Jack Nicklaus Quotes

That "I don't give a darn" attitude is probably why I've shot so many good final rounds over the years when I started the day a few shots behind with nothing to lose ... and maybe that's why I've shot so many bad last rounds when I was ahead and knew I couldn't afford a mistake.

Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.

Tom Watson, Tom Watson blew, what, two PGA Championships and a U.S. Open. Did it destroy his life? No, it didn't destroy his life. He learned from it. He went on to win a lot of major championships and obviously became one of the world's great players.

Golf is game of respect and sportsmanship; we have to respect its traditions and its rules.

Grand Haven will challenge the skilled player yet, because of some width to the holes, it also will be a fun course that the average player can enjoy.

I had polio when I was 13. I started feeling stiff, my joints ached, and over a two-week period I lost my coordination and 20 pounds.

Reflection is a scene that I will cherish forever.

We don't have to do a bunch of things to figure out how to win the Ryder Cup. Just go play golf ... I'm a little bit too casual probably about a lot of things, but you can't force good play. Good play comes from good hard work and actually being prepared to play, not being forced to play.

Learn the fundamentals of the game and stick to them. Band-Aid remedies never last.

Pete Dye introduced me to golf course design back in the 1960's. He came to my hometown Columbus, Ohio to work on The Golf Club.

I've always tried to play golf with a golf club. I have a hard time driving with my rifle. I mean, 18 is really narrow ... I have no problem with the course, except for the tee shot on 18.

I think we have more good players today [2016] than we've ever had in the game of golf. And I think that's saying a lot because we had a lot of good players when I played. I think you had a bit of a lag in there for a while, that Tiger was just so much better than everybody else that he really didn't put anybody in with him.

All I ever wanted to do was play competitive golf against the best players in the world.

Sometimes the biggest problem is in your head. You've got to believe you can play a shot instead of wondering where your next bad shot is coming from.

Ask yourself how many shots you would have saved if you always developed a strategy before you hit, always played within your capabilities, never lost you temper, and never got down on yourself.

That's sort of overkill. We've had 70 years of the Ryder Cup, and it's gotten along just fine. The pendulum will swing back without making a monumental thing about it.

There is no room in your mind for negative thoughts. The busier you keep yourself with the particulars of shot assessment and execution, the less chance your mind has to dwell on the emotional. This is sheer intensity.

If I were to look back on my work, I think I accomplished probably about 70 to 75 percent of what I could have. Maybe 60 percent. Somewhere in that area; two-thirds of what I could have accomplished. If I had been a really dedicated person, and really worked hard, I think I could have accomplished more.

When I want a long ball, I spin my hips faster.

A big part of managing a golf course is managing your swing on the course. A lot of guys can go out and hit a golf ball, but they have no idea how to manage what they do with the ball. I've won as many golf tournaments hitting the ball badly as I have hitting the ball well.

See, as much as I love the game, golf was my vehicle to competition. And I love to compete.

I knew that if I kept the pressure on and didn't do anything stupid I would probably win.

The worse you're performing, the more you must work mentally and emotionally. The greatest and toughest art in golf is "playing badly well." All the true greats have been masters at it.

Augusta National is a young man's golf course, and you really need a young man's nerves to play on it.

It's great to win, but it's also great fun just to be in the thick of any truly well and hard fought contest against opponents you respect, whatever the outcome.

The best way to cope with trouble is to stay out of it as much as possible.

If you'd asked me at 30 where I'd be during the Masters when I was 46, I'd have pictured myself on a boat fishing, smoking a cigar, drinking a mint julep and watching it on television.

I thoroughly enjoy working with kids, whether it's The First Tee or the lesson tee with my grandkids.

Bob Ford is a great guy. He's a great friend. He's done a great job at Oakmont and Seminole. He's a very quiet man. He doesn't get in the middle of everything, but he understands what a nice job he's done at both places.

I don't play much golf anymore. I can't - if I break 80, I'm doing pretty well.

If you're going to be a player people will remember, you have to win the Open at St. Andrews.

