Tom Watson Quotes

What makes a great golf course is continuity and variety: right-to-left holes, left-to-right holes.

I've always said, the harder the golf course, the better I play.

Well, I think that Augusta is not the same golf course that I grew up on. Bobby Jones' philosophy was giving you space off the tee; if you put it in the right side of the fairway, you ended up getting the right angle to the green.

You could argue that if the average golfer plays a golf course with 430-yard par 4s and they always miss the green, that's good practice. It's definitely great practice to play a course that's too long for you.

But I'd say that probably 70 percent of the bunkering is more to give you an idea of the direction that you want to go or to save your ball from going into worse places.

I will fall in love with any golf course that you have to drive the ball straight. You understand what I'm saying? That's my advantage. My advantage wasn't putting. In fact, I wasn't even a great putter or a good putter.

Golf course design is exciting.

St. Andrews is my favorite place to play golf. I've said it many times. I love the design. I love how there is always a bunker in play. And every time you play, it is always a little bit different. There are so many angles out there. It is beautifully designed. And so much fun to play.

It's a different style of golf; that stands out for sure when you come over to America. The style of play and the golf courses in America. Most golf courses in America either stretch your game, and test different elements of your game and the margins for error are smaller.

I felt like, by the end of the week in the U.S. Amateur, I was never aiming at a flag; I was just hitting it at slopes and just letting the natural contours take over.

I've wanted to design golf courses ever since I was a kid. I suppose it comes from the way I've played the game. To find the proper way to play any hole, I've always begun by asking myself what the architect has tried to do with it.

Everyone I built a course for thinks they have the best golf course in the world and I'm very pleased and proud of that.

The industry's changed so much that you can't just design something, put on a great show, and say, 'Okay, my job is done.'

You know, why the game of golf is popular? Very easy, it's a great game.

A Nicklaus Design golf course is done by the guys in my company that I work with, that have been trained in my vision, and they do what they think I might do. They might come in the office and ask me questions and I'd certainly answer their questions, but I'm not involved in the site visits or anything else.

I played golf with my friends, and then I started to play with the hustlers. And I learned a lot. I learned about golf; I learned about gambling. I learned about everything.

I'm not the most charismatic, maybe emotional, fun-packed individual on the golf course; I get that.

I think when I was about 12 or 13, my dad started taking me out to the local golf course, and that's the first time I ever hit a golf ball. I picked it up pretty quickly, just kind of monkey-see, monkey-do. But when I was 12, golf was so slow to me. For me, it was basketball, girls and music.

I don't hit it very far; I don't overpower a golf course, but I think I'm a pretty decent putter. At Augusta National, putting is premium.

I really don't have a favorite course. I usually ask where there are the least players.

The USGA is terrific. I've designed my course in Bedminster to the highest standards of the USGA, and it's a very special course.

Whenever I dream of playing a perfect round of golf, which I rarely do more than a dozen times a day, I picture myself on one of my favorite British Open-style links, and in particular the great courses of the west of Ireland, whose holes flow through naturally bunkered dunesland never far from the sight or sound of surf.

Sometimes when you play a golf course for the first time, you just got to be committed to your targets.

I have been an avid reader of 'Golf Digest' ever since I started playing this great game.

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