“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”
"Twain probably never uttered [these] words," according to R. Kent Rasmussen, editor of The Quotable Mark Twain (1998).
"To play golf is to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk" is found in H.S. Scrivener, "Memories of Men and Meetings" https://books.google.com/books?id=cYgCAAAAYAAJ&q=dicta#v=snippet&q=dicta&f=false, in Arthur Wallis Myers (ed.) Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903, p. 47. Scrivener attributes the aphorism to "my good friends the Allens". Reference from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/28/golf-good-walk.
Misattributed
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Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes
On why she has done her best creative thinking while playing golf, as quoted in Time (12 May 1980)
“[Golf/Goff] shots, nothing but [golf/goff] shots.”
Catch Phrases
On writing.
Booknotes http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/index_print.asp?ProgramID=1107 television interview (July 5, 1992)
“The mixture spoils two good things, as Charles Lamb (Elia) used to say of brandy and water.”
Abraham Hayward, writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1848.
Attributed
“[playing golf with his friends]”
Here's Your Sign (1996)
Though Woods might have used this phrase, it is one dating at least to the early 20th century; the earliest published use thus far located is in "Mr. Lyncargo's Professional, by Frank Savile, in The Badminton Magazine of Sports and Pastimes (1906), p. 498, where a character declares : "Life isn't all golf. There are other duties, sometimes."
Misattributed
Essay The Bliss of Golf (1982), reprinted in Golf Dreams (1996)