You could have all the tools in the world, but if you really don't want to be there, or if there's something that's off course that's playing on your mind... the game of golf is so mental, and if you don't have everything in the right order, it's very difficult to win golf tournaments.

In The Bob Hope Golf Classic (LWT) the participation of President Gerald Ford was more than enough to remind you that the nuclear button was at one stage at the disposal of a man who might have either pressed it by mistake or else pressed it deliberately in order to obtain room service.

I mean, I've done college basketball, a horse race, a bunch of different things and they'd blow by but golf has a frenetic pace of bouncing around from shot to shot and green to green and, in essence, acre to acre over this huge plot of land with over 150 players who are their own team.

The Olympics will be great for the growth of golf on a global scale, but my focus right now is on being the best player I can be, trying to win Major Championships and contributing to what will hopefully be a victorious European side at the forthcoming Ryder Cup Matches against the USA.

I always think before an important shot: What is the worst that can happen on this shot? I can whiff it, shank it, or hit it out-of-bounds. But even if one of those bad things happens, I've got a little money in the bank, my wife still loves me, and my dog won't bite me when I come home.

I hate whenever there's a social issue that comes up in golf and people in the mainstream media who hate golf and who've conjured up all these stereotypes of people who are in the sport, the way they tear it down... I resent it, and I'll defend golf and people in golf until my dying day.

Obviously, the good thing about golf, it's difficult to really, really blow it after five holes unless it goes really, really, really... really, really, really wrong. But you still have 13 to go, and if you have a good run, where you make five or six birdies, you can get it back somehow.

The sport was right in the center of these changing social dynamics. It was a game invented by blue-collar people in Scotland but adopted by the elite in England and America. All of those conflicts were coming into the open. I was amazed to find out how much was played out in golf as well.

You figure they cheat at the ballpark, they'll cheat on the golf course, they'll cheat in business, and anything else in life. Players may laugh about it and say it's funny, but right down in their heart, they don't think it's funny at all, and they have no respect for a person who cheats.

I was playing golf in Palm Springs and after a round I asked the waitress in a restaurant to bring me a glass of iced tea and lemonade. A lady sitting nearby heard me and asked the waitress to bring her a "Palmer," too. The name caught on and the beverage quickly spread around the country.

We don’t have to do a bunch of things to figure out how to win the Ryder Cup. Just go play golf. ... I’m a little bit too casual probably about a lot of things, but you can’t force good play. Good play comes from good hard work and actually being prepared to play, not being forced to play.

I get upset over a bad shot just like anyone else. But it's silly to let the game get to you. When I miss a shot I just think what a beautiful day it is. And what pure fresh air I'm breathing. Then I take a deep breath. I have to do that. That's what gives me the strength to break the club.

Being a club pro and all, a guy trying to keep up with golf's modern technology, I hadn't found much time for Internet dating, but then one day I knew I'd met the girl of my dreams when she replied to a comment I'd made on You-and-Me.com. She said, 'I love it when you talk equipment to me.'

There are some good teachers out there, but the only one who is a genius at diagnosing my swing is my mom. She took up golf late, when she was 39, but in her younger days, she was an amazing athlete. She never read an instruction book or took lessons, but she has a remarkable eye for motion.

Having a great golf swing helps under pressure, but golf is a game about scoring. It's like an artist who can get a two-inch brush at Wal-Mart for 20 cents or a fine camel-hair brush from an art store for 20 dollars. The brush doesn't matter - how the finished painting looks is what matters.

No matter what calamities befall him in everyday life, the true hacker still needs the pressure and inconvenience of four hours of trudging in wind or rain or sleet or sun (or all of them at once), hacking at a white pellet that seems to have a mind of its own and a lousy sense of direction.

I always knew I wanted to play golf and go to college. I try hard to be a positive role model, especially on the golf course. I try to carry myself well, and don't do anything outrageous. I try to play the game like a gentleman and give everyone respect. That's how the game should be played.

