Signature: Making well-read sense of the world, recently published a piece by Tom Blunt on “10 Great Golf Quotes, the Perfect Sport for an Uneasy Nation.” 

Not surprisingly, Updike made the list . . . though it could be considered a surprise that the quote comes not from Updike’s Golf Dreams, but from his alter ego, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom.

Great as the author says these quotes are, they still “strive—and mostly fail—to capture the angst pleasure of a sport that golf pro Gary Player once described as ‘a puzzle without an answer.'”

Here’s the Updike entry:

John Updike, Rabbit at Rest, 1990
“TV families and your own are hard to tell apart, except yours isn’t interrupted every six minutes by commercials and theirs don’t get bogged down into nothingness, a state where nothing happens, no skit, no zany visitors, no outburst on the laugh track, nothing at all but boredom and a lost feeling, especially when you get up in the morning and the moon is still shining and men are making noisy bets on the first tee.”

The funniest cited is from George W. Bush, who was talking to reporters on August 2002:

“I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.”

But H.G. Wells isn’t far behind:  “The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf. It’s almost a law.”