose or dead it may be. --Royal Selanger Golf Club, built on an ancient Chinese burial ground near Kuala Lampur -------------------------------------------------------------------- Under an assumed name. --Dutch Harrison (to a pro-am hacker who asked how to play the next shot) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Your clubs. --Jackie Gleason (when asked by Toots Shor what to give the caddie after shooting 211) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nice clods, Stadler. Did you get those at a Buster Brown fire sale? --Fuzzy Zoeller (commenting on Craig Stadler's new shoes) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I like golf becasue you can be really terrible at it and still not look much dorkier than anybody else. --Dave Barry -------------------------------------------------------------------- The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf. It's almost a law. --H.G. Wells -------------------------------------------------------------------- George, you look perfect. . .that beautiful knitted shirt, an alpaca sweater, those expensive slacks. . . you've got an alligator bag, the finest matched irons, and the best woods money can buy. It's a damn shame you have to spoil it all by playing golf. --Lloyd Mangrum (to George Burns) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a saying around Georgia that the Augusta National Golf Club is the closest thing to heaven for a golfer -- and it's just as hard to get into. --Joe Geshwiler -------------------------------------------------------------------- If there's a golf course in heaven, I hope it's like Augusta National. I just don't want an early tee time. --Gary Player -------------------------------------------------------------------- the difference between golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie. --George Deukmejian (former governor of California0 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Check the diaper; if it's wet you get relief from casual water. --Bob Murphy (after his playing partner's ball landed in a baby carriage) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey, is this room out of bounds? --Alex Karras (to a startled bystander, after hitting a golf ball through the plate glass window of the clubhouse at the Red Run Golf Club in Royal Oak, Michigan) -------------------------------------------------------------------- one reward golf has given me, and I shall always be thankful for it, is introducing me to some of the world's most picturesque, tireless, and bald-faced liars. --Rex Lardner -------------------------------------------------------------------- So if you visit Chicago, enjoy the many great courses, the Midwestern friendliness, and the cities other amenities. But if a stranger with a goofy swing wants to play for more than loose change, take a pass. It's a long walk back to your hotel in bare feet. --Mike Royko -------------------------------------------------------------------- Now on the pot, Johnny Tee. --Los Angeles Open Announcer (1965, screwing up the introduction.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My dear, did you ever stop to think what a wonderful bunker you would make? --Walter Hagen (to a buxom opera diva) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Once when I'd been in a lot of bunkers, my caddie told me he was getting blisters from raking so much. --Joanne Carner -------------------------------------------------------------------- real golfers, no matter what the provocation, never stike a caddie with the driver. The sand wedge is far more effective. --Huxtable Pippey -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Royal Hong Kong Club caddies hit the nail on the head; their term for golf -- "Hittee ball, say damn". --Dick Anderson -------------------------------------------------------------------- If a caddie can help you, you don't know how to play golf. --Dan Jenkins -------------------------------------------------------------------- Caddies are a breed of their ownn. If you shoot 66, they say, "Man, we shot 66!" But go out and shoot 77, and they say "Hell he shot 77!" --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is 60 or 70 contestants over 200 acres doing unpredicatable things at improbable times. It's an 18-ring circus without a ringmaster. --Nick Seitz -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf, especially championship golf, isn't suppose to be fun, was never meant to be fair, and never will make any sense. --Charles Price -------------------------------------------------------------------- The rest of the field. --Roger Maltbie (when asked what he would have to shoot in order to win a tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Some players would complain if they had to play on Dolly Parton's beadspread. --Jimmy Demaret -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are two things that guys on tour do not like; playing in the wind and me dating their sister. --Gary McCord -------------------------------------------------------------------- Your financial cost [of playing golf] can best be figured out when you realize if you were to devote the same time and energy to business instead of golf, you would be a millionaire in approximately six weeks. --Buddy Hackett -------------------------------------------------------------------- An expensive way of playing marbles. --G.K. Chesterton -------------------------------------------------------------------- A golf course is nothing but a poolroom moved outdoors. --Father Fitzgibbon (declining a golf invitation from colleague Father O'Malley in the movie "Going my Way") -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think I'll go cold turkey in the end and build golf courses. I'll torture other people. --David Feherty (on retirement plans) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you birdie the 18th, do you get a free game? --John Mahaffey (on TPC at Sawgrass) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never really dreamed of making many putts. Maybe that's why I haven't made many. --Calvin Peete -------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, that lot's full. Let's see if I can park this baby someplace else. --Joanne Carner (after whacking two drives into an adjoining parking lot) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Seve Ballesteros drives into territory Daniel Boone couldn't find. --Fuzzy Zoeller -------------------------------------------------------------------- I just hitch up my girdle and let 'er fly. --Babe Didrickson Zaharias (explaning her long tee shots) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I had cleared the trees and drove the green, it would've been a great tee shot. --Sam Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- Man, I can't even point that far! --Gay Brewer (after watching a long-distance blast by John Daly) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter Hagen once said that every golfer can expect to have four bad shots in a round and when you do, just put them out of your mind. This, of course, is hard to do when you're not even off the first tee when you've had them. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- I played Civil War golf, I went out in 61 and came back in 65. --Henny Youngman -------------------------------------------------------------------- My best score ever is 103, but I've only been playing 15 years. --Alex Karras -------------------------------------------------------------------- It matters not the sacrifice Which makes the duffer's wife so sore. I am the captive of my slice I am the servant of my score. --Grantland Rice -------------------------------------------------------------------- The golfer has more enemies than any other athlete. He has 14 clubs in his bag, all of them different; 18 holes to play, all of them different every week; and all around him are sand, trees, grass, water, wind, and 143 other players. In addition, the game is 50 percent mental, so his biggest enemy is himself. --Dan Jenkins -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you pick up a golfer and hold it close to your ear, like a conch shell, and listen, you will hear an alibi. --Fred Beck -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is more fun than walking naked in a strange place, but not much. --Buddy Hackett -------------------------------------------------------------------- People who say golf is fun are probably the same people who rationalize the game by saying they play it for their health. What could be fun about a game in the entire history of which nobody has ever shot the score he thought he should have? --Charles Price -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tell me honestly: do you know anyone who truly likes to play golf? Oh, I suppose there are some people who derive pleasure from golf just as there are certain kinds of individuals who enjoy being snapped in the rib cage with knotted towels. --Peter Andrews -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can, legally, possibly hit and kill a fellow golfer with a ball, and there will not be a lot of trouble because the other golfers will refuse to stop and be witnesses because they will want to keep playing. --Dave Barry -------------------------------------------------------------------- It took me 17 years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course. --Hank Aaron -------------------------------------------------------------------- watching a golf tournament is different from attending other sporting events. For one thing, the drunks are spread out in a larger area. --Don Wade -------------------------------------------------------------------- One of life's great mysteries is just what do golfers think they are playing at. But even more mysterious is what these spectators who traipse around golf courses are looking for. --Michael Parkinson (president of the Anti-Golf Society) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is one thing in this world that is dumber than playing golf. That is watching someone else play golf. What do you actually get to see? thirty-seven guys in polyester slacks squinting in the sun. Doesn't that set your blood racing? --Peter Andrews -------------------------------------------------------------------- Gimme: an agreement between two losers who can't putt. --Jim Bishop -------------------------------------------------------------------- So, it's me again, huh, Lord? Why don't you just come down here and we'll play. And bring that kid of yours. I'll play your best ball. --Tommy Bolt (after missing a putt) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the Lord's punishment for man's sins. --James "Scotty" Reston -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is not a funeral, though both can be very sad affairs. --Bernard Darwin -------------------------------------------------------------------- My caddie didn't want me to go for it. I looked at him and said, "I don't ever want to win a golf tournament if that's the way to do it. I want to win like a champion." --Amy Alcott (on hitting 3-iron from heavy rough to the final green of the '83 Dinah Shore when she had a 2-shot lead.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You know they have a saying around the racetrack that if you have eight cheap horses and run them against each other eight times, you'd have eight different winners. Sound like the PGA tour to you? -Jim Murray, 1988 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I hit every shot the way I dreamed about today. But that's the strange thing about golf. You don't have any control about what your opponent does. --Tom Kite (Final round of the '86 Masters when he lost to Nicklaus by a single shot) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack [Nicklaus]'s got to start thinking about when it is time to retire. --Ken Venturi (on the even of the 1986 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My son Steve called me at the house we're renting this morning, and he asked me, "Well Pop, what's it going to take?" and I said, "Sixty-six will tie and 65 will win." --Jack Nicklaus (prior to the final round of the '86 Masters where he shot 65 to win) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was getting choked up with all the people cheering on every hole. I was so proud of him. Finally, when he putted out on 18 I told him, "Dad, I loved seeing you play today. It was the thrill of my lifetime. I mean that was awesome." --Jackie Nicklaus (Jack Nicklaus' son and caddie at the '86 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I made that putt, it just didn't go in. Honest to God. . . I made it so many times in the practice rounds -- seven or eight times -- and it never broke left once. --Tom Kite (after missing his 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole of the '86 Masters that would have tied Jack Nicklaus. The putt broke left) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We heard the roar [for Nicklaus] on 15 and then another and another. By that time, Nicky [Price] and I were back there with about 50 people following us. So I said to Nicky, "Let's do something to wake these people up." --Greg Norman (in the final group, and 4 groups behind