Golf Putt Quotes

If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.

So smile when you read a headline that says “Investors lose as market falls.” Edit it in your mind to “Disinvestors lose as market falls—but investors gain.” Though writers often forget this truism, there is a buyer for every seller and what hurts one necessarily helps the other. (As they say in golf matches: “Every putt makes someone happy.”)

She yawned so loudly that I wanted to use her mouth as a putt putt golf hole.

The cup is only one inch wide for a putt that is struck too hard. The cup is four inches wide for a ball that dies at the hole.

Excuse me, I must go and putt

My doctor, who happens to be my old college roommate, tells me the Parkinson’s shouldn’t affect my golf game at all, which really surprised me. His explanation was very interesting. He said I’ve never been able to putt and since it was impossible for my putting to get any worse, there was actually a chance it might improve.

My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one—a series of effortless sweet shots engraved on the air, with some crisply tapped putts for punctuation

I like mini-golf. For me, it’s like long-billiards, where the green has contours, and the table is the floor. This putt-putt course is dilapidated, but that just makes it more challenging.

No matter how close you are to the basket, you should always drop your bag, or hand full of discs, and give full attention. Many 2-3 foot putts are missed because a player is in a hurry and fails to drop his bag. Many shots are missed in life because we fail to drop our baggage and give full concentration to our true goals.

If you are a duffer at golf, say, and make the same mistakes every time you try a certain swing or putt, 10,000 hours of practicing that error will not improve your game. You’ll still be a duffer, albeit an older one. No less an expert than Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research on expertise spawned the 10,000-hour rule of thumb, told me, “You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.”2

You ever choked? You know what I mean, fumbled at the goal line, stuck your foot in your mouth when you were trying to ask that girl on a date, had a brain freeze on the final exam you were totally prepared for, lipped out a three-foot putt to win the golf tournament, or been paralyzed by the feeling of “Oh my god life can’t get any better, do I really deserve this?” I have. What happens when we get that feeling? We clench up, get short of breath, self-conscious. We have an out-of-body experience where we observe ourselves in the third person, no longer present, now not doing well what we are there to do. We become voyeurs of our moment because we let it become bigger than us, and in doing so, we just became less involved in it and more impressed with it. Why does this happen? It happens because when we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we then create a fictitious ceiling, a restriction, over the expectations we have of our own performance in that moment. We get tense, we focus on the outcome instead of the activity, and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result, or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t, and it isn’t, and it’s not our right to believe it does or is. Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great

Kelly’s Island was fabulous. It was still early in the season and there were very few people about. We spent the day riding up and down quiet little lanes and exploring every inch of the island. We visited several beaches, I swam in a disused quarry, we played crazy golf – this time, a more traditional (crap) British style, complete with a windmill that you had to putt through – and we ate many ice-creams. We returned our bikes late afternoon, much to the delight of the tyrannical lady in charge of rentals, and boarded the ferry back to the mainland, before driving to a rest area further along Lake Erie.

only sport known to have inspired an indignant left-wing poem. It was written by one Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn in 1915. The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play. Just show me an indignant left-wing poem about softball or bungee jumping. And our local mill has been converted to a shopping mall, so the kids are still there. Golf is also the only sport God is known to play. God and Saint Peter are out on Sunday morning. On the first hole God drives into a water hazard. The waters part and God chips onto the green. On the second hole God takes a tremendous whack and the ball lands ten feet from the pin. There’s an earthquake, one side of the green rises up, and the ball rolls into the cup. On the third hole God lands in a sand trap. He creates life. Single-cell organisms develop into fish and then amphibians. Amphibians crawl out of the ocean and evolve into reptiles, birds, and furry little mammals. One of those furry little mammals runs into the sand trap, grabs God’s ball in its mouth, scurries over, and drops it in the hole. Saint Peter looks at God and says, “You wanna play golf or you wanna fuck around?” And golf courses are beautiful. Many people think mature men have no appreciation for beauty except in immature women. This isn’t true, and, anyway, we’d rather be playing golf. A golf course is a perfect example of Republican male aesthetics—no fussy little flowers, no stupid ornamental shrubs, no exorbitant demands for alimony, just acre upon acre of lush green grass that somebody else has to mow. Truth, beauty, and even poetry are to be found in golf. Every man, when he steps up to the tee, feels, as Keats has it … Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. That is, the men were silent. Cortez was saying, “I can get on in two, easy. A three-wood drive, a five-iron from the fairway, then a two-putt max. But if I hook it, shit, I’m in the drink.” EAT THE RICH

The men were great at turning me on, but their follow through reminded me of my mini golf games as a human. The first putt always went great, but no matter how close to the edge I got, or how many strokes I used, I could never get the ball in the hole.

If you make bogey, you’re still in it. If you make double bogey, it’s a very difficult climb,’ Spieth conceded. ‘And there was absolutely no reason to hit that putt off the green. I can leave it short, I can leave it eight feet short and have a dead straight eight-footer up the hill where I’ll make that, the majority of the time.

