Golf Tournament Quotes

There is only one reason to do a charity golf tournament. To make money! But while golf tournaments can be exhausting, time-consuming and fraught with risk, they can be downright satisfying and profitable if done right. Ultimately a golf tournament may be the hardest work you'll ever love. - Tom King

The unsurprising idea that luck often contributes to success has surprising consequences when we apply it to the first two days of a high-level golf tournament. To keep things simple, assume that on both days the average score of the competitors was at par 72. We focus on a player who did very well on the first day, closing with a score of 66. What can we

I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. p60

From my experience, CIA cocaine ops were what Charlie Pride4’s tournaments were really all about. Part of the cash generated was laundered through his bank in Dallas, Texas. Pride was tied into the same Savings and Loan scandals that Neil Bush5 had been caught in. Even Bush Jr.’s baseball “bud” Nolan Ryan6 owned a bank associated with CIA black ops. Additionally, the drug running I was involved with was channeled through Albuquerque’s LA Dodger baseball training camp and profits laundered through local Catholic charities. Charlie Pride’s annual Pro-Am Golf Tournaments covered it all.

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

In 1998, he helped organize the first “advanced chess” tournament, in which each human player, including Kasparov himself, paired with a computer. Years of pattern study were obviated. The machine partner could handle tactics so the human could focus on strategy. It was like Tiger Woods facing off in a golf video game against the best gamers. His years of repetition would be neutralized, and the contest would shift to one of strategy rather than tactical execution. In chess, it changed the pecking order instantly. “Human creativity was even more paramount under these conditions, not less,” according to Kasparov. Kasparov settled for a 3–3 draw with a player he had trounced four games to zero just a month earlier in a traditional match. “My advantage in calculating tactics had been nullified by the machine.” The primary benefit of years of experience with specialized training was outsourced, and in a contest where humans focused on strategy, he suddenly had peers. A few years later, the first “freestyle chess” tournament was held. Teams could be made up of multiple humans and computers. The lifetime-of-specialized-practice advantage that had been diluted in advanced chess was obliterated in freestyle. A duo of amateur players with three normal computers not only destroyed Hydra, the best chess supercomputer, they also crushed teams of grandmasters using computers. Kasparov concluded that the humans on the winning team were the best at “coaching” multiple computers on what to examine, and then synthesizing that information for an overall strategy. Human/Computer combo teams—known as “centaurs”—were playing the highest level of chess ever seen. If Deep Blue’s victory over Kasparov signaled the transfer of chess power from humans to computers, the victory of centaurs over Hydra symbolized something more interesting still: humans empowered to do what they do best without the prerequisite of years of specialized pattern recognition.

Many aspects of the modern financial system are designed to give an impression of overwhelming urgency: the endless ‘news’ feeds, the constantly changing screens of traders, the office lights blazing late into the night, the young analysts who find themselves required to work thirty hours at a stretch. But very little that happens in the finance sector has genuine need for this constant appearance of excitement and activity. Only its most boring part—the payments system—is an essential utility on whose continuous functioning the modern economy depends. No terrible consequence would follow if the stock market closed for a week (as it did in the wake of 9/11)—or longer, or if a merger were delayed or large investment project postponed for a few weeks, or if an initial public offering happened next month rather than this. The millisecond improvement in data transmission between New York and Chicago has no significance whatever outside the absurd world of computers trading with each other. The tight coupling is simply unnecessary: the perpetual flow of ‘information’ part of a game that traders play which has no wider relevance, the excessive hours worked by many employees a tournament in which individuals compete to display their alpha qualities in return for large prizes. The traditional bank manager’s culture of long lunches and afternoons on the golf course may have yielded more useful information about business than the Bloomberg terminal. Lehman

