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.

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 'enemy' in golf is tension.

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.

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

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

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.