You have to be optimistic about golf. I mean it's physically demanding, particularly if you're on one leg. But it's psychologically demanding regardless of your physical infirmities. I mean, it's a tough sport. You've got to be disciplined and optimistic. And if you have a bad hole, you've got to be optimistic that you'll do well on the next hole.
We seem to be riding on the top of the highest mast of the tallest ship; and yet at the same time we know that nothing of this sort matters; love is not proved thus, nor great achievements completed thus; so that we sport with the moment and preen our feathers in it lightly.
Everyone is really afraid of getting out there and not being good. That's the challenge: To be afraid and know people are staring at you and know you might not do all that well, but you do it anyway. What singles out the successful athlete from the ones who never make it past a plateau, it that successful athletes risk failure, even though they are terrified.
Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.
Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.
I would like to say boxing cannot compared with war. We have gloves on, we have cushions, we have referees, we have judges, we have ambulances there, the intention not to kill, we don't have steel there, we don't have bullets, we don't kill momma, kill daddy, kill baby, our intention is a sport, and we're not there to kill, so boxing cannot be compared in no way with machineguns and bombs and everything that used.
I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes-there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon a golf course on clean, crisp, mornings.