When players study all those patterns, they are mastering tactics. Bigger-picture planning in chess—how to manage the little battles to win the war—is called strategy. As Susan Polgar has written, “you can get a lot further by being very good in tactics”—that is, knowing a lot of patterns—“and have only a basic understanding of strategy.” Thanks to their calculation power, computers are tactically flawless compared to humans. Grandmasters predict the near future, but computers do it better. What if, Kasparov wondered, computer tactical prowess were combined with human big-picture, strategic thinking? In 1998, he helped organize the first “advanced chess” tournament, in which each human player, including Kasparov himself, paired with a computer. Years of pattern study were obviated. The machine partner could handle tactics so the human could focus on strategy. It was like Tiger Woods facing off in a golf video game against the best gamers. His years of repetition would be neutralized, and the contest would shift to one of strategy rather than tactical execution. In chess, it changed the pecking order instantly. “Human creativity was even more paramount under these conditions, not less,” according to Kasparov. Kasparov settled for a 3–3 draw with a player he had trounced four games to zero just a month earlier in a traditional match. “My advantage in calculating tactics had been nullified by the machine.” The primary benefit of years of experience with specialized training was outsourced, and in a contest where humans focused on strategy, he suddenly had peers. A few years later, the first “freestyle chess” tournament was held. Teams could be made up of multiple humans and computers. The lifetime-of-specialized-practice advantage that had been diluted in advanced chess was obliterated in freestyle. A duo of amateur players with three normal computers not only destroyed Hydra, the best chess supercomputer, they also crushed teams of grandmasters using computers. Kasparov concluded that the humans on the winning team were the best at “coaching” multiple computers on what to examine, and then synthesizing that information for an overall strategy. Human/Computer combo teams—known as “centaurs”—were playing the highest level of chess ever seen. If Deep Blue’s victory over Kasparov signaled the transfer of chess power from humans to computers, the victory of centaurs over Hydra symbolized something more interesting still: humans empowered to do what they do best without the prerequisite of years of specialized pattern recognition.

My dad always said, ’Beware of the guy who comes out on the first tee and he’s got a terrible grip and a terrible golf swing. If he’s in that tournament with you, there’s a good chance he knows how to play with that type of golf swing,’ and Bubba’s that type of person,” he said.

The ferociously radical-to-the-death Jesus of the Gospels was transformed here into a bland cheerleader for socially acceptable niceness. That made no sense to me. No one ever got himself crucified for organizing a charity golf tournament.

I didn’t think of myself as competitive. I thought in terms of having fun playing games and trying to win, but with me it was more hoping to win. I didn’t have that killer instinct they say is required to get to the top. I couldn’t see myself behaving as my dad did with his vociferous love for golf and football. The house resounded with his yells and groans during PGA and NFL tournaments. It seemed to me that yelling in itself required a killer instinct.

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.

I’ve seen you around Fairfield High. I go there,” says a short white guy, about my age. The dork is wearing a coral-colored golf shirt and white pants, as if he came from a golf tournament with a bunch of senior citizens. White Guy tries to look cool, but with that coral shirt…man, looking cool is the least of his problems.

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

While most people are sensitive to criticism, the great ones know how to use it, and when to lose it. [...] Annika was so shy and highly sensitive when she began golfing that she would purposefully hit bad golf shots at the end of tournaments to lose— to avoid giving a victory speech. But Annika had found her vocation, her true love was golf, and today she is currently the most successful lady in LPGA history. [...] Annika “turned fear into motivation…using the fear she had as a child for her success.” [...] Annika used her shadow (fear) to enable herself to grow—discovering the gold within her, to shine.

While most people are sensitive to criticism, the great ones know how to use it, and when to lose it. [...] Annika was so shy and highly sensitive when she began golfing that she would purposefully hit bad golf shots at the end of tournaments to lose— to avoid giving a victory speech. But Annika had found her vocation, her true love was golf, and today she is currently the most successful lady in LPGA history. [...] Annika “turned fear into motivation…using the fear she had as a child for her success.” [...] Annika used her shadow (fear) to enable herself to grow—discovering the gold within her, to shine.

