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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.