There are always new places to go fishing. For any fisherman, there's always a new place, always a new horizon.

There are no maladies in my golf game. My golf game stinks.

Golf was my vehicle to competition, and I can't play if I can't compete.

The holes are numbered.

Pursue what you love, what you are passionate about. Don't let somebody else dictate your life's path.

If I have a weakness, it's probably ice cream. That's where I get lax, sloppy. I'll sneak into the refrigerator at night and take two or three bites and put it back. Butter pecan. Only two or three bites, but it shows.

Success depends almost entirely on how effectively you learn to manage the game's two ultimate adversaries: the course and yourself.

If I had only one more round to play, I would choose to play it at Pebble Beach. I've loved this course from the first time I saw it. It's possibly the best in the world.

I learned early in my career, where you get so wrapped up and so excited, that all of a sudden you don't think. So I worked very hard to keep myself suppressed. And that's one of the reasons I wasn't gregarious with the gallery.

It's a great sense of accomplishment when you can take something and really think it's really tough, and then all of a sudden you conquer it. That makes you feel pretty good.

Essentially, he has been retired since he was 21.

Scoring comes from being able to preserve what you've got and play your smart shots when you need to play them and not do stupid things and take advantage of things when have you them.

Well, I think that Augusta is not the same golf course that I grew up on. Bobby Jones' philosophy was giving you space off the tee; if you put it in the right side of the fairway, you ended up getting the right angle to the green.

Through the years of experience I have found that air offers less resistance than dirt.

I don't know if I'll ever do it again or not, but frankly I don't really care.

When the British Open is in Scotland, there's something special about it. And when it's at St. Andrews, it's even greater.

We all would like to struggle like Tiger is struggling.

Why are we building golf courses? Because we enjoy being outside, bringing man and nature together.

Mostly I built golf courses the way I played golf, which was left-to-right. But I learned very rapidly that people wanted to see more than just the way I played golf and that I had to balance up what I was doing, right-to-left, left-to-right, etc.

If there is one thing I have learned during my years as a professional, it is that the only thing constant about golf is its inconstancy.

As long as I'm prepared, I always expect to win.

You don't think anything about age when you're playing [golf]. I mean, why would you ever think about that.

I'm probably the only bottom-heavy golfer in the country.

Pressure is what you live for ... if you are going to be successful in life, you're going to have pressure.

There's more to be learned here [St. Andrews] about course design than anywhere. Collection bunkers, false fronts, bump shots. The fundamentals of design became fundamental because of what's here. And it happened accidentally. Or maybe accidentally on purpose.

Don't be too proud to take lessons. I'm not.

Golf really excites me only when the course is difficult and challenging. I love competing. The pressure of competition against fine holes and fine players makes me feel very much alive.

Golf is a game of precision, not strength.

I like trying to win. That's what golf is all about.

I love design in general, the creativity. Whether it is golf courses, my apparel line, ads we do or our business with AriZona, design is fun.

Such is putting! 2% technique, 98% inspiration or confidence or touch ... the only thing great putters have in common is touch and that is the critical ingredient ... none of them found it through mechanizing a stroke, nor do I believe they could maintain it that way.

Public appearances are a headache. I hold mine down to a minimum.

Jones is the greatest golfer who ever lived and probably ever will live. That's my goal. Bobby Jones. It's the only goal.

If I had one golf course, from a design standpoint, one that I really love, it would probably be Pinehurst. There's a totally tree-lined golf course where trees are not a part of the strategy.

The US Open flag eliminates a lot of players. Some players just weren't meant to win the US Open. Quite often, they know it.

One of the worst mistakes you can make in golf is trying to force the game.

There are interesting times. The game is more fun when you are experimenting. One day yuor great, the next day scatterlog. But your learning. No that's not right. I probably have forgotten more about golf than I will ever learn. What you do is remember some of the things you thought you would never forget.

