147 Funny Golf Quotes to Keep you Smiling on the Course

We've been playing golf for hundreds of years and its a game that can test your sense of humour at times. The challenge of the game can take a lot of mental strength to keep going when things just aren't going your way. But when this happens the best thing you can do is to remember it is only a game and to keep smiling.

Many of the world's most famous golfers have been quoted with the most hilarious one liners over the years to sum up the game. Then of course there are the famous comedians and actors of the world such as Mark Twain and Ewan Mcgregor who have found the funny side of golf.

We've put together a mega list of funny golf quotes that can serve as a reminder to keep smiling when you are next having a hard time out on the course. These funny quotes about golf are listed in order of who is attributed to the quote. 

Funny Golf Quotes

Hank Aaron

Franklin Pierce Adams

Don Adams

Joey Lauren Adams

Muhammad Ali

Peter Andrews

George Archer

Tommy Armour

Ernie Banks

Dave Barry

10. Talking about golf is always boring. Playing golf can be interesting, but not the part where you try to hit the little ball; only the part where you drive the cart.

11. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing

Henry Beard

12. When your shot has to carry over a water hazard, you can either hit one more club or two more balls.

13. Play it as it lies” is one of the fundamental dictates of golf. The other is “Wear it if it clashes.

Saul Bellow

14. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.

Jack Benny

15. Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air.

Patty Berg

16. The more you play it the less you know about it.

Jim Bishop

17. Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun.

Percey Boomer

18. If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf.

Thomas Boswell

19. A major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists.

Gay Brewer

20. Golf is a game you can never get too good at. You can improve, but you can never get to where you master the game.

Eli Broad

21. I never play golf because it takes too long, and the business connections it produces can be made just as easily over an early breakfast.

George W. Bush

22. I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.

Tommy Bolt

23. Never break your putter and your driver in the same round or you’re dead.

Thomas Boswell

24. I may be the only golfer never to have broken a single putter if you don’t count the one I twisted into a loop and threw into a bush.

David Brenner

25. I don’t like to watch golf on television because I can’t stand people who whisper.

Patrick Campbell

26. Golf is the only game in which a precise knowledge of the rules can earn one a reputation for bad sportsmanship.

Don Carter

27. One of the advantages bowling has over golf is that you seldom lose a bowling ball.

Raymond Chandler

28. You boys are as cute as a couple of lost golf balls... how in the world do you do it?

G. K. Chesterton

29. Golf, like measles, should be caught young

30. I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

Winston Churchill

31. Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.

Alistair Cooke

32. They have been playing golf for 800 years and nobody has satisfactorily said why.

33. Humiliations are the essence of the game. They derive from the fact that the human anatomy is exquisitely designed to do practically anything but play golf.

Alice Cooper

34. I am past writing angst songs for kids. My angst is when I can't get my Porsche roof up and when I can't get my golf handicap down.

Bill Cosby

35. Ours is a youth culture, and like a golf tournament, we honor only low scores.

36. I did not want to turn to playing golf because golf is about as much exercise as shuffling cards.

Bruce Crampton

37. Golf is a compromise between what your ego wants you to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

Ben Crenshaw

38. I’m about five inches from being an outstanding golfer. That’s the distance my left ear is from my right.

39. Golf is the hardest game in the world. There is no way you can ever get it. Just when you think you do, the game jumps up and puts you in your place.

Rodney Dangerfield

40. My golf game is getting real good. Last week, I got through the windmill.

Beth Daniel

41. I always said you have to be really smart or really dumb to play this game well. I just don’t know where I fit in.

Jimmy Demaret

42. Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at.

George Deukmejian

43. The difference in golf and government is that in golf you can’t improve your lie.

Phyllis Diller

44. The reason a pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing

Peter Dobereiner

45. Half of golf is fun; the other half is putting.

Irene Dunne

46. Never on any golf course have I been approached by a policeman who said, Lady, you can't play with an ordinary golf ball. You're movie star. You'll have to use a coconut for a ball.

