Golf gives you an insight into human nature, your own as well as your opponent's.

Rice’s remark treats golf as a character-revealing test rather than mere recreation. Because the game is slow, exacting, and largely self-policed, it exposes how a player handles frustration, temptation, pride, and pressure—traits that may stay hidden in faster or more physical sports. The line also points to golf’s social dimension: playing alongside an “opponent” for hours offers repeated chances to observe honesty, courtesy, gamesmanship, and resilience. In that sense, the course becomes a miniature moral and psychological arena, where one learns not only about others’ temperaments but also about one’s own habits of self-control and self-deception.