My father taught me that the easiest thing to do was to quit. He’d say, ‘It doesn’t take any talent to do that.’
I don’t believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.
Victory is everything. You can spend the money but you can never spend the memories.
My father always said excuses are the crutches for the untalented.
After you have the basics down it’s all mental.
There are two great rules of life: never tell everything at once.
Art said he wanted to get more distance. I told him to hit it and run backward.
The greatest gift in life is to be remembered.
All of my decisions I made when I was a kid were decisions, would my mother and father be proud of.
Sometimes you try to make it happen instead of just letting it happen.
I had a terrible stammering problem when I was young, and as a result I spent a lot of time alone.
I couldn’t say my own name when I was 12.
My father was a man of few words.
You can’t make good scores happen. You’ve got to let it happen.
Retirement isn’t so bad. Give me a tall drink, a plush sofa and a rerun of ‘Matlock,’ and you can have the rest. Matlock is my hero. He never loses.
I began seeing my wife, Kathleen, while I was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
All of us have an ‘inner clock,’ a certain pace at which we function most comfortably and effectively.
The hardest thing in golf is trying to two-putt when you have to, because your brain isn’t wired that way. You’re accustomed to trying to make putts, and when you change that mind-set, your brain short-circuits, especially under pressure.
People thought I was cocky because I didn’t talk much. When I first turned pro, reporters asked me who was going to win. I’d say, ‘I am’ because it was the easier than giving some long, drawn-out answer.
When my father spoke, it was to say something meaningful.