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.

Golf is boring, he thinks. It discourages him. The boy would rather eat cabbage ice cream. “We’ll throw in your brother’s clubs,” I told him, “but you don’t have to golf. You can drive the cart and laugh at my shots.” He seemed okay with that. After all, a trip with dad spells restaurants and hotels and waterslides to a boy his age. He can tolerate a game of golf for such rewards. Upon arriving, we were introduced to the other members of our foursome, Jim and Neil, two of the kindest guys I’ve ever met. When they discovered Jeffrey’s intentions, they were disappointed. “Golf with us,” pleaded Jim, bowing on one knee and extending a hand, “we need you.” “I’ll buy you a pop and hamburger for lunch,” promised Neil. Perhaps it was the hamburger that beckoned louder than the golf course, but soon Jeffrey found himself on the first tee, addressing the ball and surprising us all with a straight shot about 100 yards down the fairway. “Tiger!” said Jim. “You swing just like Tiger Woods!” Jeffrey was grinning. The tournament was a best ball format. From the first tee, my ball sailed 200 yards but found a bunker. Jim and Neil were less fortunate. So guess whose ball we used? You’re right. It was “Tiger’s.

Good,” Coach said. “Natalie, will you take you to the side and teach you the basics while I work with the others. We have a golf tournament coming up.

To be sure, temperament and genetics explain some of Nicklaus’s tremendous achievement, but as we know both from research and from his own story, it was also through his relationship to his father, Charlie Nicklaus, that he developed a sense of ownership and accountability. When Jack said, “Dad, it’s my game,” that comment came out of their Corner Four relationship, in which his father was his fuel and his support. But his father also respected Jack’s sense of ownership and self-control. Charlie Nicklaus supported him from the days of playing junior golf up until the pros. He encouraged him, provided a coach for him, and gave him input, discipline, and much more. But he also gave him something huge that all Corner Four relationships give us: autonomy and responsibility. The balance between support and autonomy were there all along. As a psychologist, I can tell you that this balance helped develop the self-control that hit that 1-iron and helped him own the results he got in every other tournament he played.

Shortly after their arrival, her father and brother played in a father-son golf tournament, which they won. They came off the course with wide grins. Fine cotton shirts, polished shoes. Sloane looked at these men and suddenly couldn’t get it out of her mind that when she weighed forty pounds less than she did now, when she was a skeleton in a skirt, they hadn’t said anything. That when she’d run the sink disposal at a house they rented in the Carolinas, her brother’s wife had screamed at her as if at a dog and nobody said a word. She could remember only physical impressions of their presence in her childhood. Pearl shirt buttons, gifted ties, the period of time during which she and her brother wrote their names in bubble letters.

That’s frustratingly common. “I’ve evaluated thousands of quartz samples from all over the world,” said John Schlanz, chief minerals processing engineer at the Minerals Research Laboratory in Asheville, about an hour from Spruce Pine. “Near all of them have contaminate locked in the quartz grains that you can’t get out.” Some Spruce Pine quartz is flawed in this way. Those grains, the washouts from the Delta Force of the quartz selection process, are used for high-end beach sand and golf course bunkers—most famously the salt-white traps of Augusta National Golf Club,16 site of the iconic Masters Tournament. A golf course in the oil-drunk United Arab Emirates imported 4,000 tons of this sand in 2008 to make sure its sand traps were world-class, too.

Our modern perception of "amateur" suggests someone who does something poorly or with a lack of professionalism, but the Latin root of the word "amateur" is amor, someone who pursues a pastime out of love. Bobby embraced his amateurism as more than a label; it defined him as thoroughly as "professional" described Hagen. Fate had not tapped on Jones only to send him out on the road nine months a year with a bunch of scruffy nomads chasing penny-ante purses in half-assed tournaments. He wanted a life centered in Atlanta as part of a community, a solid wage earner supporting his wife and children and family.