Tom Watson Quotes

There is no surer or more painful way to learn a rule than to be penalized once for breaking it.

Some guys have trouble sleeping the night before an important round. I never have. Invariably, I sleep longer and better, and have more dreams, when I'm in contention and feeling pressure.

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

I have a special feeling for Blue Hills CC, where I won perhaps the most important tournament of my life when I was 14 - the Kansas City Match Play Championship. It gave me a dream of becoming a professional golfer.

My career was one of just taking it step by step. I didn't know how I was gonna fare on the professional circuit when I qualified. I didn't know whether I was gonna make a dime. I didn't know anything but this one thing: I had some dreams, and I was gonna work harder than anybody out here to ply my trade.

I never hesitated to promote someone I didn't like. The comfortable assistant - the nice guy you like to go on fishing trips with - is a great pitfall. Instead I looked for those sharp, scratchy, harsh, almost unpleasant guys who see and tell you about things as they really are. If you can get enough of them around you, and have patience enough to hear them out, there is no limit to where you can go.

Sometimes thinking too much can destroy your momentum.

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

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

The beautiful thing about the game of golf is you can play good golf and compete well into your later years, and you can't do this in basketball or football or baseball. But in golf, it's a longer live sport.

The golf swing is a violent swing. You twist, and your spine is under continual stress when you're making a golf swing. Your neck, your spine, your hands, your knees, everything.

You don't have to go to church to be spiritual, but there are certain times in your life that you know there is a presence of something very spiritual.

After playing Ballybunion for the first time, a man would think that the game of golf originated here.

I played team sport as a kid and loved it. I played basketball and football throughout high school into college in the intramurals and I loved it. There was nothing like a team.

The cows hovered over the mountain
Creating a huge pooping fountain

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.

I learned how to win by losing and not liking it.

I've said many times, 'You learn to win through not liking to lose.' And that's what I mean by learning how to win.

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.

Golfers who play a lot of courses often encounter short ledges or retaining walls, and I always had fun hopping down from them. I could jump off something six feet high and land like a cat, no problem. Well, today I can't jump off anything higher than two feet without it just killing me.

We tournament golfers are much overrated. We get paid to much.

It's time for old players like me, old fogies like me, to give it up and let the young players have a chance.

Golf will grow so long as it's fun.

From the time I won the Kansas City Match Play championship at age 14, I never wanted to be anything but a golfer.

genuine excitement

I hope that I've been able to treat people with the respect they've shown me. That's basically the tenet you try to live by. I haven't been successful at it all my life, but that's what I strive for.

I guess I have never been much of a complainer. You just take what is given you, and don't complain about what you can't affect.

In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.

I love the way the game of golf is lived and played in Scotland. I always have.

I always could putt. Part of my makeup, I always could putt.

My father wasn't a hard guy. He was a well-liked guy. He had a lot of compassion about things in life. There were rules, but there was also flexibility within those rules. He didn't push me when it came to golf: he just taught me the right way to play the game.

religion is a method of self-governance which allows a culture or civilization to invoke its own order by divine mandate.