Arnold Palmer Quotations

What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive: the white ball sailing up into the sky, reaching its apex, falling and finally dropping to the turf, just the way I planned it.

I've always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn't have a chance to win.

The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.

The more I practice the luckier I get.

What do I mean by concentration? I mean focusing totally on the business at hand and commanding your body to do exactly what you want it to do.

Putting is like wisdom - partly a natural gift and partly the accumulation of experience.

Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you.

Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening - and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.

My grandson Sam Saunders has been playing golf since he could hold a club and I spent a lot of time with him over the years. Like my father taught me, I showed him the fundamentals of the game and helped him make adjustments as he and his game matured over the years.

I have a tip that will take five strokes off anyone's golf game. It's called an eraser.

Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character.

Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.

Had I not become a professional golfer, I think I would have pursued some type of career in aviation.

To me, wearing glasses is no pleasure, but once I conceded that I simply couldn't properly judge distance without them, I began to experiment. I tried glasses and found them uncomfortable. I switched to contact lenses, and they also bothered me.

It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily.

I never quit trying. I never felt that I didn't have a chance to win.

The secret of concentration is the secret of self-discovery. You reach inside yourself to discover your personal resources, and what it takes to match them to the challenge.

I never rooted against an opponent, but I never rooted for him either.

I'm not much for sitting around and thinking about the past or talking about the past. What does that accomplish?

I fly my own airplane, and I have since 1960. I rarely fly anywhere other than my own airplane.

I used to get tired of drinking iced tea, so I'd ask my wife if we had some lemonade, and I would just dump it right in there.

I quit flying myself last year and that was difficult for me because I enjoy it as much as playing golf. It was an adjustment sitting in the back of the plane, rather than at the controls, but I've grown accustomed to it and enjoy reading a book, doing some work or challenging my wife to a game of dominos.

I have a tip that can take 5 strokes off anyone's golf game. It's called an eraser.

Feel is the most perplexing part of golf, and probably the most important.

I try to deign golf courses that are individual in character and individual in their own standing.

I don't see myself as a full-time broadcaster. I've done some of it, and I enjoy it, but I don't think I should try to make a career out of it.

My search for ways to improve my touch has never ended. We players tried a lot of different things and compared notes. Little fads would set in.

Golf challenges you mentally at any age, and when you become my age, it's a challenge physically to try to make your game work as well as it ever did. That's close to impossible, but that doesn't keep you from trying to hit the ball where you used to hit it and make the putts you used to make all the time.

I find myself getting associated with a lot of younger people in the game. I still enjoy playing with them, and I think they still enjoy playing with me. As long as I can stay competitive and have fun doing what I'm doing, I guess I'll keep doing it.

I think a firm grip helps you control the club and prevents it from turning in your hands. Another thing about feel is, if you make a change in your grip, it takes time for your brain to adapt.

Ever since I bought and started flying an airplane, it's been almost exclusively for business. I love to fly. It's a great joy to me. But rarely do I use it for any kind of pleasure, other than it is a pleasure to fly.

I can remember back to my early tour days when some fellows didn't think I'd last too long. Nothing physical - they said it was my swing. Some said it was too much of a 'muscle swing' to stand the test of time. One fellow predicted I wouldn't get past 30 out there.

I was mixing iced tea and lemonade in my kitchen since as long as I can remember. It wasn't until some time in the early 1960s that it became associated with me publicly.

Every day I play golf, that's my goal. To break 70 the other way. To shoot 70 or better.

I never felt that I didn't have a chance to win.

I probably have a club in my hands 360 days a year, one way or another, playing with friends or just fiddling around or hitting balls.

Everyone I built a course for thinks they have the best golf course in the world and I'm very pleased and proud of that.

You don't go to Palm Springs in the summer unless you're building a golf course.

When you lose the ability to step up and hit the ball as hard and as far as you want, that also affects your ability to will the ball to go where you want it to go, if you know what I mean.