The Eisenhower Era [10w] Eisenhower's presidential legacy can best be measured in golf putts.

Perhaps more than any other sport, golf focuses pressure on the player. There are no time constraints, as there are in other sports. Your competitors are not allowed to hinder you, as they are in other sports. The pressure originates in yourself; it builds from doubts. A two-foot putt on the practice green doesn’t spark many doubts. A two-foot putt to win a bet or a tournament or a Masters is another thing entirely.

When Justin had that birdie putt, then I had that slider for par, that’s when I really felt like it could get out of my hands if I’m not careful,’ said Spieth. ‘At that point, I was with my putter. I didn’t care what it looked like, didn’t care about my posture, didn’t care about the mechanics. It was all feel-based. I was seeing the line. I was seeing the arc of the putt. It had been the same thing on 15, and I was just going with it.

Putt-A-Round Anytime, Anywhere.

In rich detail, Ken told us that on the second hole of the opening round, Hogan got stuck while standing over a putt. Hogan had the yips. “I can’t take it back, Ken,” Hogan said. “Nobody gives a shit, Ben,” Ken said back. That bit of wise-guy humor was evidently all Hogan needed to hear: At age fifty-three and playing barely any tournament golf, he finished twelfth. Venturi finished three shots behind. Palmer was leading by seven with nine holes left and lost to Billy Casper in a playoff. Ken

But, Father Murray didn’t want to say Mass, he wanted to play a round of golf. Father Murray told his associate pastor that he wasn’t feeling well, and asked him if he would say Mass for him at nine o’clock. The younger priest agreed, and suggested that Father Murray go back to bed. Father Murray loaded his clubs into the trunk, drove to a distant golf course, where he hoped not to be seen, and started his golf game. Up in Heaven, Saint Peter was appalled. He said, ‘Lord, are you going to let him get away with this?’ and the Lord replied, ‘Patience, Peter.’ Meanwhile, Father Murray was playing the game of his life. He was driving the ball three hundred and fifty yards, and making forty foot putts. Again, Saint Peter asked the Lord, ‘Lord, surely you don’t intend to reward Father Murray’s behavior?’ Again, the Lord told Peter to be patient. Finally, Father Murray reached the last hole. He lined up the tee shot, and hit a sizzling shot which headed right for the cup. It dropped, rolled, and fell in for a hole-in-one. Father Murray was overjoyed. Saint Peter was baffled. ‘Lord, why would you allow Father Murray to skip Mass, tell a lie, and then play the best golf game of his life?’ The Lord answered, ‘Who’s he gonna tell?

The dying mall has attracted some odd tenants, such as a satellite branch of the public library and an office of the State Attorney General's Child Predator Unit. As malls die across the country, we'll see many kinds of creative repurposing. Already, there are churches and casinos inside half-dead malls, so why not massage parlors, detox centers, transient hotels, haunted houses, prisons, petting zoos or putt-putt golf courses (covering the entire mall)? Leaving Santee, Chuck and I wandered into the food court, where only three of twelve restaurant slots were still occupied. On the back wall of this forlorn and silent space was a mural put up by Boscov, the mall's main tenant. Titled "B part of your community", it reads: KINDNESS COUNTS / PLANT A TREE / MAKE A DONATION / HELP A NEIGHBOR / VISIT THE ELDERLY / HOPE / ADOPT A PET / DRIVE A HYBRID / PICK UP THE TRASH / VOLUNTEER / CONSERVE ENERGY / RECYCLE / JOIN SOMETHING / PAINT A MURAL / HUG SOMEONE / SMILE / DRINK FILTERED WATER / GIVE YOUR TIME / USE SOLAR ENERGY / FEED THE HUNGRY / ORGANIZE A FUNDRAISER / CREATE AWARENESS / FIX A PLAYGROUND/ START A CLUB / BABYSIT These empty recommendations are about as effective as "Just Say No", I'm afraid. As the CIA pushed drugs, the first lady chirped, "Just say no!". And since everything in the culture, car, iPad, iPhone, television, internet, Facebook, Twitter and shopping mall, etc., is designed to remove you from your immediate surroundings, it will take more than cutesy suggestions on walls to rebuild communities. Also, the worse the neighborhoods or contexts, the more hopeful and positive the slogans. Starved of solutions, we shall eat slogans.

I can’t believe I just willingly made plans that involve golf. Naomi was right. I have it bad.

That’s the thing about golf: if you mess up once, it’s easy to get in your head and ruin a whole day of it.

