Stephen Potter:
on match-play demeanor
"But the [Henry] Cotton gambit was a powerful one, as useful in life as it is in golf. No Unnecessary Smiling, as we might name it, is as effective as it is simple.... One can dance mad boleros as soon as one is in the changing room; but Not Smiling within the boundaries of the actual course is a powerful weapon."
on gamesmanship good and bad
"[Do not] attempt to irritate partner by spending too long looking for your lost ball. This is unsporting. But good gamesmanship which is also very good sportsmanship can be practised if the gamesman makes a great and irritatingly prolonged parade of spending extra time looking for his opponent's ball."
on junior golf
"All gamesman love children, and that is exactly why they must be especially on their guard with the child golfer.... when the child begins to play, be careful to stop those full careless swings, which may occasionally, by that thousand to one chance, send their ball further than your own.... In general let them not act as if games were play."
on Scottish traditions
"At St. Andrew's in particular one could or should have known personally the ball-maker. When the carved wooden heads of the earlier clubs went out and iron heads were substituted, though it was not necessary actually to forget these heads oneself, it was requred form to know the famous old character concerned, and if possible to stand in his smithy and see the sparks fly. It was correct to say, with a touch of Scots in your own voice, 'Ay it was a gran' sight to see the sparks flying'.'"
on handicaps and personalities
"There is a weak and colorless 18, with thin red hair perhaps, one whose skin never browns in the sun, a flaccid personality, an acid-drop sucker, never likely to get married, the sort of man who in the country looks as if he wishes he was in a town, and vice versa. But there is also a deep-voiced 18, a man who has recently given up football, a man of strength, who, though often off course, can, using only a spoon and number 8, slash his way round by sheer muscle.... Old 16s are sound sensible people who may have been 7 before the war."
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