“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.”

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

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.

Nobody ever wins the National Open. Somebody loses it.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course… the space between your ears.

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

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.

As I see it, the thing that hurt my putting most when it was bad, was thinking too much about how I was making the stroke and not enough about getting the ball in the hole.

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

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.

Nobody ever swung a club too slowly.

I always wanted to be a golfer, only I realised that if I’d played golf I would have been skint.

Do not hold as gold all that shines as gold.

I didn’t realize at the moment exactly what I had done…I only realized the enormity of it when I walked into the press room and got a long standing ovation.

It’s so ridiculous to see a golfer with a one foot putt and everybody is saying “Shhh” and not moving a muscle.

I’ve come to realize that I perform best when I’m letting my subconscious mind hit the ball and my conscious mind is otherwise occupied.

If you hit a bad shot, just tell yourself it is great to be alive, relaxing and walking around on a beautiful golf course. The next shot will be better.

The best stroked putt in a lifetime does not bring the aesthetic satisfaction of a perfectly hit wood or iron shot.

I think dates considered super corny and cheesy – whether it’s going bowling or miniature golf or something where you can be competitive and just have fun with each other – those always make the most memorable dates!