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AFT's 2005 First Shot of the Day archive |
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December 31
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
December 30
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
December 29
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
December 28
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)
December 27
I don't think I'll live long enough to shoot my age. I'm lucky to shoot my weight.Bruce Lansky
December 26
You make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work.Lee Trevino
December 25
"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
December 24
Go ahead and putt, you are not interrupting my conversation.Robert E. Zorn
December 23
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
December 22
What's the point of washing off your ball when teeing off on a water hole?Bruce Lansky
December 21
The dollars aren't so important... once you have them.Johnny Miller
December 20
We really have to play with 15 clubs. The 14 in our bag and the 15th in our head.Greg Twiggs
December 19
To succeed at anything, you must have a huge ego. I'm not talking about confidence. Confidence is self-assurance for a reason. Ego is self-assurance for no good reason.Frank Beard (PGA leading money winner in 1969)
December 18
My game is like a cross between karaoke and rap: crap.Nick Faldo
December 17
The 2 and 3 irons are like my mother-in-law. I'd like to hit it but I just can't.Sammy Rachels
December 16
My ex-wife has never broken 150. I wish she would stop telling people I taught her how to play golf.Bruce Lansky
December 15
I developed osteoporosis of the personality. My thought processes became brittle.Mac O'Grady
December 14
Here's a simple way to abolish golf's elitist and exclusionary image and make it a truly all-American sport: ditch that fifties-Republican-martini-drinker's green Brooks Brothers-style sport jacket and make the winner of the Masters slip on something in, say, black leather with plenty of metal studs.Bruce McCall
December 13
I shot a wild elephant in Africa thirty yards from me, and it didn't hit the ground until it was right at my feet. I wasn't a bit scared. But a four foot putt scares me to death.Sam Snead
December 12
Golf gives you an insight into human nature. Your own as well as your opponent's.Grantland Rice
December 11
I don't enjoy playing video golf because there is nothing to throw.Paul Azinger
October 11
If you grow up normal, you'll only be normal.Michelle Wie
October 10
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
October 9
I'll always remember the day I broke ninety. I had a few beers in the clubhouse and was so excited I forgot to play the back nine.Bruce Lansky
October 8
I thought Manual Labor was a Mexican golf pro.Lee Trevino
October 7
Through the ball we are all the same. We just have different ways of getting it there.Charles Coody
October 6
The one stroke marks the difference between fame and oblivion.Samuel Parrish
October 5
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
October 4
I asked my priest if it was a sin to play golf on Sunday. And he said, "It's a sin for you to play anytime."Nick Saban
October 3
Some golfers lie awake at nightAnd brood on what went wrong; I'd rather think of what went right. It doesn't take as long. Dick Emmons
October 2
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 bent grass and gorse. Links are too barren for cultivation: but sheep, rabbits, geese and professionals pick up a precarious livelihood on them.Sir Walter Simpson
October 1
My psychiatrist prescribed a game of golf as an antidote to the feelings of euphoria I experience from time to time.Bruce Lansky
September 30
The older you get the stronger the wind gets... and it's always in your face.Jack Nicklaus
September 29
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
September 28
Show me a golfer who doesn't have a mean streak, and I'll show you a weak competitor.Lee Trevino
September 27
No athletic game affords such opportunity for cool calculation or such occasion for self-examination and self-castigation as golf.John L. Low (1903)
September 26
Golf increases the blood pressure, ruins the disposition, spoils the digestion, induces neurasthenia, hurts the eyes, calluses the hands, ties knots in the nervous system, debauches the morals, drives men to drink or homicide, breaks up the family, turns the ductless glands into internal warts, corrodes the pneumogastric nerve, breaks off the edges of the vertebrae, induces spinal meningitis and progressive mendacity, and starts angina pectoris.Dr A.S. Lamb
September 25
Golf's three ugliest words: still your shot.Dave Marr
September 24
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)
