The Basic Rules of Golf

If your driver is hot, your putter will be ice cold; if you can hit your irons, you will top your woods; if you are keeping your right elbow tucked in, your head will come up.

The stages of golf are: Sudden Collapse, Radical Change, Complete Frustration, Slow Improvement, Brief Mastery, and Sudden Collapse.

Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of the next group of three.

One good shank deserves another.

The only sure way to get a par is to leave a four-foot birdie putt two inches short of the hole.

It takes 17 holes to really get warmed up.

No golfer ever played too fast.

One birdie is a hot streak.

Don't play with anyone who would question a 7.

No matter how badly you are playing, it's always possible to play worse.

Whatever you think you're doing wrong is the one thing you're doing right.

Any change works for three holes.

The odds of hitting a duffed shot increase by the square of the number of people watching.

Never play your son for money.

Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind during your swing.

The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about the golf swing.

Golfers who claim they never cheat also lie.

A golf match is a test of your skill against your opponent's luck.

Good sportsmanship is as essential to golf as good penmanship is to stock car racing.

It's surprisingly easy to hole a 50-foot putt when you lie 10.

The score your opponent reports on any hole should always be regarded as his opening offer.

The statute of limitations on forgotten strokes is two holes.

Bets lengthen putts and shorten drives.

Confidence evaporates in the presence of water.

It takes considerable pressure to make a penalty stroke adhere to a scorecard.

It's not a gimme if you're still away.

Always limp with the same leg for the whole round.

The rake is always in the other trap.

Nothing straightens out a nasty slice quicker than a sharp dogleg to the right.

The ball always lands where the pin was yesterday.

It never begins to rain on the 18th hole.

It always takes at least five holes to notice that a club is missing.

Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two triple bogeys to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe.

You can hit a 2-acre fairway 10 percent of the time, and a 2-inch branch 90 percent of the time.

The practice green is either half as fast or twice as fast as all the other greens.

No one with funny headcovers ever broke par.

Your straightest iron shot of the day will be exactly one club short.

No matter how far its shaft extends, a ball retriever is always a foot too short to reach the ball.

If you seem to be hitting your shots straight on the driving range, it's probably because you're not aiming at anything.

You really only need four clubs to hit every bad shot in golf.

Never wash your ball on the tee of a water hole.

A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.

The only thing you can learn from golf books is that you can't learn anything from golf books, but you have to read an awful lot of golf books to learn it.