Golf is an ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adopted to the purpose.

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose

Golf is a mental disorder.

Golf is a game in which attitude of mind counts for incomparably more than mightiness of muscle.

Golf is more exacting than racing, cards, speculation, or matrimony.

Somewhere around 1970 a friend introduced me to the grand old Scottish game of golf. Understandably, those who have not attempted to master this game refer to it with derision as “pasture pool.” But, anyone who has attempted to attain proficiency at golf soon understands why our Scottish ancestors invented it centuries ago and have been infatuated ever since. Using fourteen different implements, traversing grass, trees, sand and water, through wind and weather, uphill and down, the sport requires a unique blend of physical and mental skills. At any rate, golf provided me with as much enjoyment as anything else in this life. Although taking up the game too late in life to become a master of the sport, insomuch as that is possible, there are three highlights that provide moments of pleasure during these endless hours of confinement and reflection. One was shooting a five under par, sixty seven, in a Pro-Am. Another was a hole-in-one on a par four. And lastly was making a birdie on a difficult eighteenth hole in a substantial money game called a Calcutta. I suppose after all these years, plus age and health problems, that I would now be a poor golfer, but occasionally I allow myself to dream of again playing the game.

Golf is more exacting than a a steeple-chase or the half-mile.

"Golf is a game where you score a 6, yell "Fore" and write down a 5."

Last Christmas I received a set of golf clubs that, my father likes to remind me, cost a goddamned fortune. He says that he would give his right arm for such a beautiful set of clubs.

The notion of art as the dearly purchased outcome of an immense spiritual risk, one whose cost goes up with the entry and participation of each new player in the game

Golf is such a wonderful game, I love it to death.

As far as the game of marbles is concerned, there is therefore no contradiction between the egocentric practice of games and the mystical respect entertained for rules. This respect is the mark of a mentality fashioned, not by free cooperation between equals, but by adult constraint.

Winning doesn't come cheaply … you have to pay a big price.

I have come to the conclusion that the golfing temperament is essentially aristocratic— a feudal inheritance — the property exclusively of those who can see nothing absurd or even degrading in the spectacle of powerful frivolous men being followed by boys of burden.