The earliest known version appeared unsigned in Punch on 16 January 1892, in “Confessions of a Duffer. I.—Golf”: “a very small ball into a very tiny and remotely distant hole, with engines singularly ill adapted for the purpose.” The only Curzon source Quote Investigator cites is a 1987 memoir that credits him with a different variant, and Quote Investigator ↗ credits the 1892 wording to the Punch author.
“Golf: Hit a Very Small Ball into an Even Smaller Hole, with Weapons Singularly Ill-Designed for the Purpose” Anonymous, “Confessions of a Duffer. I.—Golf,” Punch, 16 January 1892. Often credited to Lord Curzon, Winston Churchill or Woodrow Wilson. · Verbatim: “The object is to put a very small ball into a very tiny and remotely distant hole, with engines singularly ill adapted for the purpose.”
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Provenance
The 1892 Punch essay
Work
Confessions of a Duffer. I.—Golf
Publication
Punch, or the London Charivari, vol. 102
Date
16 January 1892
Author
Unsigned
Almost everybody now knows that Golf is not Hockey. Nobody runs after the ball except young ladies at W--m--n! The object is to put a very small ball into a very tiny and remotely distant hole, with engines singularly ill adapted for the purpose. There are many engines.
As transcribed in the Project Gutenberg text of the 16 January 1892 issue. The 1892 text says “a very tiny and remotely distant hole” and “engines singularly ill adapted,” not “an even smaller hole” or “weapons singularly ill-designed.”
Quote Investigator ↗ found the earliest version in Punch on 16 January 1892, in “Confessions of a Duffer,” and concluded that the 1892 variant “should be credited to the author of the Punch article.”
The only Curzon source QI ↗ cites is the actor Maurice Evans’s 1987 memoir All This … and Evans Too!, which credits Lord Curzon with a different variant about pushing “a very small white ball around a very large quantity of very green grass.”
Per QI ↗, Woodrow Wilson is first linked to the quip in 1926 and Winston Churchill in 1974. Both links are later than 1892.
✓Public domain
The earliest documented wording appears in Punch for 16 January 1892, published before 1931, so that text is in the U.S. public domain. The modern “even smaller hole … weapons singularly ill-designed” wording is first documented in Alistair Cooke’s BBC “Letter from America” of 27 December 1974 (credited there to Churchill). The public-domain status applies to the 1892 Punch text.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Who gets the credit, and why it is wrong
This golf quip has drifted among several famous names. None of them appears in print with it before the anonymous 1892 Punch essay.
✕
1987 memoirLord Curzon Different variant
The actor Maurice Evans’s memoir All This … and Evans Too! (1987, p. 47) credits Curzon with a longer version: “push a very small white ball around a very large quantity of very green grass” … “with instruments entirely unsuited to the purpose!” Quote Investigator ↗ records this but does not verify it. The 1987 Evans memoir is the only Curzon source Quote Investigator cites.
✕
Popular attributionWinston Churchill Very weak evidence
The earliest Churchill link known to QI ↗ is Alistair Cooke’s BBC “Letter from America” of 27 December 1974. QI calls the evidence for Churchill “very weak.” In Churchill by Himself (2008), Richard Langworth lists the quip among the “Red Herrings”: “Likely to have been uttered by almost any golfer at one time or another.”
~
Retold versionWoodrow Wilson Probably repeated it
Per QI ↗, Wilson is first linked to the quip in 1926. QI judges that his physician Dr. Cary T. Grayson’s testimony “makes it probable” Wilson told a version, “but it is not clear if he was the creator.”
✓The earliest known version is the unsigned Punch essay of 16 January 1892, “a very small ball into a very tiny and remotely distant hole, with engines singularly ill adapted for the purpose”, as transcribed in the Project Gutenberg edition ↗.
Context
How a Victorian joke got a famous owner
The joke started as a self-mocking line from a fictional duffer. In 1892 Punch ran an unsigned series called “Confessions of a Duffer,” and its golf installment described the game’s object as putting “a very small ball into a very tiny and remotely distant hole, with engines singularly ill adapted for the purpose.” Over the following decades the line was retold with new wording and given to famous golfers and politicians: Wilson, then Churchill, and in one memoir Lord Curzon.
The neat version that circulates now, with “an even smaller hole” and “weapons singularly ill-designed”, is a later smoothing. That modern wording is documented from 1974, when Alistair Cooke gave it to Churchill in a BBC “Letter from America” (per Quote Investigator ↗). QI uses it as its headline because that is the version readers ask about.
“engines singularly ill adapted for the purpose” — Punch, 1892
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The author
About Anonymous Punch contributor
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Anonymous Punch contributor
Unsigned author · Punch, or the London Charivari, 16 January 1892
The line comes from an unsigned comic essay, “Confessions of a Duffer. I.—Golf”, in the London humor weekly Punch. The narrator is a self-described “all-round Duffer”, cursed at his christening to be bad at every sport. Quote Investigator names no author for the piece and credits the 1892 wording to whoever wrote it.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented source
Anonymous, “Confessions of a Duffer. I.—Golf,” Punch, or the London Charivari 102 (16 January 1892): 35. Earliest version documented by Quote Investigator, “Golf: Hit a Very Small Ball into an Even Smaller Hole,” 1 August 2011.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Golf: Hit a Very Small Ball into an Even Smaller Hole, with Weapons Singularly Ill-Designed for the Purpose’?” Last verified 1 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/golf-hit-a-very-small-ball-into-an-even-smaller-hole-with/