Jack Nicklaus Quotes
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The best way to cope with trouble is to stay out of it as much as possible.
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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.
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I never worried about money, except that I knew that all I had to worry about was golf. As long as I could play, I was going to make money.
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The fact is, I diet every day of my life. I have to work at it. But I diet so I can pig out.
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Concentration is a fine antidote to anxiety.
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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.
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The longer you play, the better chance the better player has of winning.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Why are we building golf courses? Because we enjoy being outside, bringing man and nature together.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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All I ever wanted to do was play competitive golf against the best players in the world.
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This is a game. That's all it is. It's not a war.
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Whether it's pool or Ping Pong, I can't stand to have my kids beat me. Especially Ping Pong! And when they beat me, they just needle the devil out of me. That's fine. I'd rather have that than let them win a shallow victory.
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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.
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Writers have told me more than once that I'm a better interview in defeat than in victory, which is a compliment I am extremely proud of.
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He's going to be around a long, long time, if his body holds up. That's always a concern with a lot of players because of how much they play. A lot of guys can't handle it. But it looks like he can.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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My ability to concentrate and work toward that goal has been my greatest asset.