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AFT's 2006 First Shot of the Day archive |
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May 25
In tennis you seldom have a chance, once things get going, to get shaky. You're too busy running around like a racehorse. Golf - hell, it makes me nervous just to talk about it. That little white ball just sits there. A man can beat himself before he ever swings at it.Ellsworth Vines (US tennis pro, turned golf pro)
May 24
Golf course architects make me sick. They can't play themselves, so they rig the courses so nobody else can play either.Sam Snead
May 23
The best exercise for golfers is golfing.Bobby Jones
May 22
There are many bad long courses and many very good short courses, and length has very little to do with merit.Harry S. Colt (1920)
May 21
What is Love compared with holing out before your opponent?P.G. Wodehouse (Archibald's Benefit)
May 20
The press still considers me one of the most laid-back athletes since Babe Ruth. That's supposed to be a criticism, but I consider it a compliment because I think being carefree on the course is one of the secrets to scoring well consistentlyFred Couples
May 19
If God wanted you to putt cross-handed, he would have made your left arm longer.Lee Trevino
May 18
I couldn't tell you exactly what I like about golf. Just when you think you've got it mastered it lets you know you haven't. I'm just crazy enough to do it.Clint Eastwood
May 17
The last time I had this much fun was a root-canal operation.Larry Ziegler
May 16
It has been estimated that if you laid all the golfers in the world end-to-end, they would lie indefinitely.Richard Sneddon (1941)
May 15
Bad putting is due more to the effect the green has upon the player than it has upon the action of the ball.Bobby Jones
May 14
With golf links in every neighbourhood, there is no reason why the middle-aged woman should fasten herself in the rocking chair and consent to be regarded by the youngsters around her as antiquated at forty-five. Instead of that, with firm tread, she can with her golfing club, follow her ball from link to link, renewing her beauty and youth by exercise in the open air.John Gilmer Speed (1894)
May 13
Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes.William Shakespeare (Richard III - Act 1, Scene 2)
May 12
Hit the shot you know you can hit, not the one you think you should.Bob Rotella
May 11
Water creates a neurosis in golfers. The very thought of this harmless fluid robs them of their normal powers of rational thought, turns their legs to jelly, and produces a palsy of the upper limbs.Peter Dobereiner
May 10
It's mass confusion. I'm guessing on every shot. About the only thing left for me is acupuncture in the brain.George Archer
May 9
I have found the game to be, in all factualness, a universal language wherever I travelled at home or abroad.Ben Hogan
May 8
The woods are full of long drivers.Harvey Penick
May 7
The moment the average golfer attempts to play from long grass or a bunker or from a difficult lie of any kind, he becomes a digger instead of a swinger.Bobby Jones
May 6
Golf cannot be played in anger, or in any mood of emotiional excess. Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit if not in rage surely in bewilderment, or gloom, or in cynicism, or even hysterically - all of those emotional excesses must be contained by the professional. Which is why balance is one of the essential ingredients of golf. Professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course - whatever emotions are seething within - with the grim yet placid and bored look of cowpokes, slack-bodied in their saddles, who have been tending the same herd for two months.George Plimpton
May 5
I accept the fact that I'm going to miss it sometimes. I just hope I miss it where I can find it.Fuzzy Zoeller
May 4
Every golfer scores better when he learns his capabilities.Tommy Armour
May 3
I think we have arrived at the stage where we are making it too complicated. I know guys who can't play two rounds before running to their teachers.Vijay Singh
May 2
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
May 1
When I came up, my ball was about three yards from the hole. Two putts made 99. I felt I was now really a golfer.Arthur Rainsford
April 30
Keeping the head still is golf's one universal, unarguable fundamental.Jack Nicklaus
April 29
There is no truth in the idea that the person who hits the most balls will become the best golfer. Golf is a bizarre sport. You can work for years on your game, without making any improvement in your score.Fred Couples
April 28
All other things being equal, greens break to the west.Ben Hogan
April 27
Golf is said to be an humbling game, but it is surprising how many people are either not aware of their weaknesses of else reckless of consequences.Bobby Jones
April 26
Prayer never seems to work for me on the golf course. I think this has something to do with my being a terrible putter.Reverend Billy Graham
