Bobby Jones Quotes

Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course

Golf is recognized as one of the more difficult games to play or teach. One reason for this is that each person necessarily plays by feel, and a feel is almost impossible to describe.

The object of golf is to beat someone. Make sure that someone is not yourself.

You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.

Jack Nicklaus is playing an entirely different game, and one which I'm not even familiar with.

If I needed advice from my caddie, he'd be hitting the shots and I'd be carrying the bag.

The rewards of golf, and of life too I expect, are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules.

Some emotions cannot be endured with a golf club in your hands.

I will tell you privately it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse all the time, but don't fret. Remember, we play the ball where it lies, and now let's not talk about this, ever again.

I think that (Alister) MacKenzie and I managed to work as a completely sympathetic team. Of course there was never any question that he was the architect and I was the advisor and consultant. No man learns to design a golf course simply by playing golf, no matter how well. But it happened that both of us were extravagant admirers of the Old Course at St Andrews and we both desired as much as possible to simulate seaside conditions insofar as the differences in turf and terrain would allow.

The difference between a sand trap and water hazard is the difference between a car crash and an airplane crash. You have a chance of recovering from a car crash.

Bad putting is due more to the effect the green has upon the player than it has upon the action of the ball.

Golf is the only game I know of that actually becomes harder the longer you play it.

Many shots are spoiled at the last instant by efforts to add a few more yards.

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.

Some people think they are concentrating when they're merely worrying.

The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.

I never learned anything from a match that I won.

If ever I needed an eight foot putt, and everything I owned depended on it, I would want Arnold Palmer to putt for me.

The best exercise for golfers is golfing.

Nicklaus plays a kind of golf with which I am not familiar.

The 'enemy' in golf is tension.

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.

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.

On the golf course, a man may be the dogged victim of inexorable fate, be struck down by an appalling stroke of tragedy, become the hero of unbelievable melodrama, or the clown in a side-splitting comedy.

No one ever swung too slowly.

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.

I can play the game only one way. I must play every shot for all there is in it. I cannot play safe.

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 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.

Bobby JonesConsidered objectively, it is quite obviously a very simple matter to propel a ball with a stick across some specially prepared ground and into a hole which is of sufficient size to accomodate it by a good margin. Simple that is, provided there is no limit upon the time or the number of strokes required.

He [the golfer] must have the courage to keep trying in the face of ill luck or disappointment, and timidity to appreciate and appraise the dangers of each stroke, and to curb the desire to take chances beyond reasonable hope of success.

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.

It is nevertheless a game of considerable passion, either of the explosive type, or that which burns inwardly and sears the soul.

Golf is the one game I know
which becomes more and more
difficult the longer one plays it.

No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you a playing a game. You are playing old man par.

I got an extra hour's nap.

I always like to see a person stand up to a golf ball as though he were perfectly at home in its presence.

Doesn't it show us all that we are silly little boys or fatuous asses to think that we can play golf without making a lot of bad shots?

You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.

Well, I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade.