The Gigantic Book of Golf Quotations Review

The Gigantic Book of Golf Quotations: Thousands of Notable Quotables from Tommy Armour to Fuzzy Zoeller

Weighing in at nearly five pounds, and 787 pages, the Gigantic Book of Golf Quotations lives up to its billing. Every page is packed with golf quotes, anecdotes and one-liners. They are, in turn, funny, serious, profound and trivial. I have wasted a good many hours flipping at random through the book, smiling and then pointing out the best ones to Mrs. GolfBlogger who—although she has no interest in golf—humors me by agreeing that it’s a nice quote.

I can’t even begin to imagine how editor Jim Apfelbaum managed to collect the more than 3,000 quotes that make up the book. It simply had to be a labor of love.

The quotes are divided by categories, such as “Competition: On Winning, Losing and the Pursuit of Excellence”; “Caddies, Galleries, Family and Media”; and “The History of the Game.” These, I found, are generally useful in trying to find a quote on a particular subject—but they are not as well organized as, say, Bartlett’s Quotations.

Here’s one of my favorites, from my not-so-distant relative, Will Rogers:

Rail splitting produced an immortal president in Abraham Lincoln; but golf with 29,000 courses, hasn’t produced even a good A-Number_1 congressman.”

Another great line, from Ian Fleming’s “GoldFinger”:

Bond thought he knew what would be in Goldfinger’s mind, what is in most golfers’ minds when they smell the first scent of a good lead melting away. Bond would be surprised to see that grooved quick swing quicken a trifle. It did.

And from my one of my all-time favorite golfers, Sam Snead:

Thinking instead of acting is the number one golf disease.

As you can tell from the quotes, there’s an amazing variety of material here.

Here’s GolfBlogger’s bottom line on the Gigantic Book of Golf Quotations: If you are looking for a Christmas gift for the golfer in your life, this book is it. And if you’re the golfer in the family, this is one to put on your wish list.