April 25
The yips are that ghastly time when, with the first movement of the putter, the golfer blacks out, loses sight of the ball and hasn't the remotest idea of what to do with the putter or, occasionally, that he is holding a putter at all.Tommy Armour
April 24
Women Who Seek Equality With Men Lack AmbitionBumper sticker of Patty Sheehan
April 23
Were some of the players to carry their own clubs, I think they would find it almost as good exercise as the playing, and, methinks, the sheaf of sticks would grow beautifully less, and they would soon discover that they could do all that was necessary with four instruments.Leamington Spa Advertiser (1899)
April 22
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
April 21
If you ever feel sorry for somebody on a golf course, you better go home. If you don't kill them, they'll kill you.Seve Ballesteros
April 20
When [Bernhard] Langer practises on his own, he can hold up a fourball.Dave Musgrove (Langer's long-time caddie)
April 19
Society is as prone to fads as are the sparks to fly upward. And the latest in outdoor fads is golf. Tennis, archery and polo have each had their turn, and golf is now coming in to replace them... Without being as violent as tennis or polo, the ancient Scottish game furnishes more exercise than either archery or croquet and seems to find favour with those lovers of outdoor sports who are too stout, too old or too lazy to enjoy any of the severer games.The New York Times (1894)
April 18
After you get the basics down, it's all mental.Ken Venturi
April 17
They're [golf psychologists] parasites. Everything that needs to be said about the mental side of golf could be written on a single sheet of paper.Mark James
April 16
Bob Hope has a beautiful short game. Unfortunately, it's off the tee.Jimmy Demaret
April 15
Arnold Palmer is the biggest crowd pleaser since the invention of the portable sanitary facility.Bob Hope
April 14
Rhythm and timing are the two things which we all must have, yet no one knows how to teach either.Bobby Jones
April 13
Your confidence is the 15th club in your bag. You'd like it to be a thick headed driver. But it sometimes seems like a pretty weak little stick.Peter Jacobsen
April 12
Swing easy and hit hard.Julius Boros
 April 11
The skill that every player has can be seen at Augusta; it demands all the shots; nothing is taken away from you. If you have skill and imagination you can show it at Augusta.David Davies
April 10
I didn't hit the ball like I was 46. But I putted like I was 66.Fred Couples
April 9
There isn't a hole out there [Augusta] that can't be birdied if you just think. But there isn't one that can't be double-bogeyed if you stop thinking.Bobby Jones
April 8
It's nice to be leading after two rounds, but the goal is to be leading after four.Chad Campbell
April 7
If you have an ego of any sort, this course [Augusta] will take it and shove it down your throat.Tom Watson
April 6
Augusta National is a young man's golf course, and you really need a young man's nerves to play on it.Jack Nicklaus
April 5
The Masters is more like a vast Edwardian garden party than a golf tournament.Alistair Cooke
April 4
[Playing Augusta National] is like playing a Salvador Dali landscape. I expected a clock to fall out of the trees and hit me in the face.David Feherty
April 3
I'm hitting the ball like a damn polka dancer - first off the heel, then off the toe.Andrew Kirkaldy (1900)
April 2
The Scots say that Nature itself dictated that golf should be played by the seashore. Rather, the Scots saw in the eroded sea coasts a cheap battleground on which they could whip their fellow men in a game based on the Calvinist doctrine that man is meant to suffer here below and never more than when he goes out to enjoy himself.Alistair Cooke
April 1
On the course, what is feared is like a magnet. Water, bunkers, trees, ravines, high grass - whatever you fear turns magnetic.Wiffi Smith
March 31
Some golfers seem to have no genius for figures. They cannot count correctly and, unfortunately, their general tendency is to be one stroke shy rather than one too many.Jerome Travers
March 30
Anyone who says he plays better at 55 than he did at 25 wasn't very good at 25.Bob Brue
March 29
Rule One: Whenever a spectator seeks out a really good vantage point and settles down on shooting stick or canvas chair, the tallest and fattest golf watcher on the course will take up station directly in front.Peter Dobereiner
March 28
Like most professional golfers, I have a tendency to remember my poor shots a shade more vividly than the good ones.Ben Hogan
March 27
Golf is very healthy; it is better to swat pills than to swallow them.Ted Osborne
March 26
There's more tension in golf than in boxing because golfers bring it on themselves. It's silly really because it's not as if the golf ball is going to jump up and belt you on the whiskers, is it?Henry Cooper
March 25
A routine is not a routine if you have to think about it.Davis Love Jr.