Nicklaus at the '86 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I just basically spun out and pushed it to the right. I was trying to hit it too hard and too high. . . I was going for the flag. I was going for the birdie and the win. It was the first time all week I let me ego get the best of me. --Greg Norman (on his 4-iron into the crowd on the 72nd hole of the '86 Masters, leading to a bogey when a par would have tied Nicklaus) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey, if your looking for a dad-burn superstar, look at this kid. He was so good today, I wanted to caddie for him. --Lee Trevino (on playing partner, Bob Tway at the '86 U.S. Open at Shinnecock) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He had that look today. When he was walking from the 10th green to the 11th tee. I could all of a sudden see it in his eyes. It's this starry look, a blank. He's like a race horse with blinders on. He saw me, but didn't see me. And I knew he had it under control. I had been nervous. But that look just calmed me. I've seen him win before without that look, but I've never seen him lose with it. --Maria Floyd (on husband Ray Floyd's stare during the final round of the '86 U.S. Open at Shinnecock) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The rule says something about intent when you do that. I intended to hit it. --Hale Irwin (calling a penatly on himself when he whiffed a 2-inch putt on his 14th hole of the third round of the '83 British Open. He lost to Watson by 1 shot) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't want ot change the name on the towels. --Lee Trevino (on marrying second wife Claudia after divorcing first wife Claudia) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Look, I don't mind if the Japanese make our cars, the Koreans our clothes, the Germans our binoculars, and I don't mind of the Arabs furnish our oil -- but does Sandy Lyle have to win the Masters? --Jim Murray, 1988 -------------------------------------------------------------------- But the proposition is not "Would a Sandy Lyle have been able to beat the Hogans, Snead and Jones in their prime?" It's "Would there even have been a Sandy Lyle in their prime?" --Jim Murray (proposing a theory that the reason why US dominated world golf for so long was due to the World Wars in Europe) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It doesn't make any difference. You don't weigh enough to do any damage. --Bill Glasson (to Mike Reid at the 1988 International when Reid stepped on Glasson's line) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You've got a free shot. You can always pitch out of the woods. --Joanne Carner (on her aggresive style on par-5s) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I go out and knock down pins. I know if I can do that, I can afford new pins for the club. --Amy Alcott -------------------------------------------------------------------- Some players never fire when they're not playing well. I'll fire anyway, hoping to get it going. It reminds me of Greg Norman at the 1988 PGA Championship. He couldn't get it going, but he was still attacking. If he ever does get it going, you can't catch him. --Joanne Carner -------------------------------------------------------------------- The early golf swing was more or less just a swing. Babe [Zaharias] brought the swing and a hit to the game. She got people, especially women, power-minded. --Patty Berg -------------------------------------------------------------------- At Augusta National 1972, I was having breakfast with Dan Jenkins when Bill MacPhail [then vice-president of CBS sports] came up and asked: "Does anybody know a goddamn limey who speaks halfway decent?" Jenkins said, "Here's your man." --Ben Wright (on getting his job with CBS sports when he pinhc-hit for Henry Longhurst who had come down with pneumonia prior to the 1972 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm glad your playing like the Tom Watson of old. I'm sick of the Tom Watson who hits 17 greens and shoots 71. --Bruce Edwards (Tom Watson's long time caddie after Watson averaged 67 and 12 greens for the 4 rounds of the 1987 Nabisco Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hit a badshot on the West coast and your partner is soothing. "You just quit on it a littel bit," He conforts, "We can fix that in one minute on the driving range." In New York, they scream at you. "What's you want to go and do that for? We needed that dummy." --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- Never refer to your partner as "The Load", "Hooky" or "Old Shanks, here, that I got saddled with" or "Three-putt." When he says "I'm doing the best I can." Never say, "That's exactly what I was afraid of." --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've had a lot of majors where I didn't play well until the last round. Keep yourself in contention; that's the name of the game. I usually ended up shooting a good round and all of a sudden, somehow, I won. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Who in the world remembers who won the 1975 Westchester Classic or the 1978 Western Open? Basically, the majors are the only comparison over time . . . played on the same courses for generations. All the best players are always there. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- I remember playing the match and how excited Ken [Venturi] and I were to be playing [Ben] Hogan and [Byron] Nelson. I know we played some fantastic golf that day, all of us, but I don't remember much else. --Harvey Ward (on the 1956 match between amateurs Venturi and Ward against legends Hogan and Nelson at Cypress Point) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There was not a missed shot in the whole round. It seems we were tying ever hole with birdies [Only three holes were halved with pars, the first, eleventh and fourteenth]. --Ken Venturi (on the 1956 match between amateurs Venturi and Ward against legends Hogan and Nelson at Cypress Point) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was the best golf I've ever seen. And that's the only team who ever beat Harvey and me. We could have challenged the world. Come to think of it, that's about what we did. --Ken Venturi (on the 1956 match between amateurs Venturi and Ward against legends Hogan and Nelson at Cypress Point) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You just know. You've got the feel. Everything is right: Your clothes look good, you're hair's perfect and you managed to shave your legs that day without cutting yourself. --Patty Sheehan (on the feeling just prior to a hot streak) -------------------------------------------------------------------- People ask me how good I would be with a strong back. But I've done pretty well with the one I have. --Fuzzy Zoeller -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you'd asked me at 30 where I'd be during the Masters when I was 46, I'd have pictured myself on a boat fishing, smoking a cigar, drinking a mint julep and watching it on television. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- About as fun a round of golf as I've ever played, of course it was even more fun for me. I won. --Jack Nicklaus (on the final round of the '75 Masters when he dueled and beat Wesikopf and Miller) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a ridiculous putt. Even if he'd barely missed, he would have ended 20 feet away. It was a one-in-a hundred putt. No a one-in-five hundred putt. --Johhny Miller (on Nicklaus' 40 foot on 16 at the '75 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a trick putt. Tom [Weiskopf] was robbed. He hit it plenty good enough to go in. I thought it would break too. He just got rooked on the deal. --Johnny Miller (on Weiksopf's 10-foot putt on the 72nd hole of the '75 Masters which would have tied him with Nicklaus) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I knew it would be a big play that won. But if you'd put us in the same position, with 18 to play the next day, Johnny [Miller] might have won, or I might have. It's like tossing a coin when you're all playing that well. --Tom Weiskopf (on the final round of the '75 Masters that was won by Nicklaus by a shot over Weiskopf and Miller) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody needs 14 clubs. The reduction would have zero effect on scoring, would make the game a touch less expensive and might diminish hte importance of riding by encouraging more golfers to carry or pull their clubs. Francis Ouiment won the 1913 U.S. Open with a set of seven clubs. --Frank Hannigan -------------------------------------------------------------------- ...20 year old U.S. Amateur champion Phil Mickelson. He looks like the best player since Jack Nicklaus. Of course, I said the same thing about Bob Dickson, Steve Melynk and Bobby Clampett. --Fran Hannigan -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was horrified. Absolutely hearsick. All I could think of was that after 23 years together, I'd lost my faithful ally. I couldn't sleep, couldn't get the loss out of my mind. It was like discovering that someone in my family had died. --Ben Crenshaw (on the theft of his putter "Little Ben" in 1990) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can't get too close to a putter -- otherwise it will get you. I never like to use the same putter for too long. When I play a tournament, I go into the pro shop and select a putter off the rack, take it out, use it, then take it back. I don't get to familiar with it. As long as it's got a shaft and a grip, it'll putt. --Gary McCord -------------------------------------------------------------------- The fact is all golfers are equipment junkies and professional golfers are the worst of the lot. They'll do anything to find the perfect putter even though they'll insist no such instrument exists. --Dave Marr -------------------------------------------------------------------- When the going is good and the putts are dropping, you love your putter. When it's going bad, it's like it has betrayed you and you want to throw the sucker in a lake. --Ken Green -------------------------------------------------------------------- People here [in the U.S.] want ot see my bad shots. They do not want to see my good shots. I believe that. They say I am a very wild driver and that this course [Augusta National] is the only course in the world that is wide enough for me. --Seve Ballesteros -------------------------------------------------------------------- Cracking under pressure, or "choking" starts as a mental process and negative thoughts inevitably have a physically hampering effect on performance. --Mac O'Grady -------------------------------------------------------------------- My goal for 1987 is to go the whole year without being fined. --Mac O'Grady -------------------------------------------------------------------- But during the last quarter century, as we all know, greens have become more difficult to putt. The main reason, of course, related to the solunar tables and the gradual warming of the earth's atmosphere. Then of course, there's the new multi-dimpled golf ball. --George Peper, 1987 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The amateur was THE tournament in those days. It was widely considered to have the best players while the pro game was doomed to be played by guys whose options would have been bootblacks or pool hustlers if they hadn't stumbled onto a golf course. The notion that no gentleman ever plays too well died hard. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- Amercans must have known television was coming. The United States Golf Association introduced "par" into the lexicon as early as 1910 when they defined it as "perfect play without flukes under ordinary weather conditions, always allowing 2 strokes on each putting green." The terms "birdies" and 'eagles" were American coinage, too. No one spoke of level-fours on this side of the Atlantic. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- A Major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists. --Thomas Boswell -------------------------------------------------------------------- We play many tournaments that effectively eliminate thought. You have traps on both sides of the flat fairway and traps on all four side of the green. You step up and aim at the center of an obvious target every time. You have no options, no room for strategy. --David Graham -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ballesteros should never be out of the top five here [Augusta National] for the rest of his prime. No course anywhere suits one player so well. --Nick Price -------------------------------------------------------------------- This place [Augusta National] rejects me like a skin transplant. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- Of the big four, the PGA is the most fair and the least fun. Basically, it;s just the U.S. Open set up by nice, rather than nasty, fellows. --Thomas Boswell -------------------------------------------------------------------- That "I don't give a darn" attitude is probably why I've shot so many good final rounds over the years when I started the day a few shots behind with nothing to lose. . . and maybe that's why I've shot so many bad last rounds when I was ahead and knew I couldn't afford a mistake. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- Not everyone can hit great shots all the time. Hubert Green didn't play as well as I did, but he beat me by four shots. He and Trevino taught me a lesson. You have to keep scoring no matter how you pull it off. It takes charachter to win a major championship. --Nick Price (after the 1985 PGA Championship. where he faded over the back-9) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I used to think you could win just a bunch of other tournaments, but, well, I never would have said it, but I guess you have to win majors to be. . .up there. The longer you play, the more you realize that they are more important. --Andy Bean -------------------------------------------------------------------- I made nothing happen very slowly. --Gary McCord (1987, on his 13 year PGA career) -------------------------------------------------------------------- As you can see, the hole [par-3 4th hole at Baltusrol Lower course] really isn't too difficult. --Robert Trent Jones (1954, living the architects dream. After members complained he made the hole too difficult, in front of the head pro and club president, he aced it on the first try) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Seve Ballesteros and Greg Norman are the modern giants, the Michelangelos, the Picassos, the de Vincis. We are lucky we have them. --Mac O'Grady, 1987 -------------------------------------------------------------------- There's no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls. You think Ballesteros or Jack Nickluas had all that talent naturally? Hell no. They worked. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I came out on the Tour I watched Billy Casper practice because I figured he was a little better than me. I might catch him if I practiced twice as hard. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- I made my peace with Augusta National. But then last year they charged me $90 for my son's ticket because he was 21. I didn't say anything at the time, but I don't think it was right. --Lee Trevino (on why he didn't play at the 1986 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Somewhere along the line I'll be recognized as one of the top players in the Nicklaus era. That's all I want to be remembered for. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- In the old days, who wanted to see a pro play? All he did was play when a member wanted a mercenary as his advisor. --Herb Graffis -------------------------------------------------------------------- About five weeks a year I play my best golf. The rest of the time I play like Johnny Hack out there. --Fuzzy Zoeller -------------------------------------------------------------------- The tournament [The Masters] had one thing going for it -- Bobby Jones. He was it sole raison d'etre. If it was assailable, he was not. golf genuflected before the name of Bobby jones. It was as if God put together the tournament. Let no man put it usunder. --Jim Murray (on The Masters becomes a major) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Herb Wind wrote about golf the way Bobby Jones played it. Herb was as careful with a verb as Bobby was with a shot. It was the greatest wedding of man and event since -- well, maybe not Homer and the Trojan War but certainly Grantland Rice and the Notre Dame backfield. --Jim Murray (on The Masters becomes a major) -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Bob] Jones never consciously discriminated against black players. I have half-dozen letters from him convincingly protesting this point. He just didn't know any. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- Look at that. Jack's [Nicklaus] gone crazy. We're beating each other to death and that son of a gun has caught and passed us. --Lee Trevino (to Tony Jacklin on the 9th tee at the 1972 Open At Muirfield) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll probably be hearin' from the bloomin' Queen herself. --Tony Jacklin (after winning his first American tournament at age 23) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When he makes that, the golf tournament is history. I've had it happen before, but I don't think it's going to happen again. But it did. . . How would I evaluate that shot? One of the worst that ever happened to me. Right up there with Trevino's [chip-in] at Muirfield [on the 71st hold of the 1972 British Open]. --Jack Nicklaus (on Tom Watson's chip-in birdie from heavy rough on the 71st hole of the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is on the flat side and at the first glance some people look upon it almost as an inland course, but after a round or two one becomes greatly impressed by the good golf that is to be obtained upon it and its excellent testing capacity. --Harry Vardon (1905, on Muirfield) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Pro golf is dull. It's a chorus line of blond towheads you can't even tell apart. --Tommy Bolt -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are interesting times. The game is more fun when you are experimenting. One day yuor great, the next day scatterlog. But your learning. No that's not right. I probably have forgotten more about golf than I will ever learn. What you do is remember some of the things you thought you would never forget. --Jack Nicklaus (during one of his slumps) -------------------------------------------------------------------- For years, I never thought I needed a short game. Finally I just decided to do something about it. I needed to get up and down from tough spots on the par-5s for my birdies. So I went to Phil [Rogers]. He's the best. For the last couple weeks, Phil has been staying at my house and we've been practicing in the evening. --Jack Nicklaus, 1980 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Watson's a great golfer, but that's all. Larry Nelson, a nice guy but so absolutely colorless you'd think he'd at least wear some bright clothes. Lon Hinkle, forget it. Ben Crenshaw's Texas drawl is his charisma. Bill Rodgers, nothing. Hale Irwin ought to be a banker. Most of these guys don't even drink. Only bullfighting and the waterhole are left as vestigal evidence of what bloody savages men used to be. --Tommy Bolt, 1980 -------------------------------------------------------------------- I couldn't care less who I'm paired with. There's nobody I've ever played better or worse with, thank goodness. You don't want any factor to be outside your control. What if Arnie's Army had bothered me? What id I'd said, "Oh geez, I'm paired with Palmer," I'd never had beaten him. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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, understnad it, and love it. --Jack Nicklaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Isao Aoki] is one of the three best players in the world from 100 yards. Maybe the best. --Tom Watson -------------------------------------------------------------------- He plays with a style with which I am not personally familiar. --Jack Nicklaus (on Isao Aoki) -------------------------------------------------------------------- His [Isao Aoki] putting stroke is so smooth, so utterly confident that I'd expect lightening to strike if he ever three-putted. We've been together all three days and he hasn't even come close to three-putting. --Jack Nicklaus (prior to the fourth straight day paired with Aoki at the 1980 U.S. Open at Baltusrol. Aoki did three-putt the second hole in the final round...and lightening didn't strike) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Now I know you're expecting me to say "I retire". Well maybe I should quit right now, but I'm not that smart. I've said a hundred times that I'm not as good as I once was. I just want to be occasionally as good as I once was. Today I was. --Jack Nicklaus (April 13, 1986. Augusta Georgia) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Some things cannont possibly happen, because they are both too improbable and too perfect. The U.S. hockey team cannot beat the Russians in the 1980 Olympics. Jack Nicklaus cannot shoot 65 to win the Masters at age forty-six. Nothing else comes immediately to mind. --Thomas Boswell -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've never been to heaven and, thinking back on my life, I probably won't get a chance to go. I guess the Masters is as close as I'm going to get. --Fuzzy Zoeller -------------------------------------------------------------------- You don't come to Augusta to find your game. You come here because you've got one. --gene Sarazen -------------------------------------------------------------------- I get too jazzed up. The first round [of the Masters] has killed me for fifteen straight years. --Johnny Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Redan at North Berwick is another fine hole which has been copied almost as often as the Eden at St. Andrews. The original hole can hardly be considered perfect, as it is too blind and there are too many bunkers which have no meaning, but the ideas embodied in the hole are excellent, and these ideas give an architect great opportunities of making interesting holes. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Penna hit that stick [16th hole at Augusta National] two years in a row and both times it trickled back all the way back down into the lake. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Player hit an ugly little neck hook down the left side, and I hit a solid drive down the right side. Because Gary's ball was on the correct line, it rolled fifty eatra yards to the flat bottom. I had a 207 yard one-iron from a downhill lie. Player had a 162yard seven-iron from a level lie. He made birdie. I made bogey. --Andy Bean (on playing the 10th hole at Augusta National) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My caddie 'Stovepipe' tried to talk me into hitting a three-wood. But I took out the turf rider [four-wood] instead. The moment I hit it, I felt something in my bones. Walter Hagen was playing with me and Bobby Jones was on the green. Twenty-one people were behind the green. The sun was going down. I wasn't sure it had gone in the hole until I saw all twenty-one people jumping up and down. --Gene Sarazan (on his double-eagle at the Second Augusta Invitational) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never had any thought the whole week. I figured my caddie [Jerry Beard] knew the course a lot better than me, so I put out my hand and played whatever club he put in it. I'd say, "How hard do I hit it?" He'd tell me and I'd swing. The guys who come down here once a year and try to get smart with Mr. Jones' course are the dumb ones. --Fuzzy Zoeller (after winning the 1979 Masters as a rookie) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can't see all the way back to the thirteenth tee from behind the twelth green [at Augusta National]. That's because they have a Delta Airlines counter back there. After you take your triple-bogey on the twelth, you just go back there and say, "I'd like a one-way ticket back home on Friday because I just missed the cut." --Ken Venturi -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you let it, the Masters will play you instead of you playing it. Augusta National can pamper you right off the bottom of the leader board. Pampered before and after your round, but mentally and emotionally pulverized during them -- that's the formula. --Joe Inman -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we had to play Augusta National in one hour, the best athlete would win the Masters. But as it is, they give us time to hang ourselves. Every swing is a 'thought shot'. So instead of the best athlete, you end up with the best thinker as the winner. --Joe Inman -------------------------------------------------------------------- If the renamed it [the Masters] the Hartford Open, everyone would shoot 265. Take away all the pressure and all these young bucks would shoot the lights out. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Lietzke has a new Trans Am with a 500 engine. He says on Thursday, he's going to do a burnout up Magnolia Lane, go into a full skid and come to a stop at the clubhouse door going backwards. I envy the loose guys like Zoeller and Lietzke. