“To sink a six-foot putt with thirty million people looking over your shoulder convince yourself that if you miss it you will be embarrassed and poor.”

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

“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 love design in general, the creativity. Whether it is golf courses, my apparel line, ads we do or our business with AriZona, design is fun.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I've wanted to design golf courses ever since I was a kid. I suppose it comes from the way I've played the game. To find the proper way to play any hole, I've always begun by asking myself what the architect has tried to do with it.”

“The fact is, I diet every day of my life. I have to work at it. But I diet so I can pig out.”

“I'd rather be two strokes ahead going into the last day than two strokes behind. Having said that, it's probably easier to win coming from behind. There is no fear in chasing. There is fear in being chased.”

“People don't want to go to the dump and have a picnic, they want to go out to a beautiful place and enjoy their day. And so I think our job is to try to take the environment, take what the good Lord has given us, and expand upon it or enhance it, without destroying it.”