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A missed golf shot will never hurt my golf swing, only my vanity. And vanity is the luxury of fools....

-Moe Norman

"I would take longer on the first tee than I would any other place on the golf course. I was gearing my brain, taking a look at the fairway, taking three or four practice swings. A lot of people wondered what I was doing up there, why I didn't tee the ball up and hit it. I was organizing myself to play this round. I thought harder about the first tee shot than any other shot I played. It set the tone for the day"

BEN HOGAN

Bradley Hughes wrote:


Best quote ever. Reminds me of something I heard him say in a piece he did with a pro in Florida whose name escapes me at this time.

"I've never SEEN a bad shot"

It speaks to the mindset he had, he knew his swing was trapped because it was such a small motion inside that created the big picture we see when we watch his swing.....

"It's a pendulum...look...LOOK!!"

He knew there were ways he could jack up a shot that had nothing to do with his ability to perform this small action time and time again, and that these things were fleeting and like circuit breakers that interfered with him performing the simple action and would not repeat themselves the way his swing repeated.

Like another favorite of mine when he was demonstrating Drivers on a short range and was just bombing it into trees beyond the range...he said

"It feels funny aiming at the trees"

If we don't point our action in the right direction, our brain will try to interfere and override our intent to make our ideal action.

" I liked to win, but more than anything, I loved to play the way I wanted to play"

Ben Hogan

After having been one-down after three rounds and shooting a final round 76 in the 1953 US Open at Oakmont (losing by 6 to Hogan), someone asked Sam Snead if he was tight before the round:

"Tight? I was so tight you couldn't a drove a flaxseed up my ass with a knot maul."

" We learned the game differently, on bad grass and good grass and a lot of bad lies, we had more shots. So I don't think the best players are as complete today, simply because they didn't have to learn what we had to learn. Being a shotmaker was a forced necessity. Today's golf laboratory is sterile. It doesn't call for anything. "


LEE TREVINO

"Whenever I reach a par 5 in two they turn it into a par 4"

Fred Funk

"If profanity had any influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is".

Horace G. Hutchinson

We all have dreams. But in order 2 make dreams into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, & discipline.

-Jesse Owens

from , "Lost Balls, great holes, tough shots and bad lies"
Charles Lindsay, forward by John Updike

And the wind shall say, "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls"

--TS Eliot, chorus to The Rock


The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf.
It's almost a law.
--H.G. Wells


Playing golf is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture.

--Winston Churchill


Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.

__William Wordsworth


Its good sportsmanship not to pick up lost
golf balls while they are still rolling.
__Mark Twain

I work in a pub and I remember when Tiger played that miraculous chip shot during the masters and everyone (including me ) were raving about it an old customer
looked up from his beer to see what the fuss was about. I said to him "did you see that shot Johnny that was amazing. .....that's why he's the best in the world. "
His reply ? "sure why wouldn't he and no one marking him"

I guess his point was we have all the time we need to take a shot in golf there's no one trying to take the ball off us.

I'm a big fan of Poirot and this made me chuckle:

youtu.be/e1mA7vmYRco?t=2m53s

(Discussing a suspicious suicide)

Captain Hastings: Good golfer, played off scratch.

Hercule Poirot: Playing the good golf is no reason not to commit suicide Hastings.

Captain Hastings: You just don't understand golf Poirot.

After beating Nicklaus in a playoff for the 1971 US Open Lee Trevino declared:

"I love Merion and I don't even know her last name"

Simon Hobday's caddie:

"It never ceases to amaze me how well he can hit a shot when he has the wrong club in his hand"

I think for me and for many the more important for us try to find something we feel good. When you feel good all impossible becomes possible.
-Manuel De Los Santos (Dominican Republic golfer who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident)

Ben Hogan fancied Trevino...he had a soft spot for players that grew up poor and excelled through hard labour.
Whenever he needed new Hogan equipment tested he would tell his rep..
" Take these clubs over to that little Mexican guy in Dallas. He's the only one who hits it solid every time, we'll find out if these clubs are any good"