GREAT SPORTING QUOTES OF OUR TIME

"Golf is the Great Mystery

"Golf is the Great Mystery. Like some capricious goddess, it bestows its favours with what would appear an almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination.

On every side we see big two-fisted he-men floundering round in three figures, stopping every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock knees and hollow cheeks, who are tearing off snappy 74s. Giants of finance have to accept a stroke per hole from their junior clerks. Men capable of governing empires fail to control a small, white ball, which presents no difficulties whatever to others with one ounce more brain than a cuckoo-clock. . . . I wish to goodness I knew the man who invented this infernal game. I'd strangle him. But I suppose he's been dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave."

- PG Wodehouse (1881 - 1975). Golf was one of the English writer's passions, and it seems like this extract, from 'The Heart of a Goof', might have been penned after a particularly frustrating day on the course.