March 24
Golf is like tennis. The game doesn't start until the serve gets in.Peter Thomson
March 23
Bets lengthen putts and shorten drives.Henry Beard
March 22
Confidence, of course is an admirable asset to a golfer, but it should be an unspoken confidence. It is perilous to put it into speech. The gods of golf lie in wait to chasten the presumptious.P.G. Wodehouse
March 21
"Never had a lesson in my life" is a phrase uttered with smug satisfaction by a good many people. The correct reply is, of course, "That's why you are no better than you are."Henry Longhurst
March 20
I never did see the sense in keeping my head down. The only reason I play golf is to see where the ball has gone.Charles Price
March 19
The game of golf has, as I have previously made clear, its peculiarities and perplexities, and the passions released during its performance, from club wrecking to suicidal impulses, have induced its Directors to introduce an extra hole, known as the Nineteenth, played rather differently to those preceding it.H. MacNeile Dixon
March 18
The formula for par golf depends on three main factors - viz. Practice, Automatism and Reason (devoid of temperamental and other mental divergence), and the formula itself would be P+A+R = PAR.Theodore Hyslop (1927)
March 17
How would you like to meet the top 143 people at what you do each week in order to survive?Bruce Crampton
March 16
I have been able to hope for the best, expect the worst, and take what comes along. If there has been one fundamental reason for my success, this is it.Gene Sarazen
March 15
The muttered hint, "Remember, you have a stroke here," freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia.John Updike
March 14
The man who runs from his office to the golf club, gulps a sandwich, belches and races to the first tee has no business howling in anguish when he puts his first two shots in the woods, then tops a 3-iron shot into the pond.Tony Lema
March 13
It's OK to have butterflies. Just get them flying in formation.Francisco Lopez
March 12
Golfers who carry ball retrievers are gatherers, not hunters. Their dreams are no longer of conquest, but only of salvage.David Owen
March 11
When the average golfer takes out his driver he calls for all our faith, when he tees up the ball he calls for all our hope, and when he drives, for all our charity.Ted Osborne
March 10
The test of a great golfer is his ability to recover from a bad start.P.G. Wodehouse
March 9
"My swing is too fast" may be the biggest misconception ever. Think about it. If you take a fast, lousy swing and slow it down, all you've got left is a slow, lousy swing. Most people swing too slow, not too fast.Hank Haney (Swing coach to Tiger Woods)
March 8
A golf ball is white, dimpled like a bishop's knees, and is the size of small mandarin oranges or those huge pills which vets blow down the throats of constipated cart-horses.Frank Muir
March 7
I think golf is good for boxing, but the reverse is far from being the case.Max Baer (World Heavyweight Champion 1934-5)
March 6
There is only one categorical imperative in golf, and that is to hit the ball. There are no minor absolutes.Sir Walter Simpson (Philosopher and Golfer)
March 5
You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.Bobby Jones
March 4
In the midst of that wilderness I chanced upon a somewhat chubby gentleman engaged in the pursuit of a small white ball, which, when he came within striking distance, he beat savagely with weapons of wood and iron. That, sir, was my first sight of you, and my earliest acquaintance with the game of golf. I remember scanning the horizon for your keeper.Charles E. Van Loan (1918)
March 3
Great champions learn from past experiences, whether those be good or bad. A lot of times a guy needs to be knocked down before he gets up and fights.Paul Azinger
March 2
I have no butt. You need a butt if you're going to hit a golf ball.Dennis Quaid
March 1
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)
February 28
Everybody has two swings: the one he uses during the last three holes of a tournament and the one he uses the rest of the time.Toney Penna
February 27
Perhaps the most important thing I can tell you about equipment is to experiment and keep an open mind.Gary Player
February 26
Of all the games in which the soul of the Anglo-Saxon delights, there is perhaps none which is a severer test of that mysterious quality called 'nerve' than the game of golf.Horace Hutchinson (1890)
February 25
I realize that's why we play golf, to hit the ball into the hole. But it is a strange feeling when you hit the shot and it actually goes in.Hollis Stacy
February 24
If long hitting is the thing that causes the spectators to whistle through their teeth in wonderment, why not play tournaments up and down an expansive stadium?Robert Harris (1953)