September 23
You begin to get the idea that maybe golf manufacturers are out of control when you find out they are making clubs and balls out of components used in nuclear weapons and bulletproof vests.E.M. Swift
September 22
Train yourself to accept the fact that as a human being you are prone to mistakes. Take pride in being emotionally resilient and mentally tough.Dr Bob Rotella
September 21
But there is a difference between playing well and hitting the ball well. Hitting the ball well is about thirty percent of it. The rest is being comfortable with the different situations on the course.Mickey Wright
September 20
I may know I am better than an 18, but the computer absorbs my scores year after year and continues to tell me that is what I am. Therein lies the tragedy of golf. We know what we should be, but there is always some number telling us what it is...Peter Andrews
September 19
Born to golf. Forced to work.Author unknown
September 18
You go out and play your game. Sometimes it comes out as 68 and sometimes at 74. That's not fatalism, that's golf.Peter Oosterhuis
September 17
I know how to choke. Given even a splinter-thin opportunity to let my side down and destroy my own score, I will seize it. Not only does ice water not run through my veins, but what runs there has a boiling point lower than body temperature.John Updike
September 16
Golf is not, on the whole, a game for realists. By its exactitudes of measurement, it invites the attention of perfectionists.Heywood Hale Broun
September 15
Golf is like acting in that both require concentration and relaxation at the same time. In acting, you can't push emotion. You have to let it rise from you naturally. Same thing in golf. You have to have a plan and a focus; but then you need to just let it happen and enjoy the smooth movement of the swing.Jane Seymour
September 14
It is today an accepted principle of golfing architecture that the tiger should be teased and trapped and tested, while the rabbit should be left to peace, since he can make his own hell for himself.Bernard Darwin
September 13
When I used to gamble, I looked for players with head covers on their irons. Those guys I could beat.Chi Chi Rodriguez
September 12
The golfer has more enemies than any other athlete. He has fourteen clubs in his bag, all of them different; 18 holoes to play, all of them different, every week; and all around him is 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
September 11
Any game where a man sixty can beat a man thirty ain't no game.Burt Shotten
September 10
Golf is not a game, it's bondage. It was obviously devised by a man torn with guilt, eager to atone for his sins.Jim Murray
September 9
Isn't it fun to go out on the course and lie in the sun?Bob Hope
September 8
I am among those who firmly believe that a round of golf should not take more than three and a half hours, four at most. Anything longer than that is not a round of golf, it's life in Albania.Dan Jenkins
September 7
May thy ball lie in green pastures... and not in still waters.Author unknown
September 6
A golf course outside a big town serves an excellent purpose in that it segregates, as though a concentration camp, all the idle and idiot well-to-do.Osbert Sitwell
September 5
A "gimme" can best be defined as an agreement between two golfers, neither of whom can putt very well. Author unknown
September 4
Golf is not just an exercise; it's an adventure, a romance... a Shakespeare play in which disaster and comedy are intertwined.Harold Segall
September 3
Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle.Author unknown
September 2
Every game of golf that has ever been played - whether the medal was 68 or 168 - has taken place on a golf course that measured eight inches or less. I arrived at the dimensions of this golf course by taking a ruler and measuring my own head from back to front.Eddie Loos
September 1
The trouble that most of us find with the modern matched sets of clubs is that they don't really seem to know any more about the game than the old ones did.Robert Browning
August 31
A man was convicted of killing his wife of thirty years by bludgeoning her to death with a golf club. During the man's trial, prosecuters showed how the wounds on the woman's head matched the outline of the man's Ping putter.Golf Digest, February 1995
August 30
One minute you're bleeding. The next minute you're hemorrhaging. The next minute you're painting the Mona Lisa.Mac O'Grady
August 29
A good player prays for wind every day, but not too earnestly.John L. Low
August 28
Duffers who consistently shank their balls are urged to buy and study 'Shanks - No Thanks' by R.K. Hoffman, or in extreme cases, M.S. Howard's excellent 'Tennis for Beginners'.Henry Beard
August 27