I could go away five or six weeks in a row and never touch a club. I would just look at them and say, 'I just don't want to; it's not that important.' And it wasn't that important. Golf - I don't want to answer loosely - I pay a lot of attention to it, but I don't ever really think about it.

Golf is a game, and talk and discussion is all to the interests of the game. Anything that keeps the game alive and prevents us being bored with it is an advantage. Anything that makes us think about it, talk about it, and dream about it is all to the good and prevents the game becoming dead.

Draymond's always talking trash, and he's really good at getting you off your game. He's one of the guys that he'll talk trash, even when you're playing golf. He will knock you off your game... But when you see his swing, you're like, 'How do you talk trash so well, and your swing's this bad?'

I moved to Los Angeles, and 'The Office' became successful, and the charity/cocktail party circuit is really not my scene. But I played golf, and I started getting invited to charity golf events, and I just fell in love with the game ten-fold, and at a lot of these events, there were athletes.

I know when I've been playing a lot of golf it takes me a while to get back into cricket again. It's not so much the different shape of the swings, more the fact that you are stationary when you hit a golf ball. In cricket you have to move forward or back, which is an instinctive timing thing.

Every day that goes by shortens our opportunity of booking it successfully. Whether it's members pulling their condos for personal use, whether it's a convention booking our conference center, whether it's golf packages being booked .. not hearing makes it that much harder to accommodate them.

They do a heck of a job with the PGA professionals around the country and taking care of the clubs and country clubs and everything else, but when it comes to understanding the guys out here on Tour and everything else, I don't think they get it because they're not out here on a regular basis.

I'm not always smiling when I'm on the golf course. Sometimes, hey, listen, people have regular jobs. You go to them when they're working, and you catch them not in the best moment either. So I understand how people could perceive me. But come get to know me, and I'm totally a different person.

If the rest of his foursome are bunched directly behind his ball, or assume the foetal position with their backs to the tee, the golfer is reminded that his drive tends to be erratic. More cruel yet is for his opponent to stand directly in the projected line of flight, as the safest place to be.

Sometimes, all the interviews, those are the toughest thing for me, but once you really start to do it a lot and start to get used to it, I can find some fun in those parts, too. Because playing golf is the easiest thing for me, and that's something I'm so used to; that's why it was always easy.

I assume my stance, and take back the club, low, slowly; at the top, my eyes fog over, and my joints dip and swirl like barn swallows, I swing. There is a fruitless commotion of dust and rubber at my feet. "Smothered it," I say promptly. After enough lessons the terminology becomes second nature.

There are so many aspects of the game that you can work on - you can drive it father, you can drive it straighter, you can hit your irons higher and more consistently, you can get better with your wedges, and you can always putt better. There's never an end to that striving to get better in golf.

As a kid in Fayetteville, N.C., I played golf all day, every day, a lot of it by myself. I spent hundreds of hours around the greens at Cape Fear Valley, the course my dad owned, hitting every shot I could think of - the one-hop-and-release, the chip that lands dead, the explosion from a bad lie.

Summer I was 13, my grandfather and my father taught me how to play golf. I took lessons that summer, and I played every day that summer. I probably would've kept playing, except I realized that girls don't watch golf; they watch tennis. So I let my golf game go dormant and started playing tennis.

None of my 22 grandchildren have genetics played. Three of my four boys were golf pros, but I think they all sort of said, "You know, I'm not going to push" with their children. I was the same with my kids. I said, "You know, if they want to play golf, that's fine, but I'm not going to push them."

I learn my lines while on the golf course. I try to do two or three things at once. I have ideas for books all the time, I have ideas for paintings all the time, and I write them all down. I take my sketchpad and my iPad, which I design on, and I do sit down and do specific tasks at specific times.

I do spend really focused time with my wife, my kids, grandkids, and so when I'm doing something or on a golf course, work has stopped. I'm not always thinking and working... I think a leader has to really be a balanced, whole and healthy person personally in order to be the best leader on the job.

