John, a two time Senior club champion, 50 year veteran of the game was playing with Kelly, a relatively new golfer. He watched her making a great saving par after a poor tee shot.
Kelly turned to John and said: “The thing is you have to keep trying because you never know in golf ! “
John thought: That’s not only TRUE but quite charming.
"IF you are going to throw a club, it is important to throw it ahead of you, down the fairway, so you don't have to waste energy going back to pick it up."
-- ~Tommy Bolt
"My best golf year in 1973 was the worst with my wife and family. I said, "to hell with this that;
if that's what it takes to be the greatest golfer in the world, I don't want it."
--Tom Weiskopf
To the caddie after his advice resulting in a bad shot:
"It's not your fault. It's my fault because I listen to you"
--Seve Ballesteros
"To give up on a shot, a hole or a round is more habit forming than a highball before breakfast"
--Sam Snead
"Nonchalant putts count the same as chalant putts."
--Henry Beard
"Think like the underdog. The underdog always has the advantage... The favorite, meanwhile, is prone to negativism, worrying about how embarrassing it would be to lose."
Dr. Bob Rotella
"Competitiveness is a personality thing and competitive people don't become pushovers the day they turn 50."
Hale Irvin
"... no part of golf is more important than putting."
--Jack Nicklaus
"Golf is an awkward set of bodily contortions designed to produce a graceful result."
Tommy Armour
"Thinking must be the hardest thing we do in golf, because we do so little of it."
Harvey Penick
"If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball."
Jack Lemmon
"Swing easy. Hit hard."
Julius Boros
"All you need for a happy life is good health and a bad memory."
David Ferehty
"Watching Phil Mickelson play golf is like watching a drunk chasing a balloon near the edge of a cliff."
David Ferehty
"Golf is a game that tests you as a person far more than it tests you as an athlete."
Tommy Bolt
"I don't get nervous at the Masters or Open anymore but I do get more interested."
Hale Irvin
After winning the US PGA championship at the age of 44:
"When you're young, you think it's inevitable that you're going to win sooner or later, but when you're old the inevitable is over." --Lee Trevino
"The only goal all day, every day is to become reacquainted and realigned with the truthful (happy) essence of who we already are. As we do this, our GolfGames begin to thrive."
Tim Kremer
"The hands are like two Australian sheep dogs, if you don't train them they will kill all the sheep"
Ben Doyle
"Swinging muscles have rhythm, but lifting muscles do not"
Johnny Revolta
"I putt as I drive"
Percy Boomer
"If the knees are working correctly you can contain a motionless head"
Homer Kelly
"The world's no. 1 tennis player spends 90 percent of his/her time winning, while the world's no. 1 golfer spends 90 percent of his/her time losing. Golfers are great losers."
-- David Feherty
"Too much ambition is a bad thing to have in a bunker."
Bobby Jones
"There are two things you can learn by stopping your backswing at the top and checking the position of your hands; how many hands you have, and which one is wearing the glove."
Thomas Mulligan
"A perfectly straight shot with a big club is a fluke."
Jack Nicklaus
"In golf, humiliations are the essence of the game."
Alistair Cooke
"The good swing is based on a pivot with the minimum of to-and-fro movement."
--Percy Boomer
"Eighteen holes of match or medal play will teach you more about your foe than will eighteen years of dealing with them across a desk."
Grantland Rice
"The Golf Stroke involves, mainly, two basic elements – the Geometry of the Circle and the Physics of Rotation."
Homer Kelly
"Until you play it, St Andrews looks like the sort of real estate you couldn't give away."
Sam Snead
"The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green."
Ernest Hemingway
"In my opinion, no young player can develop his or her game to its highest potential if he or she rides around the course in a golf cart."
Harvey Penick
"Muscles do not understand words, but they can and do respond to pictures and feels, especially when they are combined."