I would like to deny all allegations by Bob Hope that during my last game of golf, I hit an eagle, a birdie, an elk and a moose.(Former US President) Gerald Ford
August 26
I don't like watching golf on TV. I can't stand whispering.David Brenner
August 25
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
August 24
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
August 23
My handicap? Woods and irons.Chris Codiroli
August 22
Playing golf is not hot work. Cutting sugar cane for a dollar a day - that's hot work. Hotter than my first wrist watch.Chi Chi Rodriguez
August 21
Every golfer has a little monster in him. It's just that type of sport.Fuzzy Zoeller
August 20
Putting is my weak spot and always leaves me ripping. My other two weaknesses are the driving and the chipping.Arnold Zarett
August 19
Golf is a funny game. It's done much for health and at the same time has ruined people by robbing them of their peace of mind. Look at me, I'm the healthiest idiot in the world.Bob Hope
August 18
The game was easy for me as a kid. I had to play a while to find out how hard it is.Raymond Floyd
August 17
The first chapter in the Rules of Golf is etiquette. Apparently everyone starts reading at chapter two.Nick Mokelke
August 16
Golf is like a chain. You always have to work on the weakest links.George Archer
August 15
A golf ball simply cannot find the hole by itself. Even if it could, the ball would never do so willingly, after the hatred and hammering you've heaped on it to get it to the green.Dick Brooks
August 14
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
August 13
Jimmy Demaret and I had the best sports psychologist in the world. His name was Jack Daniels and he was waiting for us after every round.Jackie Burke
August 12
Golf is a diabolical game. It's easy to make fun of something that's so bizarre, so painful, so humiliating... yet so joyous.Ken Green
August 11
Every round I play, I shorten my life by two years.Tommy Nakajima
August 10
I go to the first tee scared to death every day. The peaks do not seem to last as long as the valleys in this game.J.C. Snead
August 9
According to the Captain of The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, striking your opponent or caddie at St Andrews, Hoylake or Westward Ho! meant that you lost the hole, except on medal days when it counted as a rub of the green.Herbert Warren Wind
August 8
If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.Lou Graham
August 7
My wife doesn't care what I do when I'm away. As long as I don't enjoy myself.Lee Trevino
August 6
What a shame to waste those great shots on the practice tee. I'd be afraid of finding out what I was doing wrong.Walter Hagen
August 5
You've got to gamble every once in a while in a round of golf. I'm not afraid to screw up.Fuzzy Zoeller
August 4
Many shots are spoiled at the last instant by efforts to add a few more yards.Bobby Jones
August 3
It takes six years to make a golfer: three to learn the game, then another three to unlearn all you have learned in the first three years. You might be a golfer when you arrive at that stage, but more likely you are just starting.Walter Hagen
August 2
A perfect spectator must have the eye of an eagle, the neck of a giraffe, the skin of an alligator, and the bladder of an elephant.Anonymous
August 1
You're a good loser if you can grip the winner's hand without wishing it was his throat.Hal Chadwick
July 31
If you're stupid enough to whiff, you should be smart enough to forget it.Arnold Palmer
July 30
The game just embarrasses you until you feel inadequate and pathetic. You want to cry like a child.Craig Stadler
July 29
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
July 28
Staying in the present is the key to any golfer's game: once you start thinking about a shot you just messed up or what you have to do on the next nine to catch somebody, you're lost.Paul Azinger
July 27
There are no absolutes in golf. Golf is such an individual game, and no two people swing alike.Kathy Whitworth
July 26
Addressing a golf ball would seem to be a simple matter; that is, to the uninitiated who cannot appreciate that a golf ball can hold more terrors than a spacious auditorium packed with people.Bobby Jones
July 25
The mind messes up more shots than the body.Tommy Bolt
July 24
Be decisive. A wrong decision is generally less disastrous than indecision.Bernhard Langer
July 23
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 (in 1909)
July 22
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
July 21
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
July 20
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
July 19
When you fall in love with golf, you seldom fall easy. It's obsession at first sight.Thomas Boswell
 July 18
