Great Golf Quotes page 3

December 15, 2024
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Great Golf Quotes page 3 (M - Z)

Mac O'Grady (1951 - )

“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.


Martha Beckman

“Man blames fate for other accidents but feels personally responsible for a hole in one.”


Michael Murphy (1930 - )

"Golf is a game to teach you about the messages from within, about the subtle voices of the body-mind. And once you understand them you can more clearly see...the ways in which your approach to the game reflects your entire life. Nowhere does a man go so naked." - From 'Golf in the Kingdom'.


Mikey Dee
(1969 - )

"It's gone!" - After The Hominator holed his 7-iron for Eagle in the four-ball ambrose round at the 2005 Bushranger Cup in Tocumwal.


Moe Norman (1929 - 2004)

“I don't believe in taking much of a divot, especially with the longer irons. You want to barely comb the grass through impact. It's the only way to catch the ball on the second groove up from the bottom of the clubface. That's where you want to make contact: on the second groove.”

 
Muhammed Ali (1942 - )

“I'm the best. I just haven't played yet.”


Nick Faldo (1957 - )

”When it blows here, even the seagulls walk.”

”We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years.”


Old Tom Morris (1821 - 1908)

“Faith sir! She looks like the Old Course.” - Whilst looking through a 19th century telescope at the moon.

 
Pat Ward-Thomas (1928 - )

“When all is said and done, and whatever the method and whoever the man, successful putting surely must be a matter more of nerve than technique.”

"Down the years people have wondered whether Bobby Jones was the greatest of all golfers. Comparison is invidious, for no man can do more than win and Jones won more often within a given period than anyone else has ever done. In his time, Jones was supreme, at match and medal play, to a greater extent than Hogan or Nicklaus have been in theirs."


Paul Gallico (1897 - 1976)

“If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out.”


Payne Stewart (1957 - 1999)

“I don't think it's healthy to take yourself too seriously.”

“If you can't laugh at yourself, then how can you laugh at anybody else? I think people see the human side of you when you do that.”

“But in the end it's still a game of golf, and if at the end of the day you can't shake hands with your opponents and still be friends, then you've missed the point.”


Percey Boomer

“If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf."


Peter Aliss

"He used to be fairly indecisive, but now he's not so certain."


Peter Jacobsen (1954 - )

“One of the most fascinating things about golf is how it reflects the cycle of life. No matter what you shoot, the next day you have to go back to the first tee and begin all over again and make yourself into something.”

“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 Thompson (1929 - )

“I just try to put it on the fairway, then the green and not three putt.”

“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.”

“I have begun to rate golf courses by the number of balls you need. For instance if a course is a one-ball course, assuming it has all the usual features, I think it's a great course. But a 12-ball course I think is rubbish. That's my basic criticism of Jack Nicklaus courses. They are very much like the man himself, very serious and lacking in humour.”


P. G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975)

“Golf is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.”

“It was a morning when all nature shouted Fore! The breeze, as it blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and cheer, whispering of chip shots holed and brassies landing squarely on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky.”


Phil Mickelson (1970 - )

“The object of golf is not just to win. It is to play like a gentleman, and win.”

 
P J O'Rourke (1947 - )

“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.”


Raymond Floyd (1942 - )

“They call it golf because all of the other four-letter words were taken.”

"The game was easy for me as a kid. I had to play a while to find out how hard it is."

 
Robert Trent Jones Snr (1906 - 2000)

“Golf courses are like children. I have no favourite.”

“Every hole should be a difficult par and a comfortable bogey.”

“As you can see, the hole really isn't too difficult.” - After members had complained he made the par three fourth hole at Baltusrol too tough, he came to play it and aced it at his first attempt.


Robert Trent Jones Jr (1939 - )

“The first purpose of any golf course should be to give pleasure.”


Robert Browning

"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 Hunter (1874 - 1942)

“The best architects feel it to be their duty to make the path to the hole as free as possible from annoying difficulties for the less skillful golfers, while at the same time presenting to the scratch players a route calling for the best shots at their command."

 
Roberto De Vicenzo (1923 - )

“How about that amigo? I just come over to see my friends and I win ze bloody championship." - After the 1967 Open.


Sam Snead (1912 - 2002)

“Practice puts brains in your muscles.”

"Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot."

"You can not go into a shop and buy a good game of golf."

"The fairways were so narrow you had to walk down them single file."

"You've just one problem. You stand too close to the ball after you've hit it."

"If I had cleared the trees and drove the green, it would've been a great shot."

"There are no short hitters on the tour anymore, just long and unbelievably long."

"The three things I fear most in golf are lightning, Ben Hogan and a downhill putt."

"When I swing at a golf ball right, my mind is blank and my body is loose as a goose."

“Until you play it, St. Andrews looks like the sort of real estate you couldn't give away.”

"Good golfing temperament falls between taking it with a grin or shrug and throwing a fit."

"These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow."

“The only reason I ever played golf in the first place was so I could afford to hunt and fish.”

“Golf got complicated when I had to wear shoes and begin thinking about what I was doing.”

"If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death."

“The mark of a great player is in his ability to come back. The great champions have all come back from defeat.”

“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.”

"What abandoned course is that?" - To a fellow train passenger upon arrival in St. Andrews for the 1946 Open Championship.

“I've gotten rid of the yips four times but they hang in there. You know those two-foot downhill putts with a break? I'd rather see a rattlesnake.”

