Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I keep lot of my opinions to myself. My grandfather, who was a gravedigger, told me one day, 'Son, the next time you go by the cemetery, remember that a third of the people are in there because they got into other people's business.'
You can win tournaments when you're mechanical, but golf is a game of emotion and adjustment. If you're not aware of what's happening to your mind and your body when you're playing, you'll never be able to be the very best you can be.
Sometimes, I'm an ogre. I can be short. I'll walk into the office some days and I've gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, and everybody knows it. I'm a perfectionist. I like to be organized, and I like to get everything done today.
Who in the world remembers who won the 1975 Westchester Classic or the 1978 Western Open? Basically, the majors are the only comparison over time . . . played on the same courses for generations. All the best players are always there.
I wasn't this nervous playing golf when I was drinking. It's the first tournament I've won on the PGA Tour in a sober manner, so it's a great feeling knowing I can do it sober. I don't think two years ago I could have pulled this off.
No matter what happens - never give up a hole....In tossing in your cards after a bad beginning you also undermine your whole game, because to quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast.
I wanted to just come out and continue to improve my game, continue to improve my mental capacity to play well in tournaments. I've had a slow year compared to last year, but I've been pleased because I felt like I was getting better.
I don't know if I have a brand. I just see myself as an athlete and a competitor, someone who just works really hard at trying to get better at golf. I guess I'm kind of the feel-good story who's seen every level of professional golf.
Believe it or not, I'm not really thinking about anything when I putt....It's hard to teach. I let my instincts take over. I like to see which way the break is going and use it. When I'm putting well, I feel like I can make everything.
We have two tractor-trailer rigs on the Tour. One is a therapy truck, and one is a workout truck. If everything is going well, you're walking in the workout truck, and when things aren't going well, you're walking in the therapy truck.
Having inched closer and accomplished some of my major goals in the sport of golf, no pun intended, why not work as hard as I can to attain those goals if I'm already feeling like I'm playing well and getting more and more comfortable.
The Golf Hall of Fame is full of players with unusual looking swings. Some of the prettiest swings you've ever seen in your life are made on the far end of the public driving range by guys who couldn't break an egg with a baseball bat.
I love movies, of course. 'Terminator 3' and 'Bad Boys II' - lots of action. Sports movies, action movies, comedies - I'll go to those, but not 'las de amor.' Not romance. It's not that I don't like love, but on the screen it bores me.
We went around and looked and talked to a lot of foundations with those charities and decided upon the Childrens Hospital. They had a golf tournament at the time, but it was a small event that didnt raise a significant amount of money.
I can say I won a Senior British Open at Turnberry. I think that's the best thing about it, the whole week, was playing this course. It's a challenging, very tough course, under extreme weather. But you know, it's nice to win any event.
I do like to point out the trick putts, the ones that look like they go one way but actually go another. I think the audience likes to know when a putt looks like it's two inches outside left, but it's actually two inches outside right.
Every day you gotta bring it and you gotta perform. If you have one big bad hole and just hit a couple of bad shots at the wrong time, pretty much wrecks the whole day and most cases your whole week. So that's the hard thing about golf.
I didn't want to settle or become complacent after winning a major, I wanted to stay hungry. It's easy to do. It's easy to win a big tournament and kind of get a little lazy, so it's been a good motivator for me to work a little harder.
I was horrified. Absolutely heart sick. All I could think of was that after 23 years together, I'd lost my faithful ally. I couldn't sleep, couldn't get the loss out of my mind. It was like discovering that someone in my family had died.
Recently I gave a lecture and a gentleman came to me and asked how I'd like to be remembered, i'd never been asked that before, so I thought for a few seconds. And I said I want to be remembered that I had a great love for my fellow man.
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.
Because of the grass and open face, I take one more club for shots from the rough, unless the ball is sitting on top of dry grass. Then, I use more loft and swing softer, trying to hit it about 70 percent to avoid a flyer over the green.
The competition I played against was fantastic, but golf is a different game now. The courses have shrunk because the equipment has gotten better. They're hitting the ball 10 to 15 percent farther because of the changes in the golf ball.
I think Curtis is finally getting his drive back, his passion for the game, ... I think he's starting to enjoy that competition again. That's what drives us all out here that feeling of being able to hit a good shot in a tough situation.
There's going to be places where you can attack the golf course and there's going to be times where you've got to kind of bite your lip and play conservative and hit to certain spots on the green, get out of there with a par and move on.
Whenever I have a little time off, I try to go back to my farm in South Africa. I'll spend time with my family and hunt antelope, kudu and springbok. During a 2010 hunting trip, I tore some ligaments in my ankle when I stepped in a hole.