Winning the Open Championship can turn a good player into a star, but winning The Open at St. Andrews can turn a great player into a legend.Henry Cotton
July 17
They are the same people who knock the pyramids because they don't have elevators.Jim Ferree (of players who complain about St Andrews)
July 16
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.Bobby Jones (in 1958)
July 15
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
July 14
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 (in 1885)
July 13
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
July 12
When I am playing 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
July 11
Until you play it, St. Andrews looks like the sort of real estate you couldn't give away.Sam Snead
July 10
Life is nothing but a memory. People who dwell on the bad ones aren't going to have a whole lot of good ones coming up.John Daly
July 9
The ideal build for a golfer would be strong hands, big forearms, thin neck, big thighs and a flat chest. He'd look like Popeye.Gary Player
July 8
Golf is a difficult game, but it's a little easier if you trust your instincts. It's too hard a game to try to play like someone else.Nancy Lopez
July 7
Is there such a thing as a technically perfect swing? If there is, I have yet to see it.David Leadbetter
July 6
Golf is 20 percent talent and 80 percent management.Ben Hogan
July 5
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
July 4
If you want to take long walks, take long walks. If you want to hit things with sticks, hit things with sticks. But there’s no excuse for combining the two and putting the results on TV.National Lampoon
July 3
If you're playing well, they could probably put the pin on the cart path and you'd get it close.Mike Sullivan
July 2
Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe.Anonymous
July 1
When I putt, my emotions collide like tectonic plates. It’s left my memory circuits full of scars that won’t heal.Mac O’Grady
June 30
If golfers can run around and crow when they make a birdie, I think it would be just as proper to lie down on the green and cry when you make a bogey.J.C. Snead
June 29
Baseball players quit playing and they take up golf. Basketball players quit, take up golf. Football players quit, take up golf. What are we supposed to take up when we quit?George Archer
June 28
Golf without mistakes is like watching haircuts. A dinner without wine.Jim Murray
June 27
I've lost balls in every hazard and on every course I've tried. But when I lose a ball in the ball washer, it's time to take stock.Milton Gross
June 26
Golf inflicts more pain than any other sport. If you're the sort of person whose self-worth is tied up in how you play, golf will cut you to the core of who you are.James E. Loehr
June 25
I had always suspected that trying to play golf in the company of big-time pros and a gallery would be something like walking naked into choir practice.Dan Jenkins
June 24
The older I get, the better I used to be.Lee Trevino
June 23
The Golf Hall of Fame is full of players with unusual looking swings. Some of the prettiest swings you've ever seen in your life are made on the far end of the public driving range by guys who couldn't break an egg with a baseball bat.Peter Jacobsen
June 22
If you think your hands are more important in your golf swing than your legs, try walking a hole on your hands.Gary Player
June 21
I've got the drinkers and the smokers and the eaters on my side. They like what we do.John Daly
June 20
There was nothing I could do - I just couldn't stop the bleeding.Jason Gore (of his final round 84)
June 19
Making that putt on 18, that was pretty good. I pointed it in a la Tiger at the '99 PGA. Gosh, I'm a cheeseball.Jason Gore
June 18
We all knew the exam we were going to sit this week.Paul McGinley (of Pinehurst)
June 17
You've got a fairly good idea as to what the questions are going to be. But how to record the best answer is another matter.Nick Faldo, on the US Open
June 16
I have seen men who have won a dozen or more tournaments, upon teeing off for their first USGA Open Championship, come close to vomiting. And golf is no easy game when you are trying to hole a downhill three-footer and throwing up at the same time.Charles Price
June 15
These young fellows are so completely wrapped up in getting a little golf ball into a little hole in less strokes than anyone else that their attitude and sense of intelligent balance to the more important things in life have not only been distorted, but are practically nonexistent.Donald Ross (Designer of Pinehurst No 2, venue of the 2005 US Open)
June 14
A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe - a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.Jean Giraudoux
June 13
Don't let the bad shots get to you. Don't let yourself become angry. The true scramblers are thick-skinned. And they always beat the whiners.Paul Runyan