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the only-est sport. Your 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- You can talk about strategy all you want, but what really matters is resilency. On the last nine holes of the Masters or Open, there's going to come at least one point when you want to throw yourself in the nearest trash can and disappear. You know you can't hide. It's like your walking down the fairway naked. The gallery knows what you've done, every other player knows and worst of all, you know. That's when you find out if you're a real competitor. --Hale Irwin -------------------------------------------------------------------- For an amateur, standing on the first hole of the Masters is the ultimate laxative. --Trevor Homer -------------------------------------------------------------------- it's about the same as mine, except it's got about forty-eight less cart-path grooves on the bottom and tewenty less spike marks on the face. --Craig Stadler (compating his 8813 Wilson putter to Ben Crenshaw's) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I took it [the Taylor's Steak House advertisment] off the bag for the same reason I put it on. No reason at all. -Craig Stadler -------------------------------------------------------------------- The UsGA makes sure that every Open is a paramount test of a player's ability to use the games most definitive clubs -- the driver and the putter. --Thomas Boswell -------------------------------------------------------------------- At its best, the U.S. Open demands straight drives, crisp iron shots, brilliant chipping and putting, and strategic position play. Plus the pateince of St. Francis and the will of Patton. At it's worst, the Open eradicates the difference in ability between a Tom Purtzer and a Tom Watson and throws both in the same jail of high rough and high risk shots. This is the disturbing tendency in the Opens of the seventies and eighties, one which worries everyone in golf. --Thomas Boswell -------------------------------------------------------------------- The USGA doesn't want to recognize the fact that today's players are better than ever. They seem willing to do anything to prevent us from shooting scores that would make us appear better than the great names of the past. --Hale Irwin -------------------------------------------------------------------- In my day we simply didn't believe that it was possible to play as well as these young fellows do. We thought that strength denied touch and that you coul not consistently hit the ball both long and straight. It's been proven that you can. --Byron Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- A million thoughts went through my mind. What little mind I have. --Fuzzy Zoeller (after making his final shot to win the '79 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus, I wish I could tell you what it means to me. I'd like to thank. . . well, I'd like to thank Tom [Watson] and Ed [Sneed] for missing all those putts. --Fuzzy Zoeller (speaking to the press after winning the '79 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- A smart fella once told me that a fine golfer only has one fine thing, and that's his fine golf -- and that if he forgets it, he's a fool. Tom Watson never forgets. --Byron Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- When my swing is in trouble, I go back and look at old films when I was hot. Tom [Watson] would probably never do that. He's always pushing forward, trying to reach some new level, make some improvement. The idea to go back and recapture something would make him sick. --Lanny Wadkins -------------------------------------------------------------------- You son of a bitch. You're something else. I'm really proud of you. --Jack Nicklaus (claiming that's what he said to Tom Watson after Watson came off the 18th green at the '82 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach) I'm going to beat you, you little S.O.B., if it takes me the rest of my life. --Jack Nicklaus (what Tom Watson claims he said as Watson came off the 18th green in the final round of the '82 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach) -------------------------------------------------------------------- As soon as it landed on the green, I knew it was in. When it went in the hole, I about jumped into the Pacific Ocean. --Tom Watson (on his chip-in birdie from heavy rough on the 17th green in the final round of the '82 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We live with bad conditions. We should be able to cope with them better than Americans. --Bernhard Langer -------------------------------------------------------------------- It's the old American thing from the Ryder Cup matches. The Americans wear foot-joys and all the English players stand together admiring their shoes, and their slacks and their clubs. How can you beat a man if you can't afford his shoes? --Nick Job -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't see how I'm going to get out of it. --Nick Job (surprised second round leader of the '81 Open when asked how he was going to handle being paired in the prestigious final group) -------------------------------------------------------------------- People think Trevino's loosey goosey. In fact he's tight as a drum. They think he's relaxed. Really, he's so intense he has to talk and joke constantly to relieve the tension. --Dale Antrum (PGA official) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, I think I have the best swing on the Tour. Why have scores come down in the last ten years? Partly because they are imitating me. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- Years ago I had a 1-iron I could hit 260 yards through a doorway. Now I can hit it through the keyhole. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- in ten years, we'll be playing benefits for that guy. --Bob Goalby (on Lee Trevino after Trevino won the 1968 U.S. Open at Oak Hill) -------------------------------------------------------------------- They say we've already played one major tournament this year. But for me, the first major tournament will be the Open at Merion. I don't count the Masters. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the ugliest golf course I've ever seen in my life. I wouldn't bother to play it if you put it in my backyard. Somebody's pulling somebody's leg. --Thomas Boswell (no his first glimpse of the Old Course at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There's more to be learned here about course design than anywhere. Collection bunkers, false fronts, bump shots. The fundamentals of design became fundamental because of what's here. And it happened accidentally. Or maybe accidentally on purpose. --Jack Nicklaus (on St. andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Faith sir, she looks like the Old Course. --Tom Morris (looking through a nineteenth century telescope at the surface of the moon) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Would you like to see a city given over soul and body to a tyrannising game? If you would, there's little need to rover. for St. Andrews is the abject city's name. --R.F. Murray (1885, an American student-poet at St. Andrews University) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I got no pride on the hole. It's a par-5 and I play it that way. A four is a birdie. --Lee Trevino (on the Road Hole at the Old Course at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Into the wind, the hole is almost unplayable. I just try not to pull a Tommy Nakajima. --Seve Ballesteros (on the Road Hole at the Old Course at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fairway, fairway, fairway. . . boring, boring, boring. I am great fun for the gallery. I mix with them and let them tell me what to do. --Seve Ballesteros -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ask the American players how many weeks in a row they play in Japan. --Seve Ballesteros (when asked why he doesn't play in the U.S. more) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Seve [Ballesteros] did not win the right way, you see. That's to say, he did not win the way Nicklaus won -- with self-control, conservative strategy, methodical Germanic doggedness and endless patience. The virtues of the king can, unconsciously, become the only acceptable virtues. --Thomas Boswell (explaing why the U.S. wasn't quick to accept Ballesteros) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Wher's the third ball come from? No one's playing mulligans, I trust. Oh, it's Seve's ball is it? Well good enough, that explains it. --David Graham (on finding Seve's tee-shot from the 17th hole at Augusta National on the 7th green, which his group was in the process of playing) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game in which you yell 'fore,' shoot six, and write down five. --Paul Harvey -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is just a game -- and an idiotic game most of the time. --Mark Calcavecchia -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf giveth and golf taketh away, but it taketh away a hell of a lot more than it giveth. --Simon Hobday -------------------------------------------------------------------- In football. . .some coaches have stated, "When you throw a pass, three things can happen, two of them are bad." In golf, there is no limit. --Marino Parascenzo -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf lacks something for me. It would be better if once in a while someone came up from behind and tackled you just as you were hitting the ball. --Red Grange -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf seems to me an arduous way to go for a walk. I prefer to take the dogs out. --Princess Anne -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you want to take long walks, take long walks. If you want to hit things with a stick, hit things with a stick. But there's no excuse for combining the two and putting the results on TV. Golf is not so much a sport as an assault to lawns. --National Lampoon -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is the most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste time and try the sprit of man. --Westbrook Pegler -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is a game of such monumental stupidity that anyone with a brain more active than a cantaloupe has difficulty gearing down to its demands. --Peter Andrews -------------------------------------------------------------------- All I've got against golf is it takes you so far from the clubhouse. --Eric Linklater -------------------------------------------------------------------- Many play golf, and one odd effect of that persuit is that they return to work manifestly stupider than they were. It is, I think, the company of other golfers. --G.W. Lyttleton -------------------------------------------------------------------- The reason I don't play golf is because i was a caddie when I was 13. Women never gave up a golf ball that was lost somewhere in the trees and thicket and down through the poison ivy. It was during one of these searches that I vowed to the Lord above that if I ever earned enough money I would never set foot on a course again. --Art Buckwald -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are now more golf clubs in the world than Gideon bibles, more golf balls than missionaries, and, if every golfer in the world, male and female, were laid end to end, I, for one, would leave them there. --Michael Parkinson (presdient of the Anti-Golf Society) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My game is so bad I gotta hire three caddies -- one to talk the left rough, one for the right rough, and one down the middle. And the one down the middle doesn't have much to do. --Dave Hill -------------------------------------------------------------------- My God, he looks like he's beating a chicken. --Byron Nelson (analyzing Jack Lemmon's swing) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Gay Brewer swings the club in a figure eight. If you didn't know better, you'd swear he was trying to kill snakes. --Dave Hill -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The golf swing is among the most stressful and unnatural acts in sports, short of cheering for the Yankees. --Brad Faxon -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I'm breathing heavy while walking on a green, I'm going uphill. If I trip, I'm going downhill. --Spec Goldman (on reading greens) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The greens are harder than a whore's heart. --Sam Snead (on the greens at Winged Foot Golf Club) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think I'll change my grip. --Bill Thomas (amateur, after his slice broke the windshields of two passing cars) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been sqyeezing the club so hard the cow is screaming. --J.C. Snead -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are two reasons for making a hole in one. The first is that it is immensely laborsaving. --H.I. Phillips -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a hole in one contest and I had a three. --Abe Lemons (explaining how he came within two strokes of winning an automobile in a golf tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is undetaken mostly by husbands and wives over nine holes on Friday evenings or Sunday afternoone, when nothing better is scheduled, often with results so discordant thay make Ralph and Alice Kramden sound positively blissful by contrast. --Nick Seitz -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is played by 20 million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun. --Jim Bishop -------------------------------------------------------------------- Playing with your spouse on the golf course runs almost as great a marital risk as getting caught playing with someone else's anywhere else. --Peter Andrews -------------------------------------------------------------------- Many men are more faithful to their golf partners than to their wives and have stuck with them longer. --John Updike -------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you ever actually listened yo golfers talking to each other? "Looked good starting out". . . "Better direction than last time." . . . "Who's away?" it sounds like a visitors day at a home for the criminally insane. --Peter Andrews -------------------------------------------------------------------- As every golfer knows, no one ever lost his mind over one shot. It is rather the gradual process of shot after shot watching your score go to tatters. . . knowing that you have found a different way to bogey each hole. --Thomas Boswell -------------------------------------------------------------------- After five or six arabesques in midair, he finally grazed the beam above him with the toe of his shoe -- I relized it was a golf shoe! -- and landed on his chest and stomach. For a moment he lay with his face to the ground, breathing deeply. Then he looked up and saw me staring down at him with embarrassed fascination. --Michael Murphy (his first meeting with Shivas Irons) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When I'm in this state, this cocoon of concentration, I'm living fully in the present, not moving out of it. Im' aware of every half inch of my swing. I'm absolutely engaged, involved in what I'm doing at that particular moment. That's the important thing. That's the difficult state to arrive at. It comes and it goes, and the pure fact that you go out on the first tee of a tournament and say, "I must concentrate today," is no good. It won't work. It has to already be there. --Tony Jacklin -------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't exactly describe it, but as I looked at the putt, the hole looked as big as a wash tub. I suddenly became convinced I couldn't miss. All I tried to do was keep the sensation by not questioning it. --Jack Fleck (Describing his final round at the '55 U.S. Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I never hit a shot, not even in prctice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. It's like a color movie. First I 'see' where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I 'see' the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there is this sort of fadeout, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images to reality. --Jack Nicklaus (Golf my Way) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I go into the locker room and find a corner by myself and just sit there. I try to achieve a peaceful state of nothingness that will carry over onto the golf course. If I get hte feeling of quiet and obliviousness within myself, I feel I can't lose. --Jane Blalock (Women's Day, Sep,1976: Winners and how they Win) -------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the reasons why I, 'a medical man' decided to give up medicine was a firm conviction of the extraordinary influence on health of pleasurable excitement, especially when combined with fresh air and exercise. How frequently have I, with great difficulty, persuaded patients who were never off my doorsteps to take up golf, and how rarely, if ever I have seen them in my consulting room again. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- The sporting 18th [at Pasatiempo] is truly a magnificent ending due such a delightful round. 135 yards over stupendous hazards and you are on the green. This is not the hole to falter on. Play it bravely. --Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- The old brigade is there -- with the general missing. Ouiment, Sweeter, Egan, Tolley, Willing, Johnston, Voigy -- all are in. But the brigadier general, and ranking officer of them all, is in the gallery. Bobby Jones is on the side lines a smiling, affable figure. --O.B. Keeler (on Bobby Jones losing in the first round of the 1929 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach to un-known Johnny Goodman from Omaha. Bobby Jones had been the medalist) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we don't change them pretty soon there's going to be a bunch of old ladies in there, and then pretty soon those old ladies are going to die, and then it's just going to be a dead Hall of Fame. --Patty Sheehan (on the LPGA's demanding Hall of Fame requirements) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If the purpose of golf is purgatorial, nothing more needs to be said. But if the purpose is to entertain as well as instruct, then let us pause in the mad rush for hazards, more hazards and still more and fiercer hazards. --William Hemingway (commenting in 1909 on the trend toward penal golf course design) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that [Alister] MacKenzie and I managed to work as a completely symphathetic team. Of course there was never any question that he was the architect and I was the advisor and consultant. No man learns to design a golf coursesimply by playing golf, no matter how well. But it happened that both of us were extravagant admirers of the Old Course at St. Andrews and we both desires as much as possible to simulate seaside conditions insofar as the differences in turf and terrain would allow. --Bobby Jones (on his collaboration with Dr. MacKenzie on Augusta National) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was in a zone that the hole looked as large as a garbage can. --Omar Uresti (on his nine straight birdie string during the third round of the 1994 Nike Tour Shreveport Open) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I truly believe that keeping a secret is an energy-consuming act. If every day when you wake up you have 100 units of energy for the day, and you have secrets, they might take up 10 units of that energy. After a time you might not even be aware of it anymore, but you have that much less energy to apply in your life. And that's unhealthy. --Muffin Spencer-Devlin (LPGA veteran on admitting she is gay) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't think I'm naive, but I don't have any concerns about this. I know there are still individuals who have problems with diversity, but we've come so far as a society that I don't see this as a topic that really moves people. --Jim Ritts (LPGA commissioner on Muffin Spencer-Devlin admitting she is gay) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I applaud Muffin [Spencer-Devlin]. I'm not saying every player will be thrilled about it, but we're a family and we respect each other. -- Vickie Fergon (LPGA President on Muffin Spencer-Devlin admitting she is gay) -------------------------------------------------------------------- To win so early in my career is unbelievable. But to beat a field with Price, Faldo, Norman and those other guys means a lot. I guess it proves my game belongs out here. --Tim Herron (on his victory at the 1996 Honda Classic) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I hate to play a tournament in which I'm not contending. It's just not any fun for me. --Phil Mickelson -------------------------------------------------------------------- But I can understand only three Australians and eight Japanese in the field. The Japanese buy more in the pro shop. They just back up a truck there and take everything. They're not dummies up at Augusta. They said, 'Invite more Japanese, they'll buy a lot of stuff. The Aussies, nah, they won't buy anything. The beer isn't strong enough for them. --Lee Trevino (on Australian Craig Parry not being invited to the 1996 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You have to understand, I don't play golf for fun. It's my business. When the mailman starts delivering mail on his off day, that's when I'll start playing golf for the hell of it. I like to play in tournaments. There are many great courses around the world that I have never played that are next door to tournaments. I have not played them because I don't play for fun. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- I love it. I don't know if I love it as much as Arnold Palmer, but I think I am close. I can't wait to get up in the mornings because I know I am going out to play golf. The game has been very good to me. Much has been said about when I am going to retire but I never will. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- I remember when I first came out on the Tour. I was hitting practice balls and Sam Snead and Bob Goalby were next to me. Snead said, 'Who in the hell is this guy? He has a loud mouth and an unorthodox swing.' Goalby said, 'Don't worry Sam, he'll linger but he won't last'. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's all Augusta is--greens. They are very treacherous. But I went in there with the wrong attitude and probably could have come closer. I finished in the top 10 twice and I played there 17 or 18 times. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Jack Nicklaus] was the first to bring in course management. He could go to a course and tell you within one stroke what was going to win. He used to set his sights on that because he could shoot it. He was the only player I know who, if he decided he wanted to win a tournament, could go out and do it. No one will ever be as popular as Arnold Palmer and no one will ever come close to Jack as a player. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- If Greg Norman had done better in the year that he led all four majors, it might have been a close race. But Norman is 41 now. If he had played the way he is now when he was younger, he might have had a shot at Jack. Look at the great run Norman had last year. The trouble is, Jack did that all his life. He was also smart. He only played 15 or 16 (U.S. Tour) events a year. I won the Vardon Trophy five times but I only ever had a better scoring average than Jack once. That was because he did not play enough rounds (85) to qualify. --Lee Trevino -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think golf carts take a little piece of golf's quality away. The tradition of the game is being passed by because revenue is the number one consideration. There's money in carts. --Richard Zokol -------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe it's time to propose that golfers refuse to play courses where they are forced to ride. Now this idea has absolutely no chance of gaining ground because a generation of golfers is being raised who think that walking is the oddity. They'll read in some old golf magazine that former USGA president Sandy Tatum once called golf by cart "cart-ball." And they will think, "who was that old fogy anyway?" --Lorne Rubenstein -------------------------------------------------------------------- Walking also enables us to watch a hole unfold in front of us. To walk a course is analogous to driving a long distance rather than flying. While driving, we see the country instead of racing over it. There's a human scale that flying cannot offer. --Lorne Rubenstein -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is not a good walk spoiled. It is becoming a good walk prohibited. Show me the common sense in this and I promise I will relent. But there is no common sense at all in the prohibition of walking. --Lorne Rubenstein -------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't blame me for the humps. Many people associate me with that trend, but it wasn't me. My sons [Perry & P.B.] have had more to do with perpetuating the damn humps than I did. --Pete Dye -------------------------------------------------------------------- Today, [the TPC] is harder to defend because it's no longer a once-in-a-lifetime proposition, and the progression of bastardized imitations it has fostered has done little to advance modern golf architecture, while undermining the originality of the TPC itself. --Tom Doak -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have felt terribly from the beginning when I saw the problems and recognized that they would be ongoing. We were hired to put back the contours of the greens as closely as possible to George Thomas's designs and were real proud of what we did. It's a sad situation now. --Ben Crenshaw (on Riviera's greens after the '95 PGA Championship) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I am convinced that the offensive statements attributed to Mr. Wright were not made. In his 23 years with CBS Sports, Mr. Wright has earned a reputation as a man of integrity. He is outspoken and charismatic. --David Kenin (CBS Sports President , May 12th, 1995) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It feels like I don't have feelings. I'm on cloud nine. Walking down the 18th was awesome. I've watched it on TV a lot as other guys have walked down 18 and dreamed about being there, and it was awesome. --Tim Herron (on his victory at the 1996 Honda Classic) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Azinger wins a tournament and his wife is there on the 18th green with hugs and kisses. Could you imagine me hugging and kissing my woman lover at the conclusion of my last tournament win? Well, that's what you'll see at my next one. --Muffin Spencer-Devlin (LPGA veteran on admitting she is gay) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We can get so much out of golf. I know I have, and I'd like to see the same for you. Golf is the game of a lifetime, one in which you can get better and better. It's not what you