I came back and in '63, I was at the British Open, trying to win my first British Open. And I had what I thought was a two-shot lead with two holes to play at Lytham. I remember it like it was yesterday. Anybody with a proper brain would have played the ball short of the hole. I didn't have a proper brain at the time. But you have to make that mistake to learn it.

It's hard not to play golf that's up to Jack Nicklaus standards when you are Jack Nicklaus.

I might cook occasionally, but I'm not a good cook. That's not my passion.

Resolve never to quit, never to give up, no matter what the situation.

The fact is, I diet every day of my life. I have to work at it. But I diet so I can pig out.

Naturally it is nice to be widely known for worthwhile achievements, but it forces you to do many things which you don't like to do and these things take up time you want for other things.

You have to trust your kids. They have to experience life, and you just hope you've provided them a foundation for what's right and what isn't.

I love the golf courses because it brought the best out of me. It made me prepare, made me work at it, made me do the things I needed to do to be better, and that's what I loved about USGA events. If you couldn't handle it, then you got beat, and that's OK.

There isn't a flaw in his golf or his makeup. He will win more majors than Arnold Palmer and me combined. Somebody is going to dust my records. It might as well be Tiger, because he's such a great kid.

Crises are part of life. Everybody has to face them, and it doesn't make any difference what the crisis is.

Ben Hogan was not really a big hitter. He was long enough. But Ben Hogan today? Ben Hogan today could not compete at Augusta because he did not have the massive length to compete against the long hitters. Power was always an issue at Augusta, but never so dominant that you couldn't play it.

This is a tournament. The others are all championships.

Golf is you against yourself.

Oakmont, you've got to be playing slope.

Sometimes, I'm an ogre. I can be short. I'll walk into the office some days and I've gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, and everybody knows it. I'm a perfectionist. I like to be organized, and I like to get everything done today.

I think that Pebble Beach is my favorite golf course to go to. I think Augusta is my favorite place to go play golf.

I never thought about being No. 1. I just kept trying to be No. 1.

Golfers have a tendency to be very masochistic. They like to punish themselves for some reason. A lot of them like tough courses.

Any golfer worth his salt has to cross the sea and try to win the British Open.

I like to catch fish and release them. I probably haven't killed a fish that I've caught in sport fishing for 20 years. No reason to kill it. You know, just take it and release it.

I understand golf is a game, and I've never treated it as anything else. Family is something that's very special, and so they all contributed to the room. They all contributed to what my life was, my career was.

I don't believe in luck. Not in golf, anyway. There are good bounces and bad bounces, sure, but the ball is round and so is the hole. If you find yourself in a position where you hope for luck to pull you through, you're in serious trouble.

I couldn't control Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson or Lee Trevino. The only person I could control was me. The only person I could prepare for events was me. And if I didn't play well, I didn't play well, and I wasn't going to compete.

I've had a lot of majors where I didn't play well until the last round. Keep yourself in contention; that's the name of the game. I usually ended up shooting a good round and all of a sudden, somehow, I won.

For years, I never thought I needed a short game. Finally I just decided to do something about it. I needed to get up and down from tough spots on the par-5s for my birdies. So I went to Phil [Rogers]. He's the best. For the last couple weeks, Phil has been staying at my house and we've been practicing in the evening.

Complacency is a continuous struggle that we all have to fight.

If somebody says they don't watch the leaderboard, I don't buy that, I'm sorry. Because you've got to know where you are to know how to play.

I think in my case winning fans came as a result of winning tournaments. Certainly, I didn't have too many supporters when I came on Tour. I didn't look like an athlete, I was overweight, had a crew cut, baggy clothes and on top of that I didn't smile much. I was very serious about my game, literally and figuratively the heavy.

The importance of my legacy is not the golf course, it's what my life is, and what my life is intended to be. The game of golf is a game. My family is my life.

In 1979, when I was 39, I had such a bad year, I thought it was all over. Thankfully it wasn't.

I guess that's why they call it Hell.

Did you know there's probably more golf played in Iceland than most places in the world? They play 24 hours a day in the summertime and the northern part is warmer than the southern part.