Quotes By Jack Nicklaus

How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life.

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.

A perfectly straight shot with a big club is a fluke.

Focus on remedies, not faults.

But if I played well and prepared myself properly, then all I had to do was control myself and put myself in a position to win.

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.

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 think I fail a bit less than everyone else.

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

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

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

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.

The longer you play, the better chance the better player has of winning.

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

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 first saw Arnold Palmer when I was just a kid and he came to Columbus to play in a tournament. I watched him on the driving range hit balls that day. We went on to become great friends.

When I fly in a helicopter, I insist there be two sets of controls, one for me in case something happens to the pilot. I'm no expert, but I know enough to at least get the thing on the ground. Nothing scares me like the thought of not being in control.

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.

A Nicklaus Design golf course is done by the guys in my company that I work with, that have been trained in my vision, and they do what they think I might do. They might come in the office and ask me questions and I'd certainly answer their questions, but I'm not involved in the site visits or anything else.

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

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.

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

Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20% of the time, you're the best.

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

This is a game. That's all it is. It's not a war.

The game is meant to be fun.

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.

I've been fortunate over my career to make a little history on the 16th hole at Augusta National.

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

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