The agony of “golf truisms”

If you’re a golfer, you’ll be able to relate to all of the following. If you’re not a golfer, lucky you since you don’t have to endure the agony of these “golf truisms:” 
• Don’t buy a putter until you’ve had a chance to throw it.
• Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind during your swing.
• When your shot has to carry over a water hazard, you can either use one more club or two more balls.
• If you’re afraid a full shot might reach the green while the foursome ahead of you is still putting out, you have two options: you can immediately shank a lay-up or you can wait until the green is clear and top a ball halfway there. 
• The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about the golf swing.
• No matter how bad you are playing, it is always possible to play worse.
• The inevitable result of any golf lesson is the instant elimination of the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for all of your many other errors. 
In other words, you just can’t win.
• Everyone replaces his divot after a perfect approach shot. 
• A golf match is a test of your “skill” against your opponent’s “luck.”
• It’s surprisingly easy to hole a 30-foot putt — for a 10.
• Counting on your opponent to inform you when he breaks a rule is like expecting him to make fun of his own haircut.
• It’s not a gimme if you’re still away. 
• The shortest distance between any two points on a golf course is a straight line that passes directly through the centre of a very large tree.
• You can hit a two-acre fairway 10 per cent of the time and a two-inch branch 90 per cent of the time. 
• If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.
• Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of the next group of three.
• When you look up, causing an awful shot, you will always look down again at exactly the moment when you ought to start watching the ball if you ever want to see it again.
•  Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two double bogeys to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe.
• There are two things you can learn by stopping your back-swing at the top and checking the position of your hands: how many hands you have and which one is wearing the glove.
• Hazards attract; fairways repel.
• That ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.
• If there is a ball on the fringe and a ball in the bunker, your ball is in the bunker. If both balls are in the bunker, yours is in the footprint.
• It’s easier to get up at 6 a.m. to play golf than at 10 a.m. to mow the lawn.
• A good drive on the 18th hole has stopped many a golfer from giving up the game.
• Golf is the perfect thing to do on Sunday, because you spend longer praying during golf than you would do in church.
• A good golf partner is one who’s always slightly worse than you are. 
• If there's a storm rolling in, you’ll be having the game of your life.
• Golf balls are like eggs: they're white, they’re sold by the dozen and you need to buy fresh ones each week.
• It’s amazing how a golfer who never helps out around the house will replace divots, repair ball marks and rake sand traps.
• It takes longer to learn to be a good golfer than it does to become a brain surgeon. On the other hand, you don’t get to ride around on a cart, drink beer and eat hot dogs when you are performing brain surgery.
• If your opponent has trouble remembering whether he shot a six or a seven, he probably shot an eight or worse.