Quote: to play golf is to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk (antedating 1903)

[Garson O'Toole]

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

The earliest known attribution of this famous barb to Mark Twain
appears in a 1948 issue of the Reader's Digest as noted in the Yale
Book of Quotations and The Quote Verifier. Keyes in QV mentions George
Bernard Shaw and W. C. Fields as two other targets of attribution.
Both YBQ and QV state that the joke appeared in the written record in
1913. A search of the ADS list archive, WikiQuote, and Barry Popik's
website produced no earlier citations.

Tennis players are traditional adversaries of golfers in the field of
recreational sports. The earliest cite I could locate for the above
critique of golf was in a 1903 book about lawn tennis. The tennis
enthusiast author of the second chapter attributes the saying to a
couple of fellow players named the Allens.

Citation: 1903, Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad edited by Arthur Wallis
Myers (second chapter by H. S. Scrivener), Page 47, Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York. (Google Books full view)

... my good friends the Allens ... one of the best of their many
excellent dicta is that "to play golf is to spoil an otherwise
enjoyable walk."

http://books.google.com/books?id=cYgCAAAAYAAJ&q=dicta#v=snippet&q=dicta&f=false

A nice version of the quip that uses the rhetorical device of
reversibility is attributed to the novelist Harry Leon Wilson in 1904.
In 1905 the saying appears directly in one of Wilson's novels as shown
below. Wilson later gained fame by writing the serial and bestselling
novel Ruggles of Red Gap.

Citation: 1904 December 3, The Pittsburgh Press, Literary Notes, Page
20, Col. 4, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Google News archive full view)

Harry Leon Wilson, the author of "The Seeker," is spending the fall
days in the woods near Walpole, N.H. Some of his friends have been
trying to induce him to play golf, but he refused. He makes the
following unique definition of golf: "Golf has too much walking to be
a good game, and just enough game to spoil a good walk."

http://bit.ly/9TQYFq

Citation: 1905, The Boss of Little Arcady by Harry Leon Wilson, Page
367, Lothrop Pub. Co., Boston. (Google Books full view)

This new game of golf that the summer folks play seems to have too
much walking for a good game and just enough game to spoil a good
walk.

http://books.google.com/books?id=dKsSAAAAYAAJ&q=spoil#v=snippet&q=spoil&f=false

In 1906 another tennis player disparaged golf with the saying, but he
adroitly deflected responsibility by placing the words in the mouth of
a "well-known jockey".

Citation: 1906, The Secrets of Lawn Tennis by F. W. Payn, Page 164,
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. (Internet Archive and Google Books
full view)

Although I do not endorse the view of the well-known jockey who said
that golf "merely spoilt a good walk," it appears to me that
(excellent game though it be) the attention it receives is just a
little in excess of its merits as a game and not merely as an
agreeable provider of exercise.

http://www.archive.org/stream/secretslawntenn00payngoog#page/n176/mode/1up/search/spoilt

Before Reader's Digest assigned the saying to Mark Twain it was
attributed to William Gladstone by the Earl of Birkenhead.

Citation: 1924, America Revisited by Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl
of Birkenhead, Page 6, Cassell & Company, London. (Google Books
snippet view)

The late Mr. Gladstone was once, much against his wishes, compelled to
play golf. He is reported to have commented upon the experiment that
it was a good walk spoiled.

http://books.google.com/books?id=zP0uMaqtCVUC&q=good+walk#search_anchor

Garson

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