Quotes from Famous Golfers

Arnold Palmer Golf Quotes

• How did I make a twelve on a par five hole? It’s simple. I missed a four-foot putt for an eleven.
• Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.
• It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.
• I never rooted against an opponent, but I never rooted for him either.
• I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that i didn’t have a chance to win.
• What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.
• Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening – and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.

Bobby Jones Golf Quotes

• You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.
• The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.
• 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 are playing a game. You are playing old man par.
• Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots – but you have to play the ball where it lies.
• It is nevertheless a game of considerable passion, either of the explosive type, or that which burns inwardly and sears the soul.
• A leading difficulty with the average player is that he totally misunderstands what is meant by concentration. He may think he is concentrating hard when he is merely worrying.
• I never learned anything from a match that I won.
• 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.
• Many shots are spoiled at the last instant by efforts to add a few more yards.
• The best exercise for golfers is golfing.
• 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.
• Golf is said to be a humbling game, but it is surprising how many people are either not aware of their weaknesses or else reckless of consequences.
• Rhythm and timing are the two things which we all must have, yet no one knows how to teach either.
• You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.
• 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.
• In order to win, you must play your best golf when you need it most, and play your sloppy stuff when you can afford it. I shall not attempt to explain how you achieve this happy timing.
• I get as much fun as the next man from whaling the ball as hard as I can and catching it squarely on the button. But from sad experience I learned not to try this in a round that meant anything.
• I always like to see a person stand up to a golf ball as though he were perfectly at home in its presence.
• The best exercise for golfers is golfing.

Jack Nicklaus Golf Quotes

• Don’t be too proud to take a lesson. I’m not.
• Nobody ever remembers who finished second at anything.
• A kid grows up a lot faster on the golf course. Golf teaches you how to behave.
• Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20 percent of the time, you’re the best.
• It takes hundreds of good golf shots to gain confidence, but only one bad one to lose it.
• A perfectly straight shot with a big club is a fluke.
• Golf is not, and never has been, a fair game.
• 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.
• Keeping the head still is golf’s one universal, unarguable fundamental.
• 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.
• When I want a long ball, I spin my hips faster.

Sam Snead Golf Quotes

• Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot.
• Forget your opponents; always play against par.
• Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.
• Never let up. The more you can win by, the more doubts you put in the other players’ minds the next time out.
• 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.