Jack Nicklaus Quotes - The Golden Bear

The greatest golfer to have lived with 18 Major victories

He was so good they even put him on a British 5 pound note!!! (no really!!!)

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

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

When the British Open is in Scotland, there's something special about it. And when it's at St. Andrews, it's even greater.

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

When I want a long ball, I spin my hips faster.

There's more to be learned here about course design than anywhere. Collection bunkers, false fronts, bump shots. The fundamentals of design became fundamental because of what's here. And it happened accidentally. Or maybe accidentally on purpose.
(a quote about the layout of St. Andrews Old Course)

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 think he is very mechanical. Hogan was mechanical. The mechanical golfer- and Faldo may be the exception- is probably going to go get beat by a feel player. Jack Nicklaus on Nick Faldo.

Ian Woosnam has got a beautiful swing. There's nothing mechanical about Woosnam at all and he's about as smooth and flowing a player as I have seen in a long time.

Every putt is different. Your feet dictate the stroke by how they feel on the green. I just never used the same stroke on every putt.

I've always had Arnold's gallery to fight, but I never had to fight Arnold. I've never forgotten that. Jack Nicklaus on the good nature of his great rival, Arnold Palmer.

Arnold's place in history will be as the man who took golf from a game for the few to a sport for the masses. He was the catalyst that made it happen.

It's a shame that Bob Jones isn't here. He could have saved the words he used for me in 1963 for this young man because he is certainly playing a game with which we're not familiar. Nicklaus on Tiger Woods.

He's the only golfer I've ever seen who should be required to play with a handicap. Bobby Jones on Nicklaus.

I let the Bear out of his cage. Arnold Palmer on losing the 1962 US Open play off to Nicklaus.

I think I fail a bit less than everybody else.

The longer you play, the better chance the better player has of winning. Nicklaus on how the cream usually comes to the surface in major tournaments.

When Nicklaus plays well, he wins. When he plays badly, he finishes second. When he plays terribly, he finished third. Johnny Miller.

He plays like a beautifully proportioned field gun, automatic with perfect range. Leonard Crawley on Jack Nicklaus.

All my life I wanted to play like Jack Nicklaus, and now I do. Paul Harvey, TV Journalist, after Nicklaus shot an 83 in the 1981 British Open.

If I could just putt, I might just scare somebody, maybe me. Nicklaus, sensing an opportunity to win the 1986 Masters, aged 46. He did.

I kept getting tears in my eyes... I have to say to myself, hey, you've got some golf to play. Nicklaus, in the finishing strait at Augusta in 1986

The older you get the stronger the wind gets and it's always in your face.

Tournaments are won on a Sunday and on the back nine.

The guys I'll never understand are the self-confessed non-competitors; the golfers who pick up $100,000 plus a year without ever winning a tournament and go around telling the world how happy they are to finish ninth every week.

If there is one thing golf demands above all else, it is honesty.

A kid grows up a lot faster on the golf course; Golf teaches you how to behave. You start playing with older people so that a kid who plays golf is different from a lot of athletes in other sports because he hasn't had his own way. He hasn't been spoiled.

Reporter: You really know your way around a course. What's your secret? Jack Nicklaus: The holes are numbered.

I think this is the only tournament I've ever gone into that I'm hoping I can finish second. That would be the neat part. Nicklaus gets behind his son Gary at the 1996 US Open.

I don't know. I've never been anyone else's son. Gary Nicklaus' response to a crass question on how hard it is to be Jack's son.

Photo by Gussi Jons @flickr