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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 toughest opponent of all is Old Man Par. He’s a patient soul who never shoots a birdie and never incurs a bogey. And if you would travel the long road with him, you must be patient, too.
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.