You ever choked? You know what I mean, fumbled at the goal line, stuck your foot in your mouth when you were trying to ask that girl on a date, had a brain freeze on the final exam you were totally prepared for, lipped out a three-foot putt to win the golf tournament, or been paralyzed by the feeling of “Oh my god life can’t get any better, do I really deserve this?” I have. What happens when we get that feeling? We clench up, get short of breath, self-conscious. We have an out-of-body experience where we observe ourselves in the third person, no longer present, now not doing well what we are there to do. We become voyeurs of our moment because we let it become bigger than us, and in doing so, we just became less involved in it and more impressed with it. Why does this happen? It happens because when we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we then create a fictitious ceiling, a restriction, over the expectations we have of our own performance in that moment. We get tense, we focus on the outcome instead of the activity, and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result, or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t, and it isn’t, and it’s not our right to believe it does or is. Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great idea, the love of our life, euphoric bliss, who are we to think we don’t deserve these fortunes when they are in our grasp? Who are we to think we haven’t earned them? If we stay in process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we aren’t thinking of the finish line, we’re not looking at the clock, we’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing. We are performing in real time, where the approach is the destination, and there is no goal line because we are never finished. When Bo Jackson scored, he ran over the goal line, through the end zone, and up the tunnel . The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it. When we truly latch on to the fact that we are going to die at some point in time, we have more presence in this one. Reach beyond your grasp, have immortal finish lines, and turn your red light green, because a roof is a man-made thing.

the golfer who strays right has to approach over a deep swale that protects the most radical green on the golf course, a three-tiered green where putts can break 180 degrees.

simple, rule-of-thumb formula for determining length of the backstroke is one inch of backswing for each one foot of putt distance. For

Mark Broadie compiled the following statistics, which shows the one-putt percentages from Tour Pros, scratch golfers, and a typical 90-shooter. Take a moment to allow these numbers to sink in: The distances that usually surprise most golfers are from 5-8 feet.

-Play to your basic shot shape and don’t try to “fix” your swing during a round -Off the tee, play to the open side of the fairway and away from hazards -Consider hitting a 3-wood or hybrid or even an iron off the tee if hazards lurk in your driver landing area -Play to the fat part of the green and away from hazards -Play your approach shots away from a tucked pin in order to avoid “short-siding” yourself -Try to keep the ball below the hole in order to leave easier chips and putts -If you get into trouble, your first priority is to get out of trouble, even if it means pitching back into the fairway or bailing out to the middle of the green -Always think ahead while on the tee of the ideal angle you would like to approach your next shot from, and plan your shot accordingly while considering the hazards that lurk nearby The above are just a few of the general strategy rules you can follow on any course in order to maximize your likelihood of shooting a good score. Conservative

When the putt dropped into the cup, there was no polite golf clap. The crowd erupted like Vesuvius in the last days.

You can't wait until a few putts fall and a couple of birdies go on the scorecard before you start trusting. You have to start replicating the state of mind you have on a hot streak as soon as you step onto the first tee.

Ah well, Mulholland decided. Better out than in. ‘How did the golf proceed at the weekend, sir?’ The floodgates of grievance burst asunder and spilled out a veritable deluge. ‘I had a five-foot putt on the last green to win the match for myself and partner. Just as I was about to strike the ball, just at that moment, mind you, just then, not at any other moment, Sandy Grant, my own chief constable and a fellow mason to boot, jingled the coin in his pocket. A deliberate jingle!’ Mulholland bowed his head in sorrow and spoke. ‘My Aunt Katie always says, “There’s no limit to the darkness in man. To win the prize, he’d murder the world.

Between 2002 and 2005, Tiger faced 1,540 putts of three feet and in on the PGA Tour. He missed only three of them! That is not a misprint, he missed only three of them!

BALANCE EXERCISES • Hit five shots with your feet together. • Hit five shots, standing on your right foot. • Hit five shots, standing on your left foot. • Hit five shots with your eyes closed. • Hit five shots using only your left arm and standing on your right foot. • Hit five shots using only your right arm and standing on your left foot. • Hit five shots barefooted. • Hit five shots, standing on your left toes. • Hit five shots, standing on your right toes. Do each exercise with a variety of clubs and see how many swings you can finish in balance. If it is difficult, start with small swings and a slower tempo. Pick the exercises that match your skill level, and as you get better, move on to the others. • Hit a chip shot standing on your right foot and using your left arm. Alternate by standing on your left foot and swinging with your right arm. Do this five times. • Hit putts alternating between standing on the right foot only, left foot only, on the toes of the right foot, on the toes of the left foot, and eyes closed and feeling a low center of gravity. • Hit ten consecutive bunker shots in which you finish with your weight on your front foot. Vary each shot to different targets. • Hit five shots left-handed if you are a right-handed player, and right-handed if you are a left-handed player. Do it with a 7-iron turned around. Do the same on the chipping green. • Juggle with three golf balls for four minutes. Functional Balance: You are able to hit ten consecutive shots with your feet together, five on only the left foot, and five on only the right foot, all finishing in balance. Masterful Balance: You can hit ten consecutive shots with your feet together, ten on your right foot only, ten on your left foot only, five with your eyes closed, five standing on the toes of your right foot, and five standing on the toes of your left foot, all finishing in balance.