do that counts, but what you attempt to do. --George Knudson -------------------------------------------------------------------- With a fine sea view and a clear course in front of him, the golfer may be excused if he regards golf, even though it be indifferent golf, as the true and adequate end of man's existence. --A.J. Balfour -------------------------------------------------------------------- Now this whole safety business on golf courses is chimerical. There can never be serious safety standards of any consequence connected with golf any more than there can be with baseball. I have seen both Arnold Palmer and Seve Balesteros hit golf balls over a hundred yards off-line in tournaments. I myself have hit balls not in the first row of houses off the fairway, but the second. --Desmond Muirhead -------------------------------------------------------------------- Extremely large greens breed slovenly play. When any green ceases to command respect, it loses its value as a test of that rarest of all strokes, the shot home. --A.W. Tillinghast -------------------------------------------------------------------- I played a practice round with Hubert [Green] the other day, and when we got to the ninth green, I heard a fan say, "Why does Hubert have two caddies?" --Ken Green (on his obscurity on the Tour) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Beyond learning things for their own sake, the only satisfaction in reading deeply, really deeply, into the subject of golf -- its lore, its famous figures, its historical development, anything beyond curing your slice -- is a certain smugness in knowing something about the game that somebody else doesn't, or would be expected to, an advantage that comes in handy at the 19th hole after your have had your brains beaten out on the previous 18. --Charles Price -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's as good as I can do. That's my limit. And a lot of people's limit on a course like this. --Colin Montgomerie (after shooting a 65 in the second round of the '94 U.S. Open at Oakmont. He had 5 birdies and an eagle) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it. I felt I owed it to them. --Judge Smalls (Ted Knight, Caddyshack) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Frank, either you have to get better soon or quit telling people I'm your teacher. --Dave Marr (to Frank Gifford) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stanley Thompson has left a mark on the Canadian landscape from coast to coast. No man could ask for a more handsome set of memorials. --Obituary in Ottawa Citizen for Stanley Thompson, 1952) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Old' Tom Morris was popular and consistently successful at endearing himself to the owners of the land for a new course by remarking on his arrival that "surely Providence had intended this for a golf links". --David Hamilton -------------------------------------------------------------------- The great Jack Nicklaus summed things up neatly during a charity match on the Old Course at St. Andrews wwhere he and I were playing against Ben Crenshaw and Glen Campbell. I asked him what he considered to be the most important factor to overcome in the game of golf. His reply, "It's an unfair game." --Sean Connery -------------------------------------------------------------------- The terrible beauty is that in the brotherhood of golf (feminists please excuse the term) we are all the same -- certifiable. --Sean Connery -------------------------------------------------------------------- My agent was yelling "Don't move your head!" at me all day. When I move my head before I putt, I get in trouble. On that putt, I looked at the hole too soon. --Costantino Rocca (On his missed 3-foot putt on the 17th green in his pivotal match against Davis Love III, 1993 Ryder Cup. The missed put squared the match going into 18) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We tried out best. It's best not to think about the score line too much. I did not think anyone was to blame. The critical match of the Ryder Cup unfortunaltely revolved around [Costantino] Rocca. --Bernard Gallacher (on the European loss at the 1993 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He [Costantino Rocca] had so much pressure on him. I feel bad for him. He had a whole country behind him. I told him he should be proud, that he played hard. I wish the ending had been different, that I'd birdied the last two. But he probably wouldn't feel much better if I had. --Davis Love III (on his pivitol match against Rocca at the 1993 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Do I have to know rules and all that crap? Then forget it. --John Daly (when asked whether he'd like to join the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, after winning the '95 British Open at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I miss the putt -- it's normal. I don't kill anybody so I forget about it. --Costantino Rocca (on the missed 3-foot putt on the 17th hole of his singles match against Davis Love at the 1993 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The emotion is unbelievable. After second shot at 18 -- it blows my head. Then I hole putt. Give me another chance. The second putt [actually first putt, the second shot was a chip] nobody is supposed to hole that putt. --Costantino Rocca (making a 70 foot putt for birdie on the 72nd hole of the 1995 British Open at St. Andrews to tie John Daly) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I lost my head. I lost everything. I try to cut the ball for it to stop quickly. But my hands -- they don't go forward, they are coming back. --Costantino Rocca (on his chunked chip on the 72nd hole of the 1995 British Open at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- At the Ryder Cup, I don't lose -- it is a team. If I make the putt then I don't win, either -- the team wins. --Costantino Rocca (on the missed 3-foot putt on the 17th hole of his singles match against Davis Love at the 1993 Ryder Cup) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I guess that's why they call it Hell. --Jack Nicklaus (on taking 4 shots to get out of Hell Bunker during the first round of the 1995 British Open at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's a delight to play with. He's got a great sense of humor and he can really play the game. --Tom Watson (on Amateur Gordon Sherry who he was paired with at the 1995 British Open at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He's got the deep stuff: guts, 'bottle,' whatever it takes in your nerves. On the practice range you'll see guys who swing beautifully and who do it on the course. But coming up 18, choke like donkeys. Big Gordon's not one of them. --Sam Torrance (on Gordon Sherry) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My experience of playing many of the classic links has been an enormous pleasure to me. The thrill of squeezing a ball against the turf, trying to keep it low into a buffeting wind, is something that lingers in the mind forever. --Peter Thomson (Foreward to Classic Golf Links of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The playing fields of the game evolved into what are today called golf courses. The earliest of these playing fields were found on Scottish linksland. The location of linksland, often publicly owned, in a northern latitude where summer daylight hours extended from 3 a.m. to 11 p.m. made it possible for persons other than those of a liesure class to use them. Thus, golf established an early democratic tradition in Scotland. --Goeffrey S. Cornish and Ronald E. Whitten -------------------------------------------------------------------- Suki remained at Hamilton, as professional in residence, until one sad day in 1925. He was in the Bombay station waiting for a train to Karachi, where he was to defend his Indian Invitational title. Becoming impatient, he stepped on the track to see if the train was coming. He was instantly struck on the left side by the incoming express and hurled to the next track by an outgoing local. Thus Slamming Suki Sukiyuki died as he had lived -- ambidextrously. --Lawrence Theodore, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------- who do I get, but the Dali Lama himself. The flowing robes, the grace... stunning. So, we tee off on the first hole and the Lama hits one, a big hitter the Lama, down a three thousand foot cliff at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says?... Gunga, la gunga. Gunga la gunga. So we finish eighteen and he's gonna stiff me. So I say, "Lama....Lama! How about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know" And he says, "Oh, there will be no money, but on your deathbed you will receive total consciousness". So I got that going for me, which is nice. --Carl -------------------------------------------------------------------- [The chief virtue of the links] may briefly be summarized as being; first, that they should be difficult; secondly, they should be pleasing to the eye; thirdly, that they should be strictly economical in design; and lastly, that to be truly admirable they will probably incur in the general opinion the accusation of being unfair. --H.N. Wethered, The Perfect golfer, 1931 -------------------------------------------------------------------- In St. Andrews we have a course worthy of lifelong study for serious architecture students, to heed her call and absorb the soundness of her principles. Fertile monds such as those of J.L. Low, Horace Hutchinson, Dr. Alister MacKenzie, the great Bobby Jones all thought so. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- This much is certain -- we have to be careful that golf design does not evolve into a frenzied race to cut the ribbon on real-estate sales. --Ben Crenshaw -------------------------------------------------------------------- To learn golf architecture one must know golf itself, its companionship, its joys, its sorrows, its battles -- one must play golf and love it. --George Thomas (Golf Architecture on America, 1927) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Lord only knows what the colorful and gruff Mackenzie would have made of the lava flows of Mauna Kea, or the island green 17th hole at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass. --Tom Doaks (The Anatomy of a Golf Course) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is quite certain that, had the ground on which oridinary inland golf is played today been the only available ground for the purpose, the game would never have been invented as all. --Garden G. Smith (The World of Golf, 1898) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I believe the real reason St. Andrews Old Course is infinitely superior to anything else is oweing ot the fact that it was constructed when no-one know anything about the subject at all, and since then it has been considered too sacred to be touched. What a pity it is that the natural advantages of many seaside courses have been neutralized by bad design and construction work. --Dr. Alister MacKenzie -------------------------------------------------------------------- Rape it, shape it, and grass it. --Scott Pool (On modern golf architecture techniques) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There are 118 golf holes here. All I have to do is eliminate the 100. --Perry Maxwell (on the design of Prairie Dunes) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Often it is necessary to get from one section to another over ground which is not suited to easy construction, but that troublesome hole must be made to stand right up with the others. If it has nothing about it that might make it respectable, it has to have quality knocked into it until it can hold its head up in polite society. --A.W. Tillinghast -------------------------------------------------------------------- There may be a certain amount of pleasurable excitement in running up to the top of a hillock in the hope of seeing your ball near the flag, but this kind of thing one gets tired of as one grows older. --Dr. Alister MacKenzie (on blind shots) -------------------------------------------------------------------- No matter how skillfully one may lay out the holes and diversify them, nevertheless one must get the thrill of nature. . . The puny strivings of the architect do not quench our thirst for the ultimate. --George Thomas (Golf Architecture on America, 1927) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It must be remembered that the great majority of golfers are aiming to reduce their previous best performance by five strokes if possible, and if any of them arrive at the home teeing ground with this possibility in reach, he is not caring too much whether he is driving off from a nearby ancient oak of majestic size, or from a dead sassafras. If his round ends happily, this is one beautiful course. Such is human nature. --A.W. Tillinhast -------------------------------------------------------------------- The educated taste admires simplicity of design and sound workmanship for their own sake, rather than over-decoration and the crowding of artificial hazards. --Wethered amd Simpson (The Architectural Side of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If a course needs to be in great condition to be played effectively, then the design strategy is flawed. --Tom Watson -------------------------------------------------------------------- They don't offer me a championship sitting on my butt back in New Jersey. I like playing golf. I got nothing better to do. You play the greatest golf courses in the country and they're in great shape. It's a lot of fun. --Jim McGovern (on playing 67 tournaments in 1991 and 1992) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You just well praise me for not breaking into banks. There is only one way to play this game. --Bobby Jones (on being praised for calling a penalty on himself on the 11th hole during the first round of the 1925 U.S. Open. He ended up tied with Willie MacFarlane, who he lost to in the playoff 75-72--147 to 75-73--148) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not sure [if I broke a rule], and if I'm not sure, I couldn't live with myself if I kept playing. What if I won? It would be like a curse. --Jeff Sluman (on insisting he be in the 1995 Bay Hill Inviational when he wasn't sure if he correctly took relief) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is real satisfying. Besides this one, every tournament I've played with Tiger, I've shot myself in the foot. He's the best player in America. The world, well, that's debatable. But he is the best in America. . . and I'm a close second." --Arron Oberholser (winner of the 1996 U.S. Collegiate at Pasatiempo by 3 shots over Joel Kribel and 6 shots over Tiger Woods) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I think those of us who buried him [Jack Nicklaus] two or three years ago had better put the shovels back in the garage. --Hale Irwin (after coming in second to Jack Nicklaus at the 1996 Senior Tradition) -------------------------------------------------------------------- He makes more bad shots in a single season than Harry Vardon did from 1890 to 1914, but he beats more immaculate golfers because, 'three of those and one of them counts four,' and he knows it. --A.C. Croome (On Walter Hagen) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There was a tremendous pop, like a cannon exploding. The lightening knocked me to the ground. I got up and ran for about ten yards before I fell again. I got up again, and I'm not afraid to admit it, I was hysterical. I didn't know what I was doing. Then lightening starting cracking again and agai. I started running again in a half crouch, liek a soldier running between foxholes. I was really scared. I thought, "Oh god, jet let me live. Let me live." --Bobby Nichols (describing the lightening incident at the Western Open in '75 where he was hospitalized along with Jerry Heard and Lee Trevino when lightening struck in their vacinity) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The tough thing about this game is keeping negative thoughts out of your mind. When you start making changes, you lose your touch. I'm doing what I can to get my putting feel back. --Tom Watson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold [Palmer] and I agreed that you could probably take all my Masters titles and Arnold's together and Tiger [Woods] will probably win more at Augusta. --Jack Nicklaus (after playing at practice round with Palmer and Woods prior to the 1996 Masters Tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was very, very impressed, to say the least. Whether he's [Tiger Woods) ready or not to win this year, we'll see. But he will be your favorite at the Masters for the next 20 years. --Jack Nicklaus (after playing at practice round with Tiger Woods prior to the 1996 Masters Tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We were laughing at 13 today, [during a Master's practice] He [Tiger Woods] hit a three wood off the tee and was 30, 40 yards behind me. He whipped out an iron and Arnold said, 'He's laying up.' I said, 'No, he's not.' He had 215 to the front and hit a three iron all the way up before it trickled to the side of the bank. My game felt awfully puny today.'' --Jack Nicklaus (after playing at practice round with Tiger Woods prior to the 1996 Masters Tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a great time I'll remember forever. It was the greatest stretch of golf I ever played -- when I needed it. I still watch film of '86 from time to time. I want to make sure it really happened. --Jack Nicklaus (re-calling his 6th Masters victory in 1986) -------------------------------------------------------------------- These guys may be first-time players here, but they've played a lot all over the world. They come off the NIKE Tour and the European Tour, and they're tough. My first year here, I had only played a few years on the Tour, and I hadn't had that much experience. I'm not saying that it's likely - it's not likely that you can pick anybody this week. There are some guys playing well coming in, but it's hard to pick.'' --Davis Love III (discussing the 19 Masters rookies prior to the 1996 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the advantages bowling has over golf is that you seldom lose a bowling ball. --Don Carter, professional bowler -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Scottish golf] is a more public game, more reasonably priced, 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. --Dan King (USA Today, 04/12/96, Life Section article called "Scotland's hold on golfer's hearts" by Mike Snider (Snider@aol.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was ready to play. I didn't attack the course. I just played the way I wanted to, but it's just the first round. I want to keep the momentum going and not get too excited. I'm happy and excited about shooting a 63, but there's a long way to go. --Greg Norman (on his course record tying 63 in the first round of the 1996 Masters Tournament) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Write him off quick. I think that's the end of him, really. He's gone. --Nick Faldo (sarcastically replying to question about Greg Norman missing two cuts prior to the 1996 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The thing is, you see all the money that's available out there. I see where am I going to play. I have no place to play yet. I'm not exempt. I have no security. So if I don't turn pro and I don't make it out here, where am I going to go? Nike? Hooters? Asia? Anywhere but here, I guess. --Tiger Woods (on turning pro after his sophomore year of college) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's what I did, same way as last year. We have tapes going back to '84. You know, we have tapes of all of the majors just for review's sake. It's also fun looking at the fashions back in those days, you know, all of the frills and bell bottoms. --Tiger Woods (on watching tape of past majors) -------------------------------------------------------------------- On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 9. I would give my round at the British Open and the 63 at St. George's. Sunday at St. George's was -- the Sunday at British Open, everybody was gunning for the win. I put it right up there with one of my great rounds I've played. --Greg Norman (on his opening round 63 at the 1996 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I played with Tiger [Woods], and I probably felt like you would be out there with me. Tiger is getting it by me about 50 or 60 yards, so it makes you inferior with your ability to hit the ball. --Greg Norman (on playing a practice round with Tiger Woods at Augusta National prior to the 1996 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've worked with it. I took three putts and hit the first one about 3 inches fat. The second one, I hit it; and I hit the third 15 inches fat. That was it. --Tom Watson (on using the broom handle putter) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold won all the money today, not Tiger. I was more impressed with Arnold. --Jack Nicklaus (on a practice round before the 1996 Masters with Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I just don't think that the Masters was meant to be a putting contest totally. I don't think Bob Jones wanted it to be a putting contest. He designed the 5th green so you have options to play into it. The 14th, the same thing. --Jack Nicklaus (on the Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- You know, the greens here are different than Europe. You've got to learn to putt on faster greens with more break, and that's part of the reason I wanted to learn to putt in the States. You only get these breaks a few times in Europe, really, because of the speed. In Augusta you get major breaks. --Nick Faldo (on coming to America to play on the tour and practice) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, I played like shit. I don't know. That's probably the best way of putting it. With all my mistakes today, I didn't do the right things. Nick did good, and I really just got a good old ass-whipping. --Greg Norman (on his shooting 78 in the closing round of the 1996 Masters, when he was leading by 6 shots and lost by 5 to Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Of course, I'm disappointed. Of all the ones I've let get away, this was the worst. You play poorly and you pay the price. That's all there is to it. My putting was out of sync, my rhythm was out. That's all I can say. I just didn't get the job done. But I'll wake up tomorrow morning and, hopefully, I'll still be breathing. --Greg Norman (on his shooting 78 in the closing round of the 1996 Masters, when he was leading by 6 shots and lost by 5 to Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes things work out on the golf course and sometimes they don't. Life will go on. You try to understand what happens, but maybe today I don't want to know. I just screwed up so maybe I should just put it behind me. --Greg Norman (on his shooting 78 in the closing round of the 1996 Masters, when he was leading by 6 shots and lost by 5 to Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope people will remember that I shot 67 to come roaring back. --Nick Faldo (on winning the 1996 Masters, when Norman shot a 78 on the final day when he had a 6-shot lead) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I would say that it's quadruple what I've had when I've won major championships in the past. I've gotten faxes and phone calls from all over the world. It's been overwhelming. It's really changed my opinion of humanity. --Greg Norman (on response following his 1996 Masters loss to Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- But the greens [at Agusta National] were tricked up and it required marvellous concentration and nerves of steel to win, and the greens on this French course [Royal Mougins club on the Riviera] are just the same. They may not be as fast as Augusta but they all look as though they had elephants buried every ten feet. I am fed up with it. --Mark Roe (A week after his first trip to Augusta to play in the 1996 Masters. He was playing the Air Fance Cannes Open at the Royal Mougins club on the Riviera) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a championship you had to win. Nobody was going to give it to you. The way I played today, I won it. To beat Nick [Faldo], the most tenacious golfer on the planet... I said no one is infallible. Yes, Nick was the man to beat. If I didn't beat him, he would have won. --Greg Norman (on his victory at the 1993 British Open at Royal St. George's) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If I had won today and all those other championships, my life might be totally different, but I didn't win. It's not going to affect my life. I am upset inside, but I'm not going to run around and be like a Dennis Rodman and head-butt an official. --Greg Norman (on his shooting 78 in the closing round of the 1996 Masters, when he was leading by 6 shots and lost by 5 to Nick Faldo) -------------------------------------------------------------------- No one could expect a married women with young children to win a championship. It would be enough grounds for a divorce. --Sir Ernest Holderness (former British Amateur Champion on plans for matches between the Ladies Golf Union of Great Britain and American golfers, 1931) -------------------------------------------------------------------- We played all our competitions off men's tees. We played country matches off men's tees, we played our county championship off men's tees, we played our championships off of men's tees. What do they do now? They play from the up women's tees. Today they say, 'Oh, we can't make it too tough, otherwise people won't want to play.' It's easy to drop standards and it's hellish hard to get them up. --Enid Wilson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Golf is my life and I love it. I'd play with rocks if I had to. --Margaret Curtis -------------------------------------------------------------------- In 1587 golf's first famous woman player [Mary Queen of Scots] was convicted and beheaded. Women's golf went into something of a decline after that. --Rhonda Glenn -------------------------------------------------------------------- [They were] no longer content to be regarded as purveyor of fun in mixed foursomes, or as a member of some race apart who should be confined to scratching in a nice little hen-run with dear little holes of 20 yards to so whilst the menfolk looked on in amused tolerance. --Eleanor Helme (on the forming of the Ladies Golf Union) -------------------------------------------------------------------- With golf links in every neighborhood there is no reason why the middle-aged woman should fasten herself in a rocking chair and consent to be regarded by the youngsters around her as antiquated at forty-five. Instead of that, she can, with her golfing clubs, follow her ball from link to link, renewing her beauty and her youth by exercise in the open air. --John Gilmer Speed (written in the Ladies Home Journal, 1894) -------------------------------------------------------------------- So far as our home-bred golfers are concerned, she [Beatrix Hoyt] is not only in a class by herself, but also superior in the quality of her game to any of our men. --New York Sun, 1898 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Not only did our presence there indicate that any prejudices against women's intrusion on men's rights had been overcome, but the subsequent happenings of the week clearly showed that we had justified our rights to play over the ground where other women had played 300 years before. --Mabel Stringer (on the 1908 British Ladies amateur being played on the Old Course at St. Andrews) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll always believe Alexa [Stirling] won that cup...but I took it to bed with me that night. I've a hundred and twenty cups and vases now, and thirty medals, but there's one little cup that never fails of being kept well polished. And I never slept with another one. --Bobby Jones (on the cup he won at a neighborhood birthday party when he was 6.