Pete Dye

47. Life is not fair, so why should I make a course that is fair.

David Feherty

48. Watching Phil Mickelson play golf is like watching a drunk chasing a balloon near the edge of a cliff.

Barry Fitzgerald

49. A golf course is nothing but a pool room moved outdoors.

Ian Fleming

50. The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same difference between a beautiful and a plain woman - a matter of millimetres.

Raymond Floyd

51. They call it golf because all the other four letter words were taken

Gerald Ford

52. I know I am getting better at golf because I am hitting fewer spectators.

Kinky Friedman

53. Golf is the only opportunity that middle-aged Wasps have to dress up like a pimp.

Paul Gallico

54. If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out.

Jean Giraudoux

55. A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe; a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.

Billy Graham

56. The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course.

Buddy Hackett

57. Golf is more fun than walking naked in a strange place, but not much.

Paul Harvey

58. Golf is a game in which you yell fore, shoot six, and write down five.

Ernest Hemingway

59. The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

Ben Hogan

60. As you walk down the fairway of life, you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.

61. The most important shot in golf is the next one.

62. The only thing a golfer needs is more daylight

63. I play golf with friends sometimes, but there are never friendly games.

64. Relax? How can anybody relax and play golf? You have to grip the club, don't you?

Lou Holtz

65. If he's got golf clubs in his truck or a camper in his driveway, I don't hire him.

Bob Hope

66. If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play at it, it’s recreation. If you work at it, it’s golf.

67. If I’m on the course and lightning starts, I get inside fast. If God wants to play through, let him

Bobby Jones

68. Golf is the one game I know which becomes more difficult the longer one plays it.

Tom Kite

69. I made the last putt. It just didn’t go in.

Bruce Lansky

70. We learn so many things from golf—how to suffer, for instance.

71. My psychiatrist prescribed a game of golf as an antidote to the feelings of euphoria I experience from time to time.

72. Talking to a golf ball won't do you any good, unless you do it while your opponent is teeing off.

Stephen Leacock

73. I've seen lifelong friends drift apart over golf just because one could play better, but the other counted better.

Tony Lema

74. Golf is like solitaire. When you cheat, you cheat only yourself.

Jack Lemmon

75. If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball.

Robert Wilson Lynd

76. It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.

Mickey Mantle

77. The only sure rule in golf is he who has the fastest cart never has to play the bad lie.

Dave Marr

78. Golf’s three ugliest words: Still your shot.

Dean Martin

79. If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.

Groucho Marx

80. I am not feeling really well, I need a doctor immediately. Ring the nearest golf course

Ewan McGregor

81. I started watching golf for the first time yesterday. I`m really worried about myself. I was actually enjoying it.

Patrick F. McManus

82. The other morning I was staring vacantly out the window, a hobby I personally find more entertaining than, say, stamp collecting or golf.

HL Mencken

83. It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at golf.

Phil Mickelson

84. Golf is my passion, so is a great barbeque

A. A. Milne

85. Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.

86. The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counter attractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.

Jim Murray

87. Golf is the most over-taught and least learned human endeavor in the whole spectrum of doctrinology. if they taught sex the way they teach golf, the race would have died out years ago.

88. Actually, the only time I ever took out a one-iron was to kill a tarantula. And I took a 7 to do that.

Rafael Nadal

89. I am decidedly unfriendly during a golf game, from the first hole to the last.

Willie Nelson

90. All I do is play music and golf. Which one do you want me to give up?

Jack Nicklaus

91. It's hard not to play golf that's up to Jack Nicklaus standards when you are Jack Nicklaus.

92. If there is one thing I have learned during my years as a professional, it is that the only thing constant about golf is its inconstancy.

Greg Norman

93. Happiness is a long walk with a putter

Mac O'Grady

94. One minute you’re bleeding. The next minute you’re hemorrhaging. The next minute you’re painting the Mona Lisa.

95. A hole in one is amazing when you think of the different universes this white mass of molecules has to pass through on its way to the hole.

