Famous Golfing Quotes

 

Starting with my personal favourite:

If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron - Lee Trevino

No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you are playing a game. You are playing old man par.
- Bobby Jones

Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots - but you have to play the ball where it lies - Bobby Jones

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

I never learned anything from a match that I won - Bobby Jones

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

Many shots are spoiled at the last instant by efforts to add a few more yards - Bobby Jones

The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two - Bobby Jones

Rhythm and timing are the two things which we all must have, yet no one knows how to teach either - Bobby Jones

In order to win, you must play your best golf when you need it most, and play your sloppy stuff when you can afford it. I shall not attempt to explain how you achieve this happy timing - Bobby Jones

I get as much fun as the next man from whaling the ball as hard as I can and catching it squarely on the button. But from sad experience I learned not to try this in a round that meant anything - Bobby Jones

How did I make a twelve on a par five hole? It's simple. I missed a four-foot putt for an eleven - Arnold Palmer

It's a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get - Arnold Palmer

I never rooted against an opponent, but I never rooted for him either - Arnold Palmer

I've always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that i didn't have a chance to win - Arnold Palmer

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

Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; 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 - Arnold Palmer

 

Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger - Arnold Palmer

Don't be too proud to take a lesson.  I'm not - Jack Nicklaus

Nobody ever remembers who finished second at anything - Jack Nicklaus

A kid grows up a lot faster on the golf course. Golf teaches you how to behave - Jack Nicklaus

Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20 percent of the time, you're the best - Jack Nicklaus

It takes hundreds of good golf shots to gain confidence, but only one bad one to lose it - Jack Nicklaus

A perfectly straight shot with a big club is a fluke - Jack Nicklaus

Golf is not, and never has been, a fair game - Jack Nicklaus

If there is one thing I have learned during my years as a professional, it is that the only thing constant about golf is its inconstancy - Jack Nicklaus

Keeping the head still is golf's one universal, unarguable fundamental - Jack Nicklaus

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

As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round - Ben Hogan

Like most professional golfers, I have a tendency to remember my poor shots a shade more vividly than the good ones - Ben Hogan

I don't like the glamour. I just like the game - Ben Hogan

I play with friends, but we don't play friendly games - Ben Hogan

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

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

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

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

All other things being equal, greens break to the west - Ben Hogan

The most important shot in golf is the next one - Ben Hogan

Forget your opponents; always play against par - Sam Snead

Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot - Sam Snead

Never let up. The more you can win by, the more doubts you put in the other players' minds the next time out - Sam Snead

There is an old saying: if a man comes home with sand in his cuffs and cockleburs in his pants, don't ask him what he shot.
- Sam Snead

Of all the hazards, fear is the worst - Sam Snead 

There is no such thing as a natural touch. touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls - Lee Trevino

Show me a golfer who doesn't have a mean streak, and I'll show you a weak competitor - Lee Trevino

Putts get real difficult the day they hand out the money - Lee Trevino

You don't know what pressure is until you play for five bucks with only two bucks in your pocket - Lee Trevino

Don't play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty - Harry Vardon

Never concede the putt that beats you - Harry Vardon

 

What most people don't understand is that UFOs are on a cosmic tourist route. That's why they're always seen in Arizona, Scotland, and New Mexico. Another thing to consider is that all three of those destinations are good places to play golf. So there's possibly some connection between aliens and golf - Alice Cooper

A golfer has to train his swing on the practice tee, then trust it on the course - Dr Bob Rotella

Hit the shot you know you can hit, not the one you think you should - Dr. Bob Rotella 

Remember that someone, somewhere, is practicing, and when you meet him he will win - Edward Macauley

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

A lot of guys who have have never choked, have never been in the position to do so - Tom Watson 

Victory is everything. You can spend the money, but you can never spend the memories - Ken Venturi 

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

Why am I using a new putter? Because the last one didn't float too well - Craig Stadler 

You know what they say about big hitters...the woods are full of them - Jimmy Demaret 

The mind messes up more shots than the body - Tommy Bolt 

It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling - Mark Twain

Golf is a science, the study of a lifetime, in which you can exhaust yourself but never your subject - David Forgan

Golf is golf. You hit the ball, you go find it. Then you hit it again - Lon Hinkle

One of the most fascinating things about golf is how it reflects the cycle of life. No matter what you shoot - the next day you have to go back to the first tee and begin all over again and make yourself into something - Peter Jacobsen

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

Golf is like a chain. You always have to work on the weakest links - George Archer

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

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

Golf is a compromise between what your ego wants you to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do - Bruce Crampton

Golf isn't a game it's a choice that one makes with one's life - Charles Rosin

Golf is very healthy; it is better to swat pills than to swallow them - Ted Osborne

The woods are full of long drivers - Harvey Penick

Every golfer scores better when he learns his capabilities - Tommy Armour

You must work very hard to become a natural golfer - Gary Player

If you try to fight the course, it will beat you - Lou Graham

The mind messes up more shots than the body -Tommy Bolt

Be decisive. A wrong decision is generally less disastrous than indecision - Bernhard Langer

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

Hitting the ball is the fun part of it, but the fewer times you hit the ball the more fun you have - Lou Graham

Most people play a fair game of golf - if you watch them - Joey Adams

For this game you need, above all things, to be in a tranquil frame of mind - Harry Vardon

A routine is not a routine if you have to think about it - Davis Love Jr.

A man who can putt is a match for anyone - Willie Park

The better you putt, the bolder you play - Don January

Missing a short putt does not mean you have to hit your next drive out of bounds - Henry Cotton

Whatever anyone may care to say about golf, at least one thing is mercifully certain, namely it is a voluntary affair - Henry Longhurst

The proper score for a businessman golfer is 90. If he is better than that he is neglecting his business. If he's worse, he's neglecting his golf - St Andrews Rotary Club Member

I just try to put it on the fairway, then the green and not three putt - Peter Thompson

I've heard people say putting is 50 percent technique and 50 percent mental. I really believe it is 50 percent technique and 90 percent positive thinking, see, but that adds up to 140 percent, which is why nobody is 100 percent sure how to putt - Chi Chi Rodriguez

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

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)

The better you putt, the bolder you play - Don January

A tap-in is a putt that is short enough to be missed one-handed - Henry Beard

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 (extract from 'Golf in the Kingdom')

In golf, a player can step and mar the line of his adversary's putt. A player can also hit his adversary or his caddie intentionally with his ball and claim the hole - but it isn't usually done - Charles B. Macdonald (1898)

Forget the last shot. It takes so long to accept that you can't always replicate your swing. The only thing you can control is your attitude toward the next shot - Mark McCumber

Out here, it's just you and the ball - Mike Weir

I've spent most of my life golfing - the rest I've just wasted - Unknown

A "gimme" can best be defined as an agreement between two golfers, neither of whom can putt very well - Unknown