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The player who is going to win the most often is not the one with superior in strength of distance, but the one who can make the fewest mistakes and keep out of as much trouble as possible, but when once in trouble can cope with any situation. --Alexa Stirling -------------------------------------------------------------------- I owe muc to having seen her [Alexa Stirling] play when I was just coming to understand golf a little. She put the kindling in the fire that was beginning to burn. --Glenna Collett -------------------------------------------------------------------- More than once I visualized myself, grey haired and stooped, wearily trudging over the windswept fairways of an English course seaking that elusive title. --Glenna Collett (on her inability to win the British Ladies Amateur Title) -------------------------------------------------------------------- It was truly a wonderful moment. I had wanted to win at St. Andrews so badly and, Glenna [Collett] being such a grand opponent, the match had everything a good match ought to. --Joyce Wethered (on her historic match against Glenna Collett in the final of the 1930 British Ladies Amateur at St. Andrews. Joyce Wethered won 2 and 1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I am a slave to golf! --Enid Wilson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Pam Barton was a charming personality, but very, very aggresive. She was taught by Archie Compton, a great big rawboned man who gave everything hell. He was her mentor. --Enid Wilson -------------------------------------------------------------------- Had it not been for the war Miss [Pam] Barton would have gone on winning championships. Her death made a difference to British women's golf, for had she been asble to give the post-war girls an incentive for vigirous hitting, they would not have been so vulnerable as they were to players from overseas. --Enid Wilson -------------------------------------------------------------------- She [Patty Berg] carried the name of Wilson and the LPGA into every corner of the golfing world. People came to see her time after time, always laughing at her jokes, always admiring the crisp shots, and always loving Patty Berg. She has done more to promote golf than any person in the history of the game. --Betsy Rawls -------------------------------------------------------------------- I couldn't hit an elephant's ass with a bull fiddle. --Babe Zaharias (after a poor round of golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- they were great guys, but when it came to headlines, Babe had them all beat. She had a fantastic feel for publicity. --Fred Corcoran (on Babe Zaharias getting $600 for exhibitions at the same time his other two clients, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead were getting $500) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Greg Norman is a superb player, but if he wins here, he's tied with me with three majors. I don't hear people cacklin about how great Hale Irwin is. The yardstick is still Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player -- the players who have won multiple major championships. Let's just wait and see what he does. --Hale Irwin (during the play of the 1996 Masters) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes when I am feeling low, I remember a little poem I heard when I was a boy. When your time comes to Pass on someday The only things you can keep Are what you gave away --Harvey Penick -------------------------------------------------------------------- So many people preach equity in golf. Nothing is so foreign to the truth. Does any human being receive what he conceives as equity in his life? He has got to take the bitter with the sweet, and as he forges through all the intricacies and inequalities which life presents, he proves his metal. In golf the cardinal rules are arbitrary and not founded on eternal justice. Equity has nothing to do with the game itself. If founded on eternal justice the game would be deadly dull to watch and play. --Charles Blair Macdonald -------------------------------------------------------------------- It seemed to me a form of tiddle-de-winks, stupid and silly, for never in my life had I known a sport that was not strenuous or violent. --Charles Blair Macdonald (on his first impression of Golf) -------------------------------------------------------------------- My putts looked like rats going in the hole. --Charlie Rymer (on his record tying 61 during the 3rd round of the '96 Byron Nelson) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Patsy [Price] is an engineer by profession, and she approached learning the game as an angineer might. She wanted to know the mechanics of the golf swing -- where the leveerage and the power came from. She wanted to smack the ball. --Dr. Bob Rotella (Golf is a Game of Confidence) -------------------------------------------------------------------- A golfer has to train his swing on the practice tee, then trust it on the course. --Dr. Bob Rotella (Golf is a Game of Confidence) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to deserve it. The worst thing would be for me to go in there as a questionable pick and then mess up some crucial match. I understand chemistry and leadership and toughness, but the real question is, Do I bring the game? That's always the most important thing. But I told Lanny [Wadkins], "If chosen, I will play my butt off." --Curtis Strange (on being a captain's pick prior to the 1995 Ryder Cup matches) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In looks or game, Faxon would never be mistaken for Norman. Though he drives his Infiniti too fast, favors a classic wardrobe, and lets his sandy red hair grow to his shirt collar, Faxon is not glamorous. Only his energy level is on a par with Norman's, and Brad invests in it differently. --Carl Vigeland (Stalking the Shark) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Until recently, all I had to do to get a look around a golf course was walk in the front door and tell them I worked for Pete Dye. But in Northern California, that approach only gets you a look of sympathy. because the only Pete Dye course they're familiar with is Carmel Valley Ranch, the most preposterous course Peter ever built. --Tom Doak -------------------------------------------------------------------- The way I look at it, there have been three prefectly pure putts in the history of golf. Boston's own Francis Ouimet's 20-footer at the 71st hole to lock up the U.S. Open at Brookline in 1913. Nicklaus's 18-footer at the 17th to take the lead for good in the 1986 Masters. And the brushstroke I put on my little Titlist late that morning on the 8th green at the Mayflower in Dorchester, Massachusetts. --Raymond Lee Hart (better known as Sticks, from Rick Reilly's novel, "Missing Links") -------------------------------------------------------------------- What is the that saying about going home with the one that brought you? That's what he [John Daly] is doing. He started out with a driver and blasting it, and he is still blasting it. That's his mentality. We were just talking about he hit driver off of ten, and he doesn't need a driver off of ten. But he played it anyway, and that's why he's ahead. --Jack Nicklaus (commenting on John Daly's play in the final round of the 1991 PGA Championship at Crooked Stick) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The great thing about this game is that the bad days are wonderful. --Bill Clinton -------------------------------------------------------------------- Most of the boom courses are undoubtedly terrible, because anybody who knows anything about golf in France is trying to cash in on the boom as a course designer. --Tom Doak (in "The Confidential Guide To Golf Courses" on new courses in France) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The modern player has grown accustomed to having a special club for every conceivable stroke that he fails to realize how much of his vaunted skill is due to the science of the club-maker. --Robert Browning -------------------------------------------------------------------- The boys game was perfect and chaste as Grecian statuary. --Charlie MacFarlane of the News (Regarding Bobby Jones round of 66 at Sunningdale Golf Club in Surrey when qualifying for the 1926 Open at Royal Lytham and St. Annes. Jones had a 33 on the front, 33 on the back. He had 33 shots and 33 putts.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- That's why there aren't many Americans up there. It's obviously tilted toward the other tours. I'm not going to argue that the top five players aren't the top five players, but the farther you go down the list, the more arguable it gets. --Paul Azinger (Regarding the Sony Ranking bias for tours other than the U.S.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- When a player of Daly's stature takes that many strokes I have to investigate. But both his partners Philip Walton and Frank Nobilo assured me that John tried on every shot, so he will not be fined as we did Mark Roe last year when he took 93 in Sweden. --David Probyn (Dutch Open Tournament Director, on John Daly shooting an 89 in the second round of the 1996 Dutch Open. He shot a 51 on the front-9.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- If four players are ranged in line across a wide fairway there in no earthly reason why each of them should not be calculating the shot, selecting a club and taking up a stance more or less simultaneously. The setting up of a golf shot can be as ponderous as the loading of a Roman siege catapult, with interminable adjustments to range and aim before finally the carcass of a dead horse is hoisted into the middle launcher. Lobbing four dead horses over the parapet takes an age, which is how it works in golf if three crews of loaders and launchers sit down and watch while the fourth goes into action." --Peter Dobereiner -------------------------------------------------------------------- For what [Ben] Hogan meant, it's the old story. For those who know golf, no explanation is necessary. For those who don't, no explanation is possible. --Jim Murray -------------------------------------------------------------------- "I never saw any of man's baser acts of inhumanity to man. I never saw screaming 'witches' burned at the stake, Christians tossed to starving lions, maidens pushed over the edge of active volcanoes. I never even saw a man going to the electric chair. But until I do, watching Ben Hogan walk up to a five-foot putt is my idea of cruel and inhuman punishment, only a Hitler would enjoy. You feel like saying 'Go home to your wife and kiddies and don't look upon this terrible thing!'" --Jim Murray (on Ben Hogan with the yips) -------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no country where the golfers are more keen or more hospitable than in Ireland, and the friendliness with which the inhabitants welcome their guest in only equalled by the earnestness with which the endeavour, and very often successfully, to beat them. --Bernard Darwin (The Golf Courses of the British Isles) -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm a lot older than I was when I was 30, which is kind of hard to believe. -- Fred Couples, who turns 40 in October. -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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