Bobby Jones
Robert Tyre Jones, Jr retired from golf in 1930, at the age of 28, still an amateur, having just won the Grand Slam. Grantland Rice wrote of him, "One might as well attempt to describe the smoothness of the wind as to paint a clear picture of his complete swing." A consummate gentleman, he also possessed wit, a temper and a keen intellect, and all of these are evident in his many insights into golf and life.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Considered 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.

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

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?

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

Too much ambition is a bad thing to have in a bunker.

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.

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.

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

If I had ever been set down in any one place and told I was to play there, and nowhere else, for the rest of my life, I should have chosen the Old Course at St. Andrews.

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

The best exercise for golfers is golfing.

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

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 an humbling game, but it is surprising how many people are either not aware of their weaknesses of else reckless of consequences.

Rhythm and timing are the two things which we all must have, yet no one knows how to teach either.

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

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.

No one ever swung too slowly.

You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.

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.

Well, I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade. (on being told the temperature was 100 degrees in the shade)

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.

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.

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.

Nobody ever wins the National Open. Somebody loses it. (Of the US Open)

The invisible opponent whose tangible form is the card and pencil. The toughest opponent of them all - Old Man Par.