Top 50 Sam Snead Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You have more potential than you think.”

— Sam Snead

2. “Practice puts brains in your muscles.”

— Sam Snead

3. “Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.”

— Sam Snead

4. “Grip the club as if you were holding a baby bird.”

— Sam Snead

5. “The mark of a great player is in his ability to come back. The great champions have all come back from defeat.”

— Sam Snead

6. “Practice your swing until it becomes a habit of mind and muscle.”

— Sam Snead

7. “When I swing at a golf ball right, my mind is blank and my body is loose as a goose.”

— Sam Snead

8. “Forget your opponents; always play against par.”

— Sam Snead

9. “To be consistently effective, you must put a certain distance between yourself and what happens to you on the golf course. This is not indifference, it’s detachment.”

— Sam Snead

10. “There is an old saying: if a man comes home with sand in his cuffs and cockleburs in his pants, don’t ask him what he shot.”

— Sam Snead

11. “Make the basic shot-making decision early, clearly and firmly, and then ritualize all the necessary acts of preparation.”

— Sam Snead

12. “Those who go along get along.”

— Sam Snead

13. “Correct one fault at a time. Concentrate on the one fault you want to overcome.”

— Sam Snead

14. “In golf, as in life, you get out of it what you put into it.”

— Sam Snead

15. “I was a better player at 50 than I was at 30.”

— Sam Snead

16. “Of the mental hazards, being scared is the worst. When you get scared, you get tense.”

— Sam Snead

17. “If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they’d starve to death.”

— Sam Snead

18. “You’ve just one problem. You stand too close to the ball after you’ve hit it.”

— Sam Snead

19. “Keep close count of your nickels and dimes, stay away from whiskey, and never concede a putt.”

— Sam Snead

20. “The three things I fear most in golf are lightning, Ben Hogan and a downhill putt.”

— Sam Snead

21. “Don’t just play your way around the course. Think your way around way around the course.”

— Sam Snead

22. “What did I want with prestige? The British Open paid the winner $600 in American money. A man would have to be two hundred years old at that rate to retire from golf.”

— Sam Snead

23. “I looked like a monkey trying to wrestle a football.”

— Sam Snead

24. “Golf tip: Lay off for three weeks and then quit for good.”

— Sam Snead

25. “I’ve gotten rid of the yips four times but they hang in there. You know those two-foot downhill putts with a break? I’d rather see a rattlesnake.”

— Sam Snead

26. “I’d say that golf is about 75% mental. If your state of mind gets out of kilter, you’re worse off than a tomcat floating on a log.”

— Sam Snead

27. “Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot.”

— Sam Snead

28. “I hope I’ll never get too old to want to take part in this event, and I don’t think I will ever age that much.”

— Sam Snead

29. “But you don’t have to go up in the stands and play your foul balls. I do.”

— Sam Snead

30. “A bad putter is like a bad apple in a barrel. First, it turns your chipping game sour. Then it begins to eat into your irons and finally it just cleans the head off your driver.”

— Sam Snead

31. “You can’t go into a shop and buy a good game of golf.”

— Sam Snead

32. “Most people who play golf have one big trouble: they think too much. To get any real mileage out of this game you’ve got to sit on your imagination.”

— Sam Snead

33. “I give the ball some sweet talk. I tell it that this isn’t going to hurt a bit. I’m a friend and all I’m going to do is give it a nice little ride.”

— Sam Snead

34. “I shot a wild elephant in Africa thirty yards from me, and it didn’t hit the ground until it was right at my feet. I wasn’t a bit scared. But a four foot putt scares me to death.”

— Sam Snead

35. “Playing golf is like eating. It’s something which has to come naturally.”

— Sam Snead

36. “The only place that’s holier than St. Andrews is Westminster Abbey.”

— Sam Snead

37. “The fairways were so narrow you had to walk down them single file.”

— Sam Snead

38. “If I had cleared the trees and drove the green, it would’ve been a great shot.”

— Sam Snead

39. “Until you play it, St. Andrews looks like the sort of real estate you couldn’t give away.”

— Sam Snead

40. “To quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast.”

— Sam Snead

41. “These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow.”

— Sam Snead

42. “Golf got complicated when I had to wear shoes and begin thinking about what I was doing.”

— Sam Snead

43. “When I ask you what club to use, look the other way and don’t answer.”

— Sam Snead

44. “Golf is played with the arms.”

— Sam Snead

45. “Golf course architects make me sick. They can’t play themselves, so they rig the courses so nobody else can play either.”

— Sam Snead

46. “Over the years I’ve studied the habits of golfers. I know what to look for. Watch their eyes. Fear shows up when there is an enlargement of the pupils. Big pupils lead to big scores.”

— Sam Snead

47. “What abandoned course is that?”

— Sam Snead

48. “I’ve been on some fairways that are as good as the greens we putted on back then. We had crab grass. I remember one green where I putted through ants.”

— Sam Snead

49. “There are no short hitters on the tour anymore – just long and unbelievably long.”

— Sam Snead

50. “Just have a Coke or something and watch the boys go past.”

— Sam Snead