Tom Watson quotes:

I have a special feeling for Blue Hills CC, where I won perhaps the most important tournament of my life when I was 14 - the Kansas City Match Play Championship. It gave me a dream of becoming a professional golfer.

I'd rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you.

Some guys have trouble sleeping the night before an important round. I never have. Invariably, I sleep longer and better, and have more dreams, when I'm in contention and feeling pressure.

No other game combines the wonder of nature with the discipline of sport in such carefully planned ways. A great golf course both frees and challenges a golfer's mind.

Sometimes thinking too much can destroy your momentum.

I guess I have never been much of a complainer. You just take what is given you, and don't complain about what you can't affect.

I didn't learn how to swing a golf club until late in my career. And even though I won all those tournaments, I still struggled with consistency, and I relied on my strengths, which were hitting the ball long and high, and I could chip and putt with the best of 'em.

I'm very happy with my life. I am what I am. I don't worry about anything that I can't control. That's a really good lesson in life.

The beautiful thing about the game of golf is you can play good golf and compete well into your later years, and you can't do this in basketball or football or baseball. But in golf, it's a longer live sport.

It's time for old players like me, old fogies like me, to give it up and let the young players have a chance.

I love the way the game of golf is lived and played in Scotland. I always have.

My favorite meal has always been fried chicken.

Any time you play in a USGA Championship, if you don't drive the ball on the fairway, you're dead. You're done.

I played team sport as a kid and loved it. I played basketball and football throughout high school into college in the intramurals and I loved it. There was nothing like a team.

My golf swing is a bit like ironing a shirt. You get one side smoothed out, turn it over and there is a big wrinkle on the other side. Then you iron that one out, turn it over and there is yet another wrinkle.

Confidence in golf means being able to concentrate on the problem at hand with no outside interference.

When you come off that last hole and you've just finished a good round of golf, life is good. When you come off that last hole and you messed it up through four or five holes and just played a lousy round of golf, it's just not a very good day. It just isn't.

If a course needs to be in great condition to be played effectively, then the design strategy is flawed.

Golfers who play a lot of courses often encounter short ledges or retaining walls, and I always had fun hopping down from them. I could jump off something six feet high and land like a cat, no problem. Well, today I can't jump off anything higher than two feet without it just killing me.

I've worked with it. I took three putts and hit the first one about 3 inches fat. The second one, I hit it and I hit the third 15 inches fat. That was it

Golf will grow so long as it's fun

After playing Ballybunion for the first time, a man would think that the game of golf originated here.

That's one of the things you get when you're playing golf. You get bad backs, bad necks.

My career was one of just taking it step by step. I didn't know how I was gonna fare on the professional circuit when I qualified. I didn't know whether I was gonna make a dime. I didn't know anything but this one thing: I had some dreams, and I was gonna work harder than anybody out here to ply my trade.

We tournament golfers are much overrated. We get paid to much.

I could only hit balls thrown down at my feet

The person I fear most in the last two rounds is myself.

A lot of guys who have never choked have never been in the position to do so.

A lot of guys who have have never choked, have never been in the position to do so.

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.

Ballybunion is the course on which many golf architects should live and play on before they build golf courses.

Golf will grow so long as it's fun.

Having played the Old Course many times since my first visit in 1981, I am now of the opinion it is one of the best and most beautiful tests of links golf anywhere in the world.

I learned how to win by losing and not liking it.

I never hesitated to promote someone I didn't like. The comfortable assistant - the nice guy you like to go on fishing trips with - is a great pitfall. Instead I looked for those sharp, scratchy, harsh, almost unpleasant guys who see and tell you about things as they really are. If you can get enough of them around you, and have patience enough to hear them out, there is no limit to where you can go.

If you have an ego of any sort, this course [Augusta] will take it and shove it down your throat.

Muirfield without a wind is like a lady undressed. No challenge.

Sometimes you have to lose major championships before you can win them. It's the price you pay for maturing. The more times you can put yourself in pressure situations, the more times you compete, the better off you are.

There is no surer or more painful way to learn a rule than to be penalized once for breaking it.

This game is so elusive. You try to maintain the peaks and level up the valleys.