Top 40 Arnold Palmer Quotes

I find myself getting associated with a lot of younger people in the game. I still enjoy playing with them, and I think they still enjoy playing with me. As long as I can stay competitive and have fun doing what I’m doing, I guess I’ll keep doing it.

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting it is.

I have a tip that will take five strokes off anyone’s golf game. It’s called an eraser.

Golf challenges you mentally at any age, and when you become my age, it’s a challenge physically to try to make your game work as well as it ever did. That’s close to impossible, but that doesn’t keep you from trying to hit the ball where you used to hit it and make the putts you used to make all the time.

I try to deign golf courses that are individual in character and individual in their own standing.

I probably have a club in my hands 360 days a year, one way or another, playing with friends or just fiddling around or hitting balls.

Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character.

What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.

Great touch is often written off simply as ‘talent,’ which is crucial, because a good swing can take a golfer only so far. I’ve seen thousands of fantastic swings in my day, but that doesn’t guarantee anything.

I am a sentimental guy, and occasionally, that lump in my throat when I speak has stopped my tongue from working.

Feel is the most perplexing part of golf, and probably the most important.

I quit flying myself last year and that was difficult for me because I enjoy it as much as playing golf. It was an adjustment sitting in the back of the plane, rather than at the controls, but I’ve grown accustomed to it and enjoy reading a book, doing some work or challenging my wife to a game of dominos.

Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.

Ever since I bought and started flying an airplane, it’s been almost exclusively for business. I love to fly. It’s a great joy to me. But rarely do I use it for any kind of pleasure, other than it is a pleasure to fly.

The secret of concentration is the secret of self-discovery. You reach inside yourself to discover your personal resources, and what it takes to match them to the challenge.

I fly my own airplane, and I have since 1960. I rarely fly anywhere other than my own airplane.

I can’t be casual about losing. I always think I have a chance to win until winning is absolutely impossible.

I never rooted against an opponent, but I never rooted for him either.

To me, wearing glasses is no pleasure, but once I conceded that I simply couldn’t properly judge distance without them, I began to experiment. I tried glasses and found them uncomfortable. I switched to contact lenses, and they also bothered me.

Look at the better players of my era – Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd. They had pros they worked with from time to time, but out on Tour, thousands of miles from home, each of them learned to be his own best coach. I think Tiger can do the same.

Every day I play golf, that’s my goal. To break 70 the other way. To shoot 70 or better.

My problem happens to be near-sightedness – inability to see distance. And this is pretty tough on a golfer.

I think a firm grip helps you control the club and prevents it from turning in your hands. Another thing about feel is, if you make a change in your grip, it takes time for your brain to adapt.

Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.

Had I not become a professional golfer, I think I would have pursued some type of career in aviation.

Concentration, Confidence, Competitive urge, Capacity for enjoyment.

I was mixing iced tea and lemonade in my kitchen since as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until some time in the early 1960s that it became associated with me publicly.

It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily.

Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you.

I can remember back to my early tour days when some fellows didn’t think I’d last too long. Nothing physical – they said it was my swing. Some said it was too much of a ‘muscle swing’ to stand the test of time. One fellow predicted I wouldn’t get past 30 out there.

It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He’s aware of where he is and what he’s doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.

I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.

The winners at the Olympics step up, bursting with pride, because everything that they have worked for and all their dedication is rewarded in a climax that I, and most golfers, will never experience.

When you lose the ability to step up and hit the ball as hard and as far as you want, that also affects your ability to will the ball to go where you want it to go, if you know what I mean.

My search for ways to improve my touch has never ended. We players tried a lot of different things and compared notes. Little fads would set in.

What do I mean by concentration? I mean focusing totally on the business at hand and commanding your body to do exactly what you want it to do.

Golf would be my ticket somewhere, I told myself. I just couldn’t say where it would lead me.

Critics who have said a safer shot here or there would undoubtedly have won me a few more tournaments are probably correct. Going for the green in two was who I was as a boy – and it’s who I remain as a man.

You don’t go to Palm Springs in the summer unless you’re building a golf course.

Why hit a conservative shot? When you miss it, you are in just as much trouble as when you miss a bold one.