Great touch is often written off simply as 'talent,' which is crucial, because a good swing can take a golfer only so far. I've seen thousands of fantastic swings in my day, but that doesn't guarantee anything.

I started flying because I had a fear of it early on. I figured if I learned to fly, I would understand better what was happening and started taking lessons in the late 1950's, once I had made some money on tour.

I've stated my position, and that is that we do not need a contraption to play the game of golf. I would hope that we'd play under one set of rules, and those rules would include a ban on the long putter hooked to the body in some way, shape or form.

I think I've heard somebody say that I was a well-dressed golfer. I guess that has something to do with the fact that a lot of people who play golf don't dress very well.

It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of his instrument with an internal sense of rightness - it is not merely mechanical, it is not only spiritual; it is something of both, on a different plane and a more remote one.

I like my airplane. It's as much a part of me as anything but my wife and kids.

My problem happens to be near-sightedness - inability to see distance. And this is pretty tough on a golfer.

I've always been a big thinker that the more international competition that we create through sports the better relationships we'll have with countries.

My father started on this golf course at Latrobe when he was sixteen years old. He was digging ditches when they were building the golf course.

I enjoy the press. I understand their business.

If the athlete is fair with the press, he deserves fairness back.

I started [flying] by being scared. When I was an amateur I played a couple tournaments and I had to fly, and got into weather and stuff, and it scared me, and I decided that would not work, I had to learn to fly, I had to find out about airplanes and aeronautical engineering and what it was all about.

I love America. I wanted to play golf.

The fans, I loved them. My mother would be in the gallery, I would look right at my mother and not remember.

I worked for dad on the grounds and I was in high school and I said I wanted to go to college, and he said, well, you figure it out. He said I will pay for your college but you're going to go to St. Vincent. St. Vincent College right here. That's about as much as I can afford, you work here, right here at home. I said, what if I can get somewhere else? And he said if I can get there, that's your call.

If you can concentrate on what you're doing and have the desire to do the things you have to do to win, you'll succeed.

I was playing cowboys and Indians in the trees, and then I started hitting the golf club with clubs father sawed off for me, and I began playing right here with my father.

I was the first son and first child. When my sister came along, well, she was two years younger, and I had to go to the golf course because my mother couldn't handle all the action going on. So I came with father to the golf course since I was a year and a half old and I spent the day with him here, and it worked in naturally. And it was fun for me being with my father, and doing things that a kid did it was great.

I wanted to emulate my father. I wanted to be as tough as he was. I wanted to do the things that he did. I watched him.

I was born in 1929, that was the depression, so the golf course was manned by my father and two guys, they worked for my dad and they took me with them everywhere they went. And it was fun.

That's another thing about my father. He made me very conscious of the fact I wasn't very good and I had to prove to him that I was good. And that hung with me, and I always wanted to play golf with him and show him. He said Never, Never tell anyone how good you are. Show them!

In my early days of flying, if you flew on instruments, you were inevitably going to fly in thunderstorms. That was just a part of the business of flying.

I can't afford the luxury of music while I'm flying an airplane. I have to pay attention to what I'm doing.

I think the guys are more conscious of the fact that being in good physical condition under the conditions that they play will make them better players.

All the things that I have derived either directly or indirectly through the game of golf are things I owe a great deal to the game and to the people who support the game.

I've noticed the sound of the golf ball being hit by the golf club is different, and much more realistic, with the hearing aids. The sound with the hearing aids makes sense, and better represents what I know is happening to the golf ball. So you could say that the hearing aids help give me confidence regarding my golf game.

I like the Miami because I could play golf all winter.

I played high school golf, I played amateur golf and I started getting officers. I was playing pretty good, won amateur tournaments as a junior, and the whole thing.

Winning is a drive, it's a thing that you feel like when I go to bed at night I go to sleep.

I would not have been able to accomplish a lot of what I did professionally had I not learned to fly myself and owned an airplane. For example, I was able to fly to an exhibition for the day and be back home in time for dinner. I never would have been able to do that flying commercially.