June 12
It is a wonderful tribute to the game or to the dottiness of the people who play it that for some people somewhere there is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle, an unplayable course, the wrong time of the day or year.Alistair Cooke
June 11
To control his own ball, all alone without help or hindrance, the golfer must first and last control himself, and himself only. The little round toy sitting so alone and so still, which has so fascinated and tantalised the human animal for more than five centuries, is thus uniquely a psychic as well as physical cynosure of muscular skill and mental concentration.John Stuart Martin
June 10
Somebody give me a banana. I'm playing like a monkey, so I might as well eat like one.Chi Chi Rodriguez
June 9
When the ducks are walking, you know it is too windy to be playing golf.Dave Stockton
June 8
There are five top superstars in golf, 20 great stars, and 30 good ones. The rest should go and get jobs.Mark H. McCormack
June 7
The devil invented golf, so the least we can do is return the favour and cheat like hell when we play.The Golfer's Home Companion
June 6
The most advanced medical brains in the universe have yet to discover a way for a man to relax himself, and looking at a golf ball is not the cure.Milton Gross
June 5
Hitting a golf ball correctly is the most sophisticated and complicated maneuver in all of sports, with the possible exception of eating a hot dog at a ball game without getting mustard on your shirt.Ray Fitzgerald
June 4
A driving range is the place where golfers go to get all the good shots out of their system.Henry Beard
June 3
The biggest liar in the world is the golfer who claims that he plays the game merely for exercise.Tommy Bolt
June 2
It's a marriage. If I had to choose between my wife and my putter, well, I'd miss her.Gary Player
June 1
Playing golf is like raising children. You keep thinking you'll do better next time.E.C. McKenzie
May 31
All golfers fear the one-iron. It has no angle, no loft. The one-iron is a confidence-crusher, a fear trip, an almost guarantee of shame, failure, dumbness and humiliation if you ever use it in public.Hunter S. Thompson
May 30
Every hole should be a hard par and an easy bogey.Robert Trent Jones
May 29
You can't go into a shop and buy a good game of golf.Sam Snead
May 28
I haven't slept properly for 12 years because of this bloody game. I don't think you do in a competitive game. You toss and turn and you don't sleep.Colin Montgomerie (in 2001)
May 27
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
May 26
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)
May 25
You get to know more of the character of a man in a round of golf than in six months of political experience.David Lloyd George
May 24
Golf is to me what his Sabine farm was to the poet Horace - a solace and an inspiration.Ramsay MacDonald
May 23
The fun part of golf is the variety of shots. In football you can do anything with a ball, but you can do anything with a golf ball as well. When you hit a shot and the ball does exactly what you want it to do ... that's wonderful. It's just great when you hit the ball well. You should always try not to make the ball cry.Johann Cruyff
May 22
Putts get real difficult the day they hand out the money.Lee Trevino
May 21
By the time you get to your ball, if you don't know what to do with it, try another sport.Julius Boros
May 20
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
May 19
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
May 18
The smaller the ball used in the sport, the better the book.George Plimpton
May 17
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
May 16
Not until death has holed him out does the golfer abandon his search after the perfect game.Henry Longhurst
May 15
Golf is, in part, a game; but only in part. It is also in part a religion, a fever, a vice, a mirage, a frenzy, a fear, an abscess, a joy, a thrill, a pest, a disease, an uplift, a brooding, a melancholy, a dream of yesterday, and a hope for tomorrow.New York Tribune, 1916
May 14
Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.P.G. Wodehouse
May 13
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
May 12
The best advice I can give for playing a ball out of water is - don't.Tony Lema
May 11
I hate this game. And I can't wait till tomorrow to play it again.Jeff Sluman
May 10
Retire to what? I'm a golfer and a fisherman. I've got no place to retire to.Julius Boros
May 9
If my golf game was a prize fight, they'd stop it.Bob Hope
May 8
I’m gambling that when we get into the next life, Saint Peter will look at us and ask, 'Golfer?' And when we nod, he will step aside and say, 'Go right in; you’ve suffered enough.' One warning, if you do go in and the first thing you see is a par 3 surrounded by water, it ain’t heaven.Jim Murray
