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.
Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course.
The main idea in golf as in life, I suppose is to learn to accept what cannot be altered and to keep on doing one’s own reasoned and resolute best whether the prospect be bleak or rosy.
The difference between a sand trap and water hazard is the difference between a car crash and an airplane crash. You have a chance of recovering from a car crash.
The real way to enjoy playing golf is to take pleasure not in the score, but in the execution of strokes.
I never learned anything from a match that I won.
You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.
The toughest opponent of all is Old Man Par. He’s a patient soul who never shoots a birdie and never incurs a bogey. And if you would travel the long road with him, you must be patient, too.
You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.
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.
If I had ever been set down in any one place and told I was to play there, and nowhere else, for the rest of my life, I should have chosen the Old Course at St. Andrews.
Golf is the only game I know of that actually becomes harder the longer you play it.
I will tell you privately it’s not going to get better, it’s going to get worse all the time, but don’t fret. Remember, we play the ball where it lies, and now let’s not talk about this, ever again.
One reason golf is such an exasperating game is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten, and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.
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.
The object of golf is to beat someone. Make sure that someone is not yourself.