Top 50 Bobby Jones Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots – but you have to play the ball where it lies.”

— Bobby Jones

Featured in: Life is Hard Quotes

2. “In golf, the customs and etiquette and decorum are as important as the rules of play.”

— Bobby Jones

3. “You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.”

— Bobby Jones

4. “The real way to enjoy playing golf is to take pleasure not in the score, but in the execution of strokes.”

— Bobby Jones

5. “Too much ambition is a bad thing to have in a bunker.”

— Bobby Jones

6. “The toughest opponent of all is Old Man Par. He’s a patient soul who never shoots a birdie and never incurs a bogey. And if you would travel the long road with him, you must be patient, too.”

— Bobby Jones

7. “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.”

— Bobby Jones

8. “Some emotions cannot be endured with a golf club in your hands.”

— Bobby Jones

9. “The main idea in golf as in life, I suppose is to learn to accept what cannot be altered and to keep on doing one’s own reasoned and resolute best whether the prospect be bleak or rosy.”

— Bobby Jones

10. “Golf is a game that creates emotions that sometimes cannot be sustained with the club still in one’s hand.”

— Bobby Jones

11. “Jack Nicklaus is playing an entirely different game, and one which I’m not even familiar with.”

— Bobby Jones

12. “You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.”

— Bobby Jones

13. “Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course.”

— Bobby Jones

14. “I never learned anything from a match that I won.”

— Bobby Jones

15. “If I had ever been set down in any one place and told I was to play there, and nowhere else, for the rest of my life, I should have chosen the Old Course at St. Andrews.”

— Bobby Jones

16. “The best exercise for golfers is golfing.”

— Bobby Jones

17. “No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you a playing a game. You are playing old man par.”

— Bobby Jones

18. “The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.”

— Bobby Jones

19. “I can play the game only one way. I must play every shot for all there is in it. I cannot play safe.”

— Bobby Jones

20. “Golf is the only game I know of that actually becomes harder the longer you play it.”

— Bobby Jones

21. “No putt is too short to be despised.”

— Bobby Jones

22. “Some people think they are concentrating when they’re merely worrying.”

— Bobby Jones

23. “Fight tautness whenever it occurs; strive for relaxed muscles throughout.”

— Bobby Jones

24. “Rhythm and timing are the two things which we all must have, yet no one knows how to teach either.”

— Bobby Jones

25. “Well, I’m glad we don’t have to play in the shade.”

— Bobby Jones

26. “Golf is said to be an humbling game, but it is surprising how many people are either not aware of their weaknesses of else reckless of consequences.”

— Bobby Jones

27. “The difference between a sand trap and water hazard is the difference between a car crash and an airplane crash. You have a chance of recovering from a car crash.”

— Bobby Jones

28. “The rewards of golf, and of life too I expect, are worth very little if you don’t play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules.”

— Bobby Jones

29. “I will tell you privately it’s not going to get better, it’s going to get worse all the time, but don’t fret. Remember, we play the ball where it lies, and now let’s not talk about this, ever again.”

— Bobby Jones

30. “In order to win, you must play your best golf when you need it most, and play your sloppy stuff when you can afford it. I shall not attempt to explain how you achieve this happy timing.”

— Bobby Jones

31. “The ‘enemy’ in golf is tension.”

— Bobby Jones

32. “Doesn’t it show us all that we are silly little boys or fatuous asses to think that we can play golf without making a lot of bad shots?”

— Bobby Jones

33. “Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly a thousand times, he should be able to duplicate the performance at will. But such is certainly not the case.”

— Bobby Jones

34. “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.”

— Bobby Jones

35. “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.”

— Bobby Jones

36. “Addressing a golf ball would seem to be a simple matter; that is, to the uninitiated who cannot appreciate that a golf ball can hold more terrors than a spacious auditorium packed with people.”

— Bobby Jones

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

— Bobby Jones

38. “The object of golf is to beat someone. Make sure that someone is not yourself.”

— Bobby Jones

39. “If ever I needed an eight foot putt, and everything I owned depended on it, I would want Arnold Palmer to putt for me.”

— Bobby Jones

40. “Many shots are spoiled at the last instant by efforts to add a few more yards.”

— Bobby Jones

41. “As I see it, the thing that hurt my putting most when it was bad, was thinking too much about how I was making the stroke and not enough about getting the ball in the hole.”

— Bobby Jones

42. “A leading difficulty with the average player is that he totally misunderstands what is meant by concentration. He may think he is concentrating hard when he is merely worrying.”

— Bobby Jones

43. “If I needed advice from my caddie, he’d be hitting the shots and I’d be carrying the bag.”

— Bobby Jones

44. “The moment the average golfer attempts to play from long grass or a bunker or from a difficult lie of any kind, he becomes a digger instead of a swinger.”

— Bobby Jones

45. “One reason golf is such an exasperating game is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten, and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.”

— Bobby Jones

46. “Bad putting is due more to the effect the green has upon the player than it has upon the action of the ball.”

— Bobby Jones

47. “Golf is like eating peanuts. You can play too much or play too little.”

— Bobby Jones

48. “I got an extra hour’s nap.”

— Bobby Jones

49. “Nobody ever wins the National Open. Somebody loses it.”

— Bobby Jones

50. “Golf is recognized as one of the more difficult games to play or teach. One reason for this is that each person necessarily plays by feel, and a feel is almost impossible to describe.”

— Bobby Jones