Why Golf is Like Trading

In golf, it’s better to hit a hole in one than sink a put at par. In trading, it’s better to get a great entry point and ride a trend for days, weeks, or months than to attempt to day trade something all day long.

Some golfers sport nice golf clothes, use expensive clubs, and dish out advice but their score doesn’t reflect their supposed dedication. Some traders love fancy indicators, multiple monitors, and impressive desk set ups, but don’t make much money. Instead they are in it for the experience and ego gratification.

Good golf comes from learning and practicing the proper form and technique. Success doesn’t come from  strong emotions or trying harder. Good trading comes from learning how to manage risk, control emotions, and follow a winning system rather than trading emotionally without discipline.

Quotes that apply to golf AND Trading:

  1. “Golf is not a wrestle with bogey; it is not a struggle with your mortal foe; it is a physiological, psychological, and moral fight with your self; it is a test of mastery over self; and the ultimate and irreducible element of the game is to determine, which of the players is the more worthy combatant.” –Arnold Haultain
  2. “Golf is the loneliest sport. You’re completely alone with every conceivable opportunity to defeat yourself. Golf brings out your assets and liabilities as a person. The longer you play, the more certain you are that a man’s performance is the outward manifestation of who, in his heart, he really thinks he is.” –Hale Irwin
  3. “If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf.” – Percey Boomer
  4. “I never learned anything from a match that I won.” -Bobby Jones
  5. “Concentration in golf comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.” –Arnold Palmer
  6. “Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” –Arnold Palmer
  7. “Golf is about how well you accept, respond to, and score with your misses much more so than it is a game of your perfect shots.” –Dr. Bob Rotella
  8. “Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots—but you have to play the ball where it lies.” –Bobby Jones
  9. “No one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf  is the greatest of games.” –Bobby Jones
  10. “Golf is a compromise between what your ego wants you to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.” –Bruce Crampton
  11. “Golf is not, and never has been, a fair game.” –Jack Nicklaus
  12. “Man blames fate for other accidents, but feels personally responsible for a hole in one.” -Martha Beckman
  13. “The worst club in my bag is my brain.” -Chris Perry
  14. “Of all the hazards in golf, fear is the worst.” –Sam Snead
  15. “Golf  is not a game of great shots. It’s a game of most accurate misses. The people who win make the smallest mistakes.” –Gene Littler
  16. “Golf is a difficult game, but it’s a little easier if you trust your instincts. It’s too hard a game to try to play like someone else.” –Nancy Lopez
  17. “One reason golf  is such an exasperating game is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten, and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.” –Bobby Jones
  18. “It’s a funny thing, the more I practice golf, the luckier I get.” –Arnold Palmer
  19. “A lot of guys who have never choked in golf, have never been in the position to do so.” –Tom Watson
  20. “Golf is a game, which brings out the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of human nature. It permits no compromises, recognizes no weaknesses, and punishes the foolhardy. Yet the apparent simplicity in hitting a small white ball from A to B lures all potential golfers/traders into a false sense of security. Every instinct in the human psyche says the game looks easy, therefore it must be. That, for many of us, is where the trouble starts.” –A.J. Dalconen