May 7
Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.Arnold Palmer
May 6
A shot that goes in the cup is pure luck, but a shot to within two feet of the flag is skill.Ben Hogan
May 5
Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.Sam Snead
May 4
I thought marriage was tough. Golf's like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel! It's a psychological game that gets into your blood.Sylvester Stallone
May 3
Life's too short to spend all the time in the gym. I just like to have a few beers and enjoy myself too.Ian Woosnam
May 2
Never concede the putt that beats you.Harry Vardon
May 1
If you can't enjoy the time between the golf shots, then you are going to have a pretty difficult time because most of your life is the time in-between.Peter Jacobson
April 30
Golf is a non-violent game played violently from within.Bob Toski
April 29
If I swung the gavel the way I swung that golf club, the nation would be in a helluva mess.(Speaker of the US House of Representatives) Tip O'Neill
April 28
It's amazing how many people beat you at golf now that you're no longer president.George Bush Snr
April 27
You get no points for style when it comes to putting. It's getting the ball to drop into the cup that counts.Laurie Auchterlonie
April 26
Golf is like a razor. You get just so sharp and then it begins to dull a little more the more you use it.Doug Sanders
April 25
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
April 24
Golfers make better lovers because they have such great touch. In golf you have to be good in all areas. You have to be powerful, be strong, have stamina, and be able to control yourself. All those things are important in making love.Jan Stephenson
April 23
Like one's own children, golf has an uncanny way of endearing itself to us while at the same time evoking every weakness of mind and character, no matter how well hidden.W. Timothy Gallwey
April 22
Golf is like solitaire. When you cheat, you cheat only yourself.Tony Lema
April 21
There is no better game in the world when you are in good company, and no worse game when you are in bad company.Tommy Bolt
April 20
I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than play golf on television.Jack Lemmon
April 19
While playing golf, your partners give you praise and encouragement even when you are not performing well. I don't remember this ever happening in the bedroom.Written to Anne Landers
April 18
Good golfing temperament falls between taking it with a grin or shrug and throwing a fit.Sam Snead
April 17
Every day I try to tell myself that this is going to be fun today. I try to put myself in a great frame of mind before I go out - then I screw it up with the first shot.Johnny Miller
April 16
Golf is a lot like sex. It's something you can enjoy all your life. And if you remain an amateur, you get to pick your own playing partners.Jess Sweetser
April 15
In golf, driving is a game of free-swinging muscle control, while putting is something like performing eye surgery and using a bread knife for a scalpel.Tommy Bolt
April 14
The only shots you can be dead sure of are those you've already taken.Byron Nelson
April 13
I have three-putted in 40 countries.Fred Corcoran
April 12
Having a great golf swing helps under pressure, but golf is a game about scoring. It's like an artist who can get a two-inch brush at Wal-Mart for 20 cents or a fine camel-hair brush from an art store for 20 dollars. The brush doesn't matter - how the finished painting looks is what matters.Jerry Pate
April 11
It's [Augusta National] a difficult course and it doesn't make it easier when you have three shanks.Ian Poulter
April 10
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
April 9
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
April 8
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
April 7
For an amateur, standing on the first hole of the Masters is the ultimate laxative.Trevor Homer
April 6
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
April 5
Do not be tempted to invest in a sample of each golfing invention as soon as it makes its appearance. If you do, you will only complicate and spoil your game - and encumber your locker with useless rubbish.Harry Vardon
April 4
For every up in this game, there's twenty downs.Brian Davis
April 3
Learning to play golf is like learning to play the violin. It's not only difficult to do, it's very painful to everyone around you.Hal Linden
April 2
Golf and women are a lot alike. You know you are not going to wind up with anything but grief, but you can't resist the impulse.Jackie Gleason
April 1
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
March 31