February 23
Golf is not a mere game; it is a disease, infectious and contagious, which once acquired cannot be shaken off. Once a golfer always a golfer - there's no help for it!L. Latchford (1903)
February 22
Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic.Earl Wilson
February 21
Most of the difficult things in golf are mental, not physical. Are subjective, not objective. Are the created phantasms of the mind, not the veritable realities of the course.Arnold Haultain (1910)
February 20
My golf-loving friend Bob Hope asked me what my handicap was, so I told him - the Congress.Ronald Reagan
February 19
Golf, I have been told, is physically a better game for our sex than any other, as it exercises a greater number of muscles without fear of over-exertion or strain.Issette Pearson (1899)
February 18
Golf is a game which brings out the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of human nature. It permits no compromises, recognises no weaknesses and punishes the foolhardy. Yet the apparent simplicity in hitting a small white ball from A to B lures all potential golfers into a false sense of security. Every instinct in the human psyche says the game looks easy, therefore it must be. That, for many of us, is where the trouble starts.A.J. Dalconen
February 17
It is a law of nature that everybody plays a hole badly when playing through.Bernard Darwin
February 16
You don't hit anything on the backswing, so why rush it?Doug Ford
February 15
Not a week goes by without my learning something new about golf. That means, of course, that I was ignorant of eight things about golf two months ago. Extend that process back nearly twenty years and the result is an impressive accumulation of ignorance.Peter Dobereiner
 February 14 - Valentine's Day special!
Golf may be a hussy, but I love her.Don Herold (1952)
February 13
It is true that my predecessor did not object, as I do, to pictures of one's golf skill in action. But neither, on the other hand, did he ever bean a Secret Serviceman.President John F. Kennedy
February 12
Golf humanizes women, humbles their haughty natures, tends, in short, to knock out of their systems a certain modicum of the superciliousness, that swank, which makes wooing a tough proposition for the diffident male.Horace Hutchinson (1899)
February 11
The only thing you should force in a golf swing is the club back in the bag.Byron Nelson
February 10
When I come back in the next life, I want to come back as a golf pro's wife. She wakes up every morning at the crack of ten, and is faced by her first major decision of the day: whether to have breakfast in bed or in the hotel coffee shop.Dan Sykes
February 9
I believe you know something about a game called Golf. Some people here object to it being called a game, and prefer to designate it a science. I should term it a disease, or even an epidemic.Anonymous letter to Golf Illustrated magazine (1901)
February 8
Golf: the second best pastime that any sinner on this earth can have.R.H. Lyttelton
February 7
I have never felt so lonely as on a golf course in the midst of a championship with thousands of people around, especially when things began to go wrong and the crowds started wandering away.Bobby Jones
February 6
Putting is like wisdom. Partly a natural gift and partly the accumulation of experience.Arnold Palmer
February 5
A great golf hole is one which puts a question mark into the player's mind when he arrives on the tee to play it.MacKenzie Ross
February 4
Every rock 'n' roll band I know, guys with long hair and tattoos, plays golf now.Alice Cooper
February 3
I was playing once with the King of Samoa. I asked him what his handicap was. 'Six wives,' he said.Jack Redmond
February 2
The divorce is from my old putter. I think it's final - at least we're due for a long separation. I've suffered with that old putter for two years now. It got so rude I couldn't stand it.Shelly Hamlin
February 1
I guess I'm not a professional's professional. I think I'd rather go to the dentist than play a practice round.Laura Davies
January 31
Reading a green is like reading the small type in a contract. If you don't read it with painstaking care, you are likely to be in trouble.Claude Hamilton
January 30
Don't tell the opponent to drive first (in match play) when you have won the toss for the honour. It is a confession of weakness.H.L. Fitzpatrick (1900)
January 29
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.Bobby Jones
January 28
The average player would rather play than watch. Those who don't play can't possibly appreciate the subtleties of the game. Trying to get their attention with golf is like selling Shakespeare in the neighbourhood saloon.Bob Toski
January 27