We just became very good friends [ with Dwight Eisenhower ], we played golf, we played heart exhibitions. Then his doctor said he should not play golf anymore.

I played with [Dwight Eisenhower] on the day after I won the Masters at his request. We became everlasting friends. I was with him the day before he died at Walter Reed.

It is such a disappointment in American political reaction and actions. When some of our politicians are flying around the country in private airplanes all the time, using public services as their mode of private transportation, and then criticizing us who are in business.

A lot of tournaments that I can remember I made a few bad shots and I was afraid I would lose the tournament and it seemed to work, the putts seemed to go in. Just the Desire.

I had a system, and the system worked.

The game is so fantastic, and people who get into it love it so much...I'd be pleased with that. There's no game like it.

I remember ones I lost [shot]. I remember the ones I won, but I remember the ones I lost, something that I will never forget. Did it ruin me or hurt my career? It taught me about life, how to take the bad with the good.

I look back, it taught me something - it taught me how to live, how to be a better guy, not let defeat be the end of my life.

I would never felt good if I hadn't experienced losing, because losing is part of your life. And it something that if I could teach people to understand that I think it could help them a lot.

I always said that if I have the perfect club then I should play the perfect game.

When you get into competition and get under pressure, and get over that ball and are looking at it, and know you have to hit it, it is having that system to depend on to get that ball to where you want it to be.

When you play by the rules, defy mental demons, overcome every challenge, and enjoy a walk in the country at the same time - that's being alive.

You can describe my round as having moments of ecstasy and stark raving terror. I looked like I knew what I was doing at times and at other times I looked like a twenty handicap player.

I never felt I could be a complete professional without having won the British Open. It was something you had to do to complete your career.

I have won the Australian, I won the British, all PGA championships, but I haven't won the PGA championship.

Your worst putt will usually be as good as your best chip.

I feel more strongly than ever about this. I would like the professional game freed of golf carts. Golf is a physical game. If we are playing competitive professional golf, we should walk. When I can't walk 18 holes, I'll pack it in.

I can only tell you one thing that I do know for sure, I am a dreamer. There are not many people that will recognize or want to recognize the fact that they are dreamers in their own life ... I continue to get up in the morning,enthusiastically, and go pick up a golf club with a thought that I can somewhere find that secret to making the cut. That's just an example, but it applies to other things in life, too, and that's the way I live and the way I think and the way I feel.

As long as I can stay competitive and have fun doing what I'm doing, I guess I'll keep doing it.

Frankly, I'm not much for funerals unless it's absolutely an obligation. I don't feel it serves much of a purpose to go and see my friends just lying there, dead. I try to pay my respects to my friends when they're alive.

Golf never ceases to be a challenge, even when it really is just you and the ball out there and nobody else.

If you are really serious about playing golf and playing good golf, stick to the basic fundamentals. Sure, there's going to be a little change here and a change there, but you don't want to make them. You want to stick to the things that you started with, and you learned, and you know how to apply them.

I received many years of good advice from my father - how to live, how to play, how to be a gentleman.

When I was in college, I thought about becoming an attorney. But I wasn't smart enough; I hate being cooped up indoors; and I'm too nice a guy.

One thing I've learned over time is, if you hit a golf ball into water, it won't float.

There's some good news, too, and the good news is that the players [finally] have become more aware of the fact that we [in golf] need sponsors, and we need the good will that is created by the players being, let's say, cooperative with the sponsors - meaning friendly.

I would like to say, however, that a man might be walking around lucky and not know it unless he tries.

Swing your swing. I know, I did.

I’m particularly proud of anything the House and the Senate agree on,

For years I did take my time, but that was because I hated waiting to hit shots - I adopted a pace where I didn't have to stand by my ball and wait.

I have had a love affair with Wake Forest since my undergraduate days, but I didn’t realize until many years later what I had truly learned at Wake Forest, both in and out of the classroom, about the meaning of a productive and meaningful life,