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
March 30
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
March 29
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
March 28
Once when I was golfing in Georgia, I hooked the ball into the swamp. I went in after it and found an alligator wearing a shirt with a picture of a little golfer on it.Buddy Hackett
March 27
A golf course is an outdoor insane asylum peopled with madmen suffering from the delusion that they will finally master the game.Robert H. Davis
March 26
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
March 25
If someone had offered me a 69 this morning, I'd probably have accepted it.Richard Johnson
March 24
Golf - a young man's vice and an old man's penance.Irvin S. Cobb
March 23
The good chip allows you to whistle while you walk in the dark alleys of golf.Tommy Bolt
March 22
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
March 21
It's easy at times to win golf tournaments and shoot 59, and sometimes it's hard to post an 85.David Duval
March 20
John [Daly] certainly gives it a good hit, doesn't he? My Sunday best is a Wednesday afternoon compared to him.Nick Faldo
March 19
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.
March 18
I never exaggerate. I just remember big.Chi Chi Rodriguez
March 17
Are you sure you played all the holes Christy?Henry Cotton
(Said when Christy O'Connor shot a 64 to break Cotton's course record) March 16
The amateur has an infectious, contagious enthusiasm for golf and life.Mac O'Grady
March 15
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
March 14
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
March 13
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)
March 12
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
March 11
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.William Howard Taft
March 10
The steps you hit your drive past your opponent are the most golden you'll walk in your life.Paul Berthody
March 9
For this game you need, above all things, to be in a tranquil frame of mind.Harry Vardon
March 8
This game is so elusive. You try to maintain the peaks and level up the valleys.Tom Watson
March 7
It's very difficult to move yourself up bit by bit. It's like trying to eat an elephant for God's sake. I can do it. It's just I have to have it bite by bite, you know. It's possible. You can eat an elephant, but you have to do it bite by bite. You can't do it all in one go.Colin Montgomerie
March 6
I hate a hook. It nauseates me. I could vomit when I see one. It's like a rattlesnake in your pocket.Ben Hogan
March 5
It is the constant and undying hope for improvement that makes golf so exquisitely worth the playing.Bernard Darwin
March 4
The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.Hunter S. Thompson
March 3
The real success in golf lies in turning three shots into two.Bobby Locke
March 2
The three things I fear most in golf are lightning, Ben Hogan and a downhill putt.Sam Snead
March 1
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
February 28
I like the thought of playing for money instead of silverware. I never did like to polish.Patty Sheehan
February 27
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
February 26
Every hole should be a difficult par and a comfortable bogey.Robert Trent Jones
February 25
Golf seems to me an arduous way to go for a walk. I prefer to take the dogs out.H.R.H. Princess Anne
February 24
There are two reasons for making a hole in one. The first is that it is immensely labor-saving.H.I. Phillips
February 23
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
February 22
Oh hang it! With so many things to be thought of all at once, steady play is impossible.Sir Walter Simpson
February 21
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
February 20
Many play golf, and one odd effect of that pursuit is that they return to work manifestly stupider than they were. It is, I think, the company of other golfers.G.W. Lyttleton
February 19
Golf is the most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste time and try the sprit of man.Westbrook Pegler
February 18
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
February 17
Golf is the Lord's punishment for man's sins.James "Scotty" Reston
February 16
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
February 15
A major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists.Thomas Boswell
February 14
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
February 13
Golf is a better game played downhill.Jack Nicklaus
February 12
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
February 11
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.Alistair Cooke
February 10
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
February 9