Mike Hebron
"Golf is harder than baseball. In golf, you have to play your foul balls"
--Ted Williams
"Golf is about how well you accept, respond to, and score with your misses much more so than it is a game of your perfect shots."
Dr. Bob Rotella
"One minute you're bleeding. The next minute you're hemorrhaging. The next minute you're painting the Mona Lisa". (describing a typical round of golf)
Mac O'Grady
"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
"I compare the pressure of a golf shot with making an extra point in basketball. The player starts from a full stop, and that rim doesn't move."
Harvey Penick
"A well-adjusted individual is one who can play golf as if it were a game."
Anonymous
"I have a tip that will take five strokes off anyone's game. It's called an eraser."
--Arnold Palmer
"Good putting is the banishment of doubt."
Ian Woosnam
"The only way to build realistic confidence in yourself is through practice."
Sam Snead
"I PUTT BEST when "my hands feel thin."
Horton Smith
"A golf course is nothing but a poolroom moved outdoors."
Barry Fitzgerald
"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
"There's something intrinsically therapeutic about choosing to spend your time in a wide, open, park-like setting that non-golfers can never truly understand."
Charles Rosin
"The more you play it the less you know about it."
Patty Berg
"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 a playing a game. You are playing old man par."
Bobby Jones
"Imagine the ball has little legs, and chop them off."
Henry Cotton
"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
"Golf is a game in which attitude of mind counts for incomparably more than mightiness of muscle."
Arnold Haultain
"Only one golfer in a thousand grips the club lightly enough."
Johnny Miller
"Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated."
Arnold Palmer
"It takes hundreds of good golf shots to gain confidence, but only one bad one to lose it."
Jack Nicklaus
"One thing about golf is you don't know why you play bad and why you play good".
George Archer
"When you play the game for fun, it's fun. When you play it for a living, it's a game of sorrows."
Gary Player
"Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing."
--Ben Hogan
"First we crawl, then walk, then run.
Still before motion.
Slow before speed.
Soft before strength.
Stillness, slowness, and softness are the foundation of motion, speed and strength."
Mike Hebron
"You have to make corrections in your game a little bit at a time, It's like taking your medicine.A few aspirin will probably cure what ails you, but the whole bottle might just kill you."
Harvey Penick
"Understand that golf is neither a right-handed nor left-handed game, but a two-handed one."
Ernest Jones
"There is no type of miracle that can't happen at least once in golf."
Grantland Rice
"Watching Sam Snead practice hitting golf balls was like watching a fish practice swimming."
John Schlee
"My first rule is, Distance without direction is worse than no distance at all"
Nancy Lopez
"When warming up before a round, make the last shot you hit on the practice tee the same as the first shot you have to hit on the course"
Ken Venturi
"With either a downhill lie or an uphill lie, always play the ball nearer the higher foot"
Jackie Burke Jr.
"If you could eliminate the occasional bad shot you would be the first person to do so"
John Jacobs
"Nobody ever swung a club too slowly"
Bobby Jones
"Give me golf clubs, the fresh air, and a beautiful partner, and you can keep my golf clubs and the fresh air"
Jack Benny
"After taking the stance, it is too late to worry. The only thing to do then is to hit the ball."
Bobby Jones
"Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss."
Anonymous
"The biggest liar in the world is the golfer who claims that he plays the game merely for exercise"
Tommy Bolt
"Like life, golf can be humbling. However. little good comes from brooding about mistakes we've made. The next shot, in golf or in life, is the big one.
Grantland Rice
"Golf is the hardest game in the world. There's no way you can ever get it. Just when you think you do, the game jumps up and puts you into your place."
Ben Crenshaw
"Golf is a game in which you yell fore, shoot six, and write down five."
Paul Harvey
"Caddies are a breed of their own. 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
"It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf"
Robert Lynd
"Golf and sex are the only things you can enjoy without being good at either of them"
Jimmy DeMaret
"Don't play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty"
Harry Vardon
|