One of the big changes in the Congress since I first came to Washington is that all of these folks go home every weekend. They used to play golf together; their families got to know each other, go to dinner at each other's homes at weekends - and these would be people who were political adversaries.

Trouble is bad to get into but fun to get out of. If you're in trouble, eighty percent of the time there's a way out. If you can see the ball, you can probably hit it; and if you can hit it, you can move it; and if you can move it, you might be able to knock it in the hole. At least it's fun to try.

I don't like anything that's "just an escape." To me the best part of golf is that, unlike my tennis game, I can actually get better. I've probably reached my plateau in tennis, but in golf I have a lot of room for improvement. I really enjoy working on my game. I like practicing. I chart my rounds.

Golf is not a wrestle with Bogey; it is not a struggle with your mortal foe; it is a physiological, psychological and moral fight with your self; it is a test of mastery over self; and the ultimate and irreducible element of the game is to determine which of the players is the more worthy combatant.

I loved curling and I loved the social aspect of it, the team. It's like if you had the same golf foursome for a long time, or if you're a bridge player, or a beer-league hockey team. You start to look forward to that time together and camaraderie, and having something that you do just for yourself.

When a putter is waiting his turn to hole out a putt of one or two feet in length, on which the match hangs at the last hole, it is of vital importance that he think of nothing. At this supreme moment he ought to fill his mind with vacancy. He must not even allow himself the consolation of religion.

Being a Daddy is priority number one. When you are old and facing oblivion in a nursing home or a hospital or on a golf course in winter, you are not going to wish you had spent more time at the office or making a sales call or watching a show. You will wish you had spent more time with your family.

Phoenix is an interesting example. Drive around and see the golf courses everywhere, and you see people's big green lawns. And you live in a desert! I've always remarked about the capacity of human beings to look at somewhere and move there because of its uniqueness and its beauty and then change it.

The great Jack Nicklaus summed things up neatly during a charity match on the Old Course at St. Andrews where he and I were playing against Ben Crenshaw and Glen Campbell. I asked him what he considered to be the most important factor to overcome in the game of golf. His reply, "It's an unfair game."

Here's a simple way to abolish golf's elitist and exclusionary image and make it a truly all-American sport: ditch that fifties-Republican-martini-drinker's green Brooks Brothers-style sport jacket and make the winner of the Masters slip on something in, say, black leather with plenty of metal studs.

The Universal Law is impartial. It will give you anything you believe. It will throw you garbage or roses depending on the energy you put in. You are the one in charge, and you must accept that and stand alone. If you think God is coming down to fix things for you, forget it. God is out playing golf.

Rest is key. I need to get the right rest time and family time to stay refreshed. My downtime is for family activity. That's all about there is. I never switch off. Running my day-to-day golf business is a fairly busy one. There's a lot of moving parts and I'm trying to simplify it and make it easier.

I thrive on the adrenaline of excitement and danger. I just cannot stand boredom on the other side of it. Why am I a person who loves guns? I have no idea. Why do I like to go hunting? I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me. Why does somebody love golf, because that doesn't make sense to me either.

We shot 'Dharma & Greg' six blocks from my house for five years. I had a Dodge Durango that I sold after five years, and it only had like 12,000 miles on it. My whole life was within eight square blocks of my house. There was a golf course across the street. In my downtime, I was on the driving range.

From 1975-'79, I worked for PGA professional Tony Bruno. For five years I watched, lost in admiration, as Tony ran the golf shop at Battleground Country Club in Manalapan, N.J. Tony put in 80-hour weeks doing what nearly 29,000 men and women club pros do every day: Keeping the game alive with a smile.

What most people don't understand is that UFOs are on a cosmic tourist route. That's why they're always seen in Arizona, Scotland, and New Mexico. Another thing to consider is that all three of those destinations are good places to play golf. So there's possibly some connection between aliens and golf.

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