Jack Nicklaus Quotes

Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's level of aspiration and expectation.

I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head.

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

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

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

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.

Talent isn't as important as the work and dedication necessary to become competent.

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.

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.

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

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.

It takes hundreds of good golf shots to gain confidence, but only one bad one to lose it.

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

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

Focus on remedies, not faults.

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.

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.

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.

Pete Egoscue has totally changed my life. Never have I experienced such complete pain relief as I have by following the Egoscue Method.

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.

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

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.

I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. It's like a color movie. First I 'see' where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I 'see' the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there is this sort of fadeout, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images to reality.

Once you play a tournament, you're playing against the golf course, you're playing against yourself and trying to do the best you can.

I never missed a putt in my mind.

You have to love something and have a passion for it to be disciplined. My commitment was purely to golf

Age doesn't make a difference either. Whether you're 20 or 70, you can still play together. There are so many different things you can do with golf that you can't do in other sports.

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.

Confidence is believing in your own ability, knowing what you have to do to win. My confidence was developed through preparation.

There is no room in your mind for negative thoughts.

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

Concentration is a fine antidote to anxiety.

The successful people seem to have blinders on. Everything is straight ahead. They go forward and know exactly what they're going to do once they've made up their mind to do it, and by God they don't look sideways.

Johnny Miller is a very honest guy. That may have been to his detriment sometimes. On television, he's too honest. We talk about it a lot. Do you really need to be that honest? You know what I mean? But he's a good man. He's a good family man. He's got good values, and we're delighted to have him as our honoree.

If a guy is a good athlete, he'll end up being a pretty decent golfer if he just takes it up. But you never master it; even the best players in the world never master the game.

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.

Golf is not, and never has been, a fair game.

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.

Nobody - but nobody - has ever become really proficient at golf without practice, without doing a lot of thinking and then hitting a lot of shots. It isn't so much a lack of talent; it's a lack of being able to repeat good shots consistently that frustrates most players. And the only answer to that is practice.

I've never set up any golf course that would favor anybody. I try to make it exactly the opposite, which is what we did at Valhalla when we modernized it to accommodate the lengths players are hitting it today.

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.

Tee your ball high...air offers less resistance than dirt.

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.

People only do their best at things they truly enjoy

I've said many times before that Pebble Beach is a wonderful thinking-man's golf course. That is why it is such a great U.S. Open venue.

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

The one strongest, most important part of my game is that I want to be the best. I won't accept anything less that that. My ability to concentrate and work toward hat goal has been my greatest asset.

Golf is a game of precision, not strength.

Golf is a nice game, but that's all. It's never going to be an exciting game to watch on TV. It's not a circus and never will be one. The audience for golf is not going to change significantly. It's always going to be people who play it, understand it, and love it.