Bobby Jones Quotations

Some people think they are concentrating when they're merely worrying.

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

It is nothing new or original to say that golf is played one stroke at a time. But it took me many years to realize it.

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

You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.

If ever I needed an eight foot putt, and everything I owned depended on it, I would want Arnold Palmer to putt for me.

The perfect design should place a premium upon sound judgment as well as accurate striking, by rewarding the correct placing of each shot. Mere length is its own reward, but length without control ought to be punished.

We are at a low. But I wouldn't say it's a low where we are tossing in the towel and giving up and saying there's nothing else we can do. It's not like that. It's a low like where the next day can't come quick enough.

With two teams that pressure a lot and are physical, once someone gets pushed or aggravated and gets hit, tempers flare up and they get mad and teammates defend teammates and other people get involved. That was usually the case when we played them last year.

We're going to come ready to play for 40 minutes and leave it all out there. A lot of people don't expect us to win. We're a scrappy bunch. We don't back down from everyone.

We're just not good enough. Our effort's been great. And the fans have been phenomenal. I think they feel sorry for us. I think they know what we're going through.

We know how good we can play and we know how bad we can play. We know we can't take anybody lightly.

We're still 12-2. It's not like we're pushing the panic button.

Fight tautness whenever it occurs; strive for relaxed muscles throughout.

I can play the game only one way. I must play every shot for all there is in it. I cannot play safe.

Golf is a game that creates emotions that sometimes cannot be sustained with the club still in one's hand.

I had held a notion that I could make a pretty fair appraisal of the worth of an opponent simply by speaking to him on the first tee and taking a good measuring look into his eyes.

I never learned a thing from a tournament I won.

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.

Golf is like eating peanuts. You can play too much or play too little.

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

The 'enemy' in golf is tension.

Nicklaus plays a kind of golf with which I am not familiar.

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

Well, I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade.

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.

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

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

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.

When I'm a little fatigued, sometimes I baby it. I don't try to do it. I'm not 100 percent. I probably won't be the rest of conference play. I just have to play through it. I've never really been injured before.

No putt is too short to be despised.

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

In golf, the customs and etiquette and decorum are as important as the rules of play.

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

Nobody ever wins the National Open. Somebody loses it.

Nobody ever swung a club too slowly.

The rewards of golf, and of life too I expect, are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules.

I got an extra hour's nap.

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

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.

Bobby JonesConsidered 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.

I always like to see a person stand up to a golf ball as though he were perfectly at home in its presence.

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.

No one ever swung too slowly.

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?

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 recognized as one of the more difficult games to play or teach. One reason for this is that each person necessarily plays by feel, and a feel is almost impossible to describe.

The best exercise for golfers is golfing.

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.

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.

Many shots are spoiled at the last instant by efforts to add a few more yards.

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

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. No man learns to design a golf course simply by playing golf, no matter how well. But it happened that both of us were extravagant admirers of the Old Course at St Andrews and we both desired as much as possible to simulate seaside conditions insofar as the differences in turf and terrain would allow.

He [the golfer] must have the courage to keep trying in the face of ill luck or disappointment, and timidity to appreciate and appraise the dangers of each stroke, and to curb the desire to take chances beyond reasonable hope of success.

I will tell you privately it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse all the time, but don't fret. Remember, we play the ball where it lies, and now let's not talk about this, ever again.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The real way to enjoy playing golf is to take pleasure not in the score, but in the execution of strokes.

I never learned anything from a match that I won.

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

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

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.

The object of golf is to beat someone. Make sure that someone is not yourself.

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

The main idea in golf as in life, I suppose is to learn to accept what cannot be altered and to keep on doing one's own reasoned and resolute best whether the prospect be bleak or rosy.

Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course

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.

When I have started him, he hasn't played as well. I guess he just needs to watch for a few minutes before he goes in. That seems to work. We are still finding out what works, but this team is giving me great effort.

Lets collide and get it over with. We've had our list of streaks to break and been checking them off. This is our improvised list. Everybody knows what it takes. We're playing the team expected to win the national championship. Either you bring it or you don't.

Oh yeah. We're both athletic. We like to cause turnovers, put pressure on people. We're real similar. There's a lot of different themes that intervene with each other. But when it comes down to it, that just makes the competition level rise that much more. I expect a hard, scrappy game.

Obviously, a big blow for J.R. and a disappointing blow for our team.

I don't expect to be going home anytime soon. A tournament like this takes everything. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't still be here.

I don't know why it's been that way. It's just kind of weird.

I believe with modern equipment and modern players, we cannot make a good course more difficult or more testing for the expert simply by adding length. The only way to stir them up is by the introduction of subtleties around the greens.

Give Robert Morris a lot of credit. I thought they played like a team desperate to get that fourth seed and the home game. They showed great focus and determination to win this basketball game.

If we win, it will be one of the biggest games in Husky basketball history. At the same time, this could be our last game. So a lot of stuff is at stake.

He has that grown-man game. He's strong, he rebounds. He just takes that team to another level.

Whatever happened, I know B-Roy did it for a reason. That's what happens when you get two good teams caught up in the moment. Sometimes tempers flare up.

He was feeling it tonight and that builds your confidence up. That has a lot to do with it. This was the most 3's I've seen him shoot in a game. He shot it so confidently and he knew it was going in. It just looked nice. Once you get that rhythm and feel, the game just seems like everything is open for you. Everything comes easier.

I think there were times in the game when we put ourselves in bad situations, but I also feel there were crucial plays in the game and the overtime when we got the short end of the stick. We usually don't make any excuses, but sometimes you've got to just let us play ball. When things are obvious you've got to call them. When they are not obvious, don't make it a questionable call.

Our goal is when Vince Young leaves here, he won't be a candidate for the Heisman,

Robert Morris has five guys who can step away from the basket and hit the 3 (point shot). We had too many turnovers, especially in the first half. We played better in the second half but built such a huge hole by then it was hard to get back in the game.

Robert Morris and St. Francis are like the step-children of the Northeast Conference when it comes to TV exposure.

It doesn't matter that we've never seen the family. They lost someone defending our freedom, and we owe them more gratitude than we can ever give them. We're really happy to be able to do this.

I think making it a flat fee would be a very good thing. I have a car and a truck and paying a flat fee of $26.25 would save me a little bit of money.

Maybe I should have played to the side, so I saw the pick, because I didn't see it.

Man, that dude is fast. I like to rise to those kinds of challenges. Bug him. Annoy him. He should be pretty tired. I know I am, chasing him around all game.

That was huge. It's like free throws. You make the first one, and on the second one, you don't have as much pressure.

We're always just trying to scrap back when we come here or we're getting blown out. Hopefully something new can happen on this last trip.

You always want these games so you can prove people wrong.

We dug ourselves such a big hole with those turnovers.

We played sound (defense). If he made it, kudos to him. It's March Madness.

We had it like that last year for halves, but not for a whole game.

We played our best ball. Life goes on.

We were staying at the University of New Orleans, and it was awful, worse than you can imagine.