Quotes from Jack Nicklaus


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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.


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.


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


The way I pack is I look at how long I'll be gone and I pack day for day. If I'm going on a three-day fishing trip, I plot each day. I put most of that in a little bag. If I'm going from there to work on golf courses for a few days, I plot that trip.


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


I'd rather be two strokes ahead going into the last day than two strokes behind. Having said that, it's probably easier to win coming from behind. There is no fear in chasing. There is fear in being chased.


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.


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


I'm a firm believer that in the theory that people only do their best at things they truly enjoy. It is difficult to excel at something you don't enjoy.


People don't want to go to the dump and have a picnic, they want to go out to a beautiful place and enjoy their day. And so I think our job is to try to take the environment, take what the good Lord has given us, and expand upon it or enhance it, without destroying it.


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


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.


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.


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.


Concentration is a fine antidote to anxiety.


Well, the biggest rival I had in my career was me.


A kid grows up a lot faster on the golf course. Golf teaches you how to behave.


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


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


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