No matter what happens, never give up a hole... In tossing in your cards after a bad beginning you also undermine your whole game, because to quit between tee and green is more habit forming than drinking a highball before breakfast.Sam Snead
January 26
It is... in the mind and not the body that the cause of every golfing ailment is to be sought, and this being so, it is the mind which requires treatment and not the body, as is the customary procedure.Major G.F. Mappin (1948)
January 25
The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance.G.K. Chesterton
January 24
My enthusiasm for the game has dwindled in that I've found something more interesting than golf - a wife.Bruce Lietzke
January 23
Golf championships are a good deal like omelettes. You cannot have an omelette without breaking eggs, and you cannot have a golf championship without wrecking hopes.O.B. Keeler
January 22
I wonder what Tommy Morris would have had to say to all this number 6-iron, number 12-iron, number 28-iron stuff. He probably wouldn't have said anything, just made one of those strange Scottish noises at the back of his throat like someone gargling.P.G. Wodehouse
January 21
The less said about the putter the better. Here is an instrument of torture, designed by Tantalus and forged in the devil's own smithy.Tony Lema
January 20
There is no reason, in the nature of things, why golf should not be begun as soon as one can walk, and continued as long as one can walk.Peter Cavendish
January 19
Even when times were good, I realized that my earning power as a golf professional depended on too many ifs and putts.Gene Sarazen
January 18
I call my putter 'Sweet Charity' because it covers such a multitude of sins from tee to green.Gardner Dickinson
January 17
I'm certainly not a saint out there on the golf course. In fact, far from it. Like when you make a three-putt and become upset. I take one step back and remember there are more important things going on in the world than golf.Bernhard Langer
January 16
The trouble with me is I think too much. I always said you have to be dumb to play good golf.JoAnne Carner
January 15
My golf swing is a bit like ironing a shirt. You get one side smoothed out, turn it over and there is a big wrinkle on the other side. Then you iron that one out, turn it over and there is yet another wrinkle.Tom Watson
January 14
When I came up, my ball was about three yards from the hole. Two putts made 99. I felt I was now really a golfer.Arthur Rainsford
January 13
If you want meat you go to the butcher's, and if you want your hair cut you go to the barber's. The same applies to golf. Don't listen to your playing companions, listen to the professionals.Jimmy Tarbuck
January 12
Golf is an indispensable adjunct to high civilisation.Andrew Carnegie
January 11
Everyone wants to be known as a great striker of the ball for some reason. Nobody wants to be called a lucky, one-putting s.o.b.Gary Player
January 10
Golf gives no margin: either you win or you fail. You cannot hedge; you cannot bluff; you cannot give a stop order. One chance is given you, and you hit or miss. There is nothing more rigid in life. And it is this ultra and extreme rigidity that makes golf so intensely interesting.Arnold Haultain (1910)
January 9
Not only are three-putt greens probable, at times they are an achievment.Charlie Pride
January 8
Golf is essentially an exercise in masochism conducted out of doors; it affords an opportunity for a certain swank, it induces a sense of kinship in its victims, and it forces them to breathe fresh air, but it is, at bottom, an elaborate and addictive rite calculated to drive them crazy for hours on end and send them straight to the whisky bottle after that.Paul O'Neil
January 7
The game is not as easy as it seems. In the first place, the terrible inertia of the ball must be overcome.Lord Wellwood (1895)
January 6
It may be said especially that mankind has always displayed a uniform craving for the pastime of hitting a ball with a stick. With the savage races, an enemy's head has taken the place of the ball, but the principle is still the same.Scotia on Golf (1886)
January 5
Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I've played the game for 40 years and I still haven't the slightest idea how to play.Gary Player
January 4
It is nothing new or original to say that golf is played one stroke at a time. But it took me many strokes to realize it.Robert T. Jones, Jr
January 3
Someone once told me that there is more to life than golf. I think it was my ex-wife.Bruce Lansky
January 2
Golf has so many virtues; it is not too strenuous; it is healthy; it can be played, anyhow in our climate, practically the whole year round. It has so many advantages over all other games that it must endure and prosper.Lord Barbazon of Tara (1952)
January 1
Half of golf is fun; the other half is putting.Peter Dobereiner
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