One thing I've learned over time is, if you hit a golf ball into water, it won't float.Arnold Palmer
February 8
Just because a course is 7,000 yards long, it's not great.Frank Hannigan
February 7
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
February 6
I like golf because you can be really terrible at it and still not look much dorkier than anybody else.Dave Barry
February 5
The golf world is overpopulated with persons who wish they had commenced to play in the proper way.James Braid (1906)
February 4
I went to play golf and tried to shoot my age, but I shot my weight instead.Bob Hope
February 3
The great thing about starting golf in your forties 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
February 2
Golf is not sacred, and there is no use getting so gosh-darned solemn about it.Don Herold
February 1
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)
January 31
If you think golf is relaxing, you're not playing it right.Bob Hope
January 30
Life is full of many minor annoyances, and few matters of real consequence.Harvey Penick
January 29
Go play golf. Go to the golf course. Hit the ball. Find the ball. Repeat until the ball is in the hole. Have fun. The end. Chuck Hogan
January 28
Keep your eye on the club. Nothing is more embarrassing than to throw a club and then have to ask a playing partner where it went.Glen Waggoner
January 27
My swing is so bad I look like a caveman killing his lunch.Lee Trevino
January 26
I can airmail the golf ball, but sometimes I don't put the right address on it.Jim Dent
January 25
Golf balls are attracted to water as unerringly as the eye of a middle-aged man to a female bosom.Michael Green
January 24
If I had my way, no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust under the United
States.H. L. Mencken
January 23
Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be
serious.P.G. Wodehouse
January 22
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.H. L. Mencken
January 21
A passion, an obsession, a romance, a nice acquaintanceship with trees, sand, and water.Bob Ryan
January 20
If you break 100, watch your golf. If you break 80, watch your business.Joey Adams
January 19
Few golfers are born with the natural talent for hitting the ball, but every player is blessed with the God-given ability to throw a club.Hnery Beard
January 18
Golf is the hardest game in the world to play, and the easiest to cheat at.Dave Hill
January 17
Putting isn't golf, greens should be treated almost the same as water hazards: you land on them, then
add two strokes to your score.Chi Chi Rodriguez
January 16
Putting allows the touchy golfer two to four opportunities to blow a gasket in the short space of two
to forty feet.Tommy Bolt
January 15
Golf is like an 18-year-old girl with big boobs. You know it's wrong but you can't keep away from
her.Val Doonican
January 14
Don't play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty.Harry Vardon
January 13
If the wind is in your face, you swing too hard just to get the ball through it; if the wind is at
your back, you swing too hard just to see how far you can get the ball to go.Henry Beard
January 12
Indeed, the highest pleasure of golf may be that on the fairways and far from all the pressures of
commerce and rationality, we can feel immortal for a few hours.Colman McCarthy
January 11
Golf is a fascinating game. It has taken me nearly forty years to discover that I can't play it.Ted Ray
January 10
Over the years, I've studied the habits of golfers. I know what to look for. Watch their eyes. Fear
shows up when there is an enlargement of the pupils. Big pupils lead to big scores.Sam Snead
January 9
I still swing the way I used to, but when I look up the ball is going in a different direction.Lee Trevino
January 8
Never bet with anyone you meet on the first tee who has a deep suntan, a one-iron, and squinty eyes.Dave Marr
January 7
My best golf score is 103, but I've only been playing for 15 years.Alex Karras
January 6
I'd rather play golf and break even, than work hard and come out ahead.Mike Donald
January 5
Golf is not a wrestle with Bogey; it is not a struggle with your mortal foe; it is a physiological,
psychological and moral fight with your self; it is a test of mastery over self; and the ultimate and
irreducible element of the game is to determine which of the players is the more worthy combatant.Arnold Haultain
January 4
Nothing dissects a man in public quite like golf.Brent Musburger
January 3
There is no such thing as a natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf
balls.Lee Trevino
January 2
The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.Bobby Jones
January 1
Golf isn't a game, it's a choice that one makes with one's life.Charles Rosin
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