Where you can make up ground is if the wind blows and your opponents make big numbers. I think you can shoot three, four, five-under par. But to make up a six, seven or eight-shot lead, that will be tough without the leaders coming back.
I guess what was going to come back came back on Monday. Of course now I've played a different golf course. I've played two practice rounds and two tournament rounds all kind of the same and now today I've played a different golf course.
We went around and looked and talked to a lot of foundations with those charities and decided upon the Children's Hospital. They had a golf tournament at the time, but it was a small event that didn't raise a significant amount of money.
A serious athlete to me is one who is committed to excellence at any level, at any age, in any endeavor and in either sex. This commitment begins with a dream and a sense of talent and skill and determination to make that dream come true.
Everyone has addictions and my problem is that I have 5,000 of them. If it's not drinking, it's gambling; if it's not gambling, it's eating anything from burgers, doughnuts to M&Ms. The only addiction I don't suffer from is chasing women.
The hardest thing in golf is trying to two-putt when you have to, because your brain isn't wired that way. You're accustomed to trying to make putts, and when you change that mind-set, your brain short-circuits, especially under pressure.
I'm probably less serious about my game than I was in the past. I've lost a brother and father in the past six years. And what about people who have lost friends and comrades in war? Golf is a game. You've got to keep that in perspective.
To be able to hold all four majors - the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA - all concurrently I think is the Grand Slam. But a lot of people have a different opinions on that. People think you have to win it in the same calendar year.
I always wanted to be the best I could be at whatever I did. I didn't want to be the number one golfer in the world. I just wanted to be as good as I could be. I work hard, I push myself hard, and I probably even expect too much of myself.
I played competitive golf all my life. Then all of a sudden, when I quit playing the game, I've got all this spare time and this energy. And certainly I wasn't ready to pack up my bags and go sit in front of the television with a shawl on.
In my life, I've seen everything, and one thing I know for sure is you can't win in the federal court. You're going against the government of the United States. You don't beat a federal court, a federal judge, and the FBI - there's no way.
People need to know that when I was interviewed when I played, I would really pat myself on the back when I did well and tell you how good I was playing, but I'd also tell you when I choked or I was playing terrible. I told it like it was.
God in Christ has taken into Himself the brokenness of the human condition. Hence, human woundedness, brokenness, death itself are transformed from dead ends to doorways into Life. In the divinizing humanity of Christ, bruises become balm.
I love competing against the best players. I have a huge challenge, and that's to win a U.S. Open and complete the Grand Slam. I enjoy that challenge. Every year it comes around, I get excited to try to conquer that opportunity. I love it.
You know I need that cockiness, the self-belief, arrogance, swagger, whatever you want to call it, I need that on the golf course to bring the best out of myself. So you know once I leave the golf course, you know that all gets left there.
In my day we simply didn't believe that it was possible to play as well as these young fellows do. We thought that strength denied touch and that you could not consistently hit the ball both long and straight. It's been proven that you can.
I don't believe in luck. Not in golf, anyway. There are good bounces and bad bounces, sure, but the ball is round and so is the hole. If you find yourself in a position where you hope for luck to pull you through, you're in serious trouble.
My dad's a scratch golfer and I've got the knack of seeing something and then replicating it. I saw my dad swing a club and I worked out how to do the same thing. My backswing and follow-through have been basically the same since I was two.
I've had support from all sides, from people who call themselves Irish, from Northern Irish, to the whole of the UK, to people in America, and it would be terrible for me to segregate myself from one of those groups that support me so much.
I didn't really get into golf until I was about 14. My mom and dad were taking lessons from a pro an hour and a half from our farm in Cohuna, Australia. When they got home, I'd ask my mom to explain everything they learned - drills and all.
I didn't realize at the moment exactly what I had done...I only realized the enormity of it when I walked into the press room and got a long standing ovation.It wasn't until I came out of my daze that I began to appreciate my accomplishment.
The key in shooting any good round is to give yourself some chances and, tomorrow, if my swinging is feeling any good, I'll have some chances. But, if it's not, then I'll have to give myself those 15- to 20-footers and hope I can make those.
Elmcrest CC, in Cedar Rapids, is where it all started when I was growing up. The tree-lined course has a very demanding layout that requires you to be accurate off the tee and avoid a number of well-placed water hazards on some of the holes.
The press still considers me one of the most laid-back athletes since Babe Ruth. That's supposed to be a criticism, but I consider it a compliment because I think being carefree on the course is one of the secrets to scoring well consistently