Jack Nicklaus Play Quotations

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.

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.

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

At a certain point in the [golf] tournament, it becomes a match play event and becomes a match play event against who is on the leaderboard, so you have to know who is there to do what you're going to try to do.

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'm deadly serious even when I play tennis against my kids. I want to beat their brains out.

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

1960, I was 20 years old, and I was leading the U.S. Open. Now, I wasn't leading by several strokes, but I was leading the U.S. Open and playing with Ben Hogan, had a very good chance to win, nine holes to go, I was leading. I was still leading with six holes to play.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 always practice as I intend to play.

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.

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.

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.

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.