P. J. O'Rourke

96. Golf... combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.

97. You can smoke or drink on a golf course without interrupting the game, and you can take a leak - something you can't do on a squash court and shouldn't do in a swimming pool.

Arnold Palmer

98. Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated

99. I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone’s game: it’s called an eraser.

Jesper Parnevik

100. Golf is the most brilliant game ever invented! What other game could turn seemingly intelligent and sane people into complete lunatics in a matter of seconds?

Rob Payne

101. There has to be a better use for titanium than golf clubs.

Harvey Penick

102. Golf tips are like Aspirin: One may do you good, but if you swallow the whole bottle you’ll be lucky to survive.

103. I see things written about the golf swing that I can't believe will work except by accident.

104. Golf has probably kept more people sane than psychiatrists have.

Chris Perry

105. The worst club in my bag is my brain.

106. If there's a golf course in heavem, I hope it's like Augusta National. I just don't want an early tee time.

Gary Player

107. Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I’ve played the game for 50 years and I still haven’t the slightest idea of how to play.

Betsy Rawls

108. I have always had a drive that pushed me to try for perfection, and golf is a game in which perfection stays just out of reach.

Ted Ray

109. Golf is a fascinating game. It has taken me nearly 40 years to discover that I can't play it.

Done Rickles

110. I used to play golf. I wanted to be a better player. But after a while, I realize I'd always stink. That's when I really started to enjoy the game

Tom Robbins

111. You know what the game of golf is, don't you? It's basketball for people who can't jump and chess for people who can't think.

Chi Chi Rodriguez

112. I read the greens in Spanish, but putt in English.

113. I never prayed that I would make a putt. I prayed that I would react well if I missed.

114. Golf is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off.

Will Rogers

115. The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

Bertrand Russell

116. The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.

Sam Snead

117. Grip the club as if you were holding a baby bird.

118. 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.

119. If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they grip a golf club, they’d starve to death.

Craig Stadler

120. Why am I using a new putter? Because the last one didn’t float too well

Payne Stewart

121. The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack too many things

122. But in the end it's still a game of golf, and if at the end of the day you can't shake hands with your opponents and still be friends, then you've missed the point.

Louise Suggs

123. Much of anyone’s game is played (or should be played) in the short six-inch course between the ears.

124. Golf is like a love affair. If you don't take it seriously, it's no fun. If you do take it seriously, it will break your heart.

Harry Toscano

125. I’m hitting the woods just great, but I’m having a terrible time getting out of them

Lee Trevino

126. If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.

127. My swing is so bad, I look like a caveman killing his lunch

128. How can they beat me? I’ve been struck by lightning, had two back operations, and been divorced twice

129. You don’t know what pressure is until you play for five bucks with only two bucks in your pocket.

130. I’m going to win so much money this year, my caddie will make the top twenty money winner’s list

131. You don’t know what pressure is until you play for five bucks with only two bucks in your pocket.

132. There is no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls

Mark Twain

133. It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.

John Updike

134. Many men are more faithful to their golf partners than to their wives and have stuck with them longer.

135. Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.

Harry Vardon

136. Don’t play too much golf, two rounds a day are plenty

137. A great deal of unnecessarily bad golf is played in this world.

H. G. Wells

138. The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf – it’s almost a law

P. G. Wodehouse

139. Golf is a good walk spoiled

140. Golf is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

141. The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

142. To find a man’s true character, play golf with him.

Tiger Woods

143. Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.

Henny Youngman

144. While playing golf today I hit two good balls. I stepped on a rake.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

145. It’s not just enough to swing at the ball. You’ve got to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it.

146. Good golf is easier to play-and far more pleasant-than bad golf.

147. I expect to play golf until I am 90-even longer if anybody figures out a way to swing a club from a rocking chair.

Summary

So there you have it, 147 of the funniest golf quotes that you will keep you laughing when the chips are down on the course. If you have a favorite funny golf quote from the list above please let us know by posting a comment.