“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.”

“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.”

"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."

“If I could have shot 69 in the last round every time, I would have won nine US Opens. Nine!” (Note: Snead won 3 US Masters, 3 US PGAs and a British Open and a record 82 PGA Tour titles. At the US Open he had 12 top 10 finishes, including being runner-up four times, but he never took home the bikkies.)

“But, no, I don't feel my career has not been fulfilled because I didn't win the US Open. It's like the guy said: You going to crucify a man because he missed a putt to win a tournament? Does a three-foot putt mean his whole life? Another guy said, well, he couldn't win the big one. Well, Jesus, what do you call those others? What's big and what's small?”

"The only place that's holier than St. Andrews is Westminster Abbey."


Sam Torrance (1953 - )

”If you'd offered me a 69 at the start this morning I'd have been all over you!”


Sandy Lyle (1958 - )

"It's not whether you win or lose - but whether I win or lose."


Seve Ballesteros (1957- )

"In the United States, I'm lucky; in Europe, I'm good.”

”Everything was fine until I walked on to the first tee!”

"I miss. I miss. I miss. I make." - Describing his four-putt at Augusta's 16th in 1988.

”I don't want people to watch the way I dress. I want people to watch the way I play."

“I always putted without a glove but I have no idea why - I saw others doing it and copied them.”

"I'd like to see the fairways more narrow. Then everybody would have to play from the rough, not just me."

“I look into their eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, 'I am going to bury you.”

"It doesn't matter if you look like a beast before or after the hit, as long as you look like a beauty at the moment of impact."

“To give yourself the best possible chance of playing to your potential, you must prepare for every eventuality. That means practice.”


 Simon Hobday (1940 - )

“Two balls in the water. By God, I've got a good mind to jump in and make it four!”


Sir Walter Simpson

“Excessive golfing dwarfs the intellect. Nor is this to be wondered at when you consider that the more fatuously vacant the mind is, the better for play. It has been observed that absolute idiots play the steadiest.”

“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.”

“When a putter is waiting his turn to hole out a putt of one or two feet in length, on which the match hangs at the last hole, it is of vital importance that he think of nothing. At this supreme moment he ought to fill his mind with vacancy. He must not even allow himself the consolation of religion.”


Steve Pate (1961 - )

"I had played so poorly recently, I started thinking that maybe I should do something else. Then I saw my friends going to work everyday and realised that my life wasn't so bad."


Ted Ray (1877 - 1943)

“The next time you see a good player stalking backward and forwards on the green, do not be led away by the idea that he is especially painstaking, but rather pity him for a nervous individual who is putting off the evil moment as long as he possibly can.”


Tom Doak (1960 - )

"The best designs of all are organic, evolving from the subtleties of the ground they inhabit."


Tommy Armour (1894 - 1968)

"In other games you get another chance. In baseball you get three cracks at it; in tennis you lose only one point. But in golf, the loss of one shot has been responsible for the loss of heart."

“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 Bolt (1918 - )

"Putting allows the touchy golfer two to four opportunities to blow a gasket in the short space of two to forty feet."

"There is no better game in the world when you are in good company, and no worse game when you are in bad company."

"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."

“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.”

“Actually I was more of a breaker than a thrower - most of them putters. I broke so many of those that I probably became the world's foremost authority on how to putt without a putter.”


Tom Watson (1949 - )

"The person I fear most in the last two rounds is myself."

”Muirfield without a wind is like a lady undressed. No challenge."

“Only Opens.” - When asked if he collected anything Scottish for luck.

"A lot of guys who have never choked, have never been in the position to do so."

“No other game combines the wonder of nature with the discipline of sport in such carefully planned ways. A great golf course both frees and challenges a golfer's mind.”

“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 Weiskopf (1942 - )

"I am absolutely delighted to have come second. Who cares about winning when you can be second? I love being runner-up.”


Walter Hagen (1892 - 1969)

“Miss a putt for $2,000? Not likely!”

"I don't want to be a millionaire; just live like one."

“What a shame to waste those great shots on the practice tee.”

"That's the easiest 69 I ever made." - On celebrating his 69th birthday.

"Why waste good shots in practice when you might need them in a match?"

“It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art.”

“There is no tragedy in missing a putt, no matter how short. All have erred in this respect.”

“You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”

“Hurry up Gene, I got a date tonight.” - To Gene Sarazen, moments before he hit the 'shot heard around the world' at the 1935 US Masters.

“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.”

“He may have gone to bed three hours ago, but he knows who he is playing. You can rest assured that he hasn't slept a wink.” - On his opponent in the 1919 US PGA Championship.

“You don't have the game you played last year or last week. You only have today's game. It may be far from your best, but that's all you've got. Harden your heart and make the best of it.”

"I never played a perfect 18 holes. There is no such thing. I expect to make at least seven mistakes a round. Therefore, when I make a bad shot, I don't worry about it. It is just one of the seven."

"When I have a match to play, I begin to relax as soon as I wake up. Everything I do, I do slow and easy. That goes for stroking the razor, getting dressed, and eating my breakfast. I'm practically in slow motion. By the time I'm ready to tee off, I'm so used to taking my time that it's impossible to hurry my swing."

"Here Eddie, hold the flag while I putt out." - To Edward, Prince of Wales.

Great Golf Quotes page 1 (A - F)
Great Golf Quotes page 2 (G - L)
Great Golf Quotes page 3 (M - Z)