Adage: Golf is a good walk spoiled (Mark Twain attrib 1948 August 28)

[Garson O'Toole]

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

The saying above is typically ascribed to Mark Twain. For years the
earliest known citation crediting Twain was an issue of Reader's
Digest in December 1948. The Yale Book of Quotations and the Quote
Verifier include this cite. Both references also note that the saying
was in circulation decades before 1948.

The Reader's Digest acknowledged The Saturday Evening Post, but did
not provide any details. Now I've located the precise issue containing
the Twain attribution. It appeared in the first paragraph of an
article about the genesis of golf in Scotland:

Cite: 1948 August 28, Saturday Evening Post, Volume 221, Issue 9,
Golf's Own Home Town by Allan A. Michie, Start Page 32, Quote Page 32,
Saturday Evening Post Society, Indianapolis, Indiana. (Ebsco)

[Begin excerpt]
If Mark Twain, who once crustily called a game of golf a good walk
spoiled, had ever ventured to the venerable gray-stone city of St.
Andrews on the bleak east coast of Scotland, the outraged citizens
would have given him the Scottish equivalent of the bum's rush.
[End excerpt]

The earliest evidence of the quip that I've located was published in
1903 in a book about lawn tennis. (I posted this cite previously.)

Cite:  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)

[Begin excerpt]
I cannot readily picture my good friends the Allens (whom I have often
assailed unsuccessfully with various partners) as golfers; in fact,
one of the best of their many excellent dicta is that "to play golf is
to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk."
[End excerpt]

The entry for the saying has been updated:
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/28/golf-good-walk/

Garson

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