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Twenty majors if you count his two U.S. Amateurs, in stone the winner for all time. Champions great and small have sought his counsel in clubhouses and terraces across the world. Nicklaus started writing for Golf Digest in the early 1970s. What follows are some of his most enduring words that have appeared in our magazine across four decades. —Max Adler

Learn, practice and trust one basic swing. Most golfers, and especially those who begin the game as adults, pick it up and then continue to play by trial and error, rather than by formally learning one basic method.

1. I’ve always believed the club should dominate you instead of you dominating the club.
2. To me, winning by one is the same as winning by 10.
3. Aim and alignment are by far the most important elements of the act of moving a golf ball from A to B. Rub the magic lamp, get the genie to give you any golf swing of your choice from history, and, if you don’t direct it correctly from the beginning, it still won’t reduce your present score by even one measly stroke.
4. Even the gutsiest players learn they can’t try the hero shot all the time.
5. You first have to see the trouble, then think positively about playing away from it. Some players might say they just “let it happen.” Well, you don’t ever just let it happen.
6. I hold the club fairly loosely, but just before starting back, I press my hands together on the grip once or twice. I call this a “stationary press.”
7. The harder I want to hit a shot, the slower I try to begin the swing.
8. The fuller your backswing, the longer it takes to execute, which can help your tempo. Longer swingers, I’ve noticed, usually enjoy longer-lasting careers.
9. I believe the Ryder Cup is an exhibition by some of the best golfers in the world, great entertainment and an exercise in sportsmanship, camaraderie and goodwill. The individual performances, good or bad, don’t determine who the best players in the world are. Nor does the side that happens to win determine on what side of the Atlantic the best golf is played. Too many people believe otherwise, and that helps make the matches too contentious among the teams and their fans.
10. One of my lifelong checkpoints is to keep the shaft between my arms throughout the swing.
11. Practice hitting as fully as you can without letting either heel lift at any point in the swing. This will teach you the proper way to shift weight by rolling your ankles, but most of all it will teach you the feeling of staying “centered.”
12. I believe it’s impossible for me to hit too soon with the clubhead. When I need a through-swing thought, it’s most often, Release! Use the clubhead!
13. Although I have great affection for the Masters, as far as pure golf I’d rather play in the British Open than any other event.
14. Patience was always my strength. When a player says a course doesn’t suit him, he’s half beaten right there.
15. On most courses, there are only five or six shots where you really need to pay attention and play conservative.
16. When I putt, I hold my breath just before initiating the stroke to keep my head and body still.
17. I visualize the putter shaft as being extremely limber, almost as flexible as a length of rope, which means the only way I can get the clubhead to swing truly is to stroke putts very softly.
18. I know I have to make the putt. There is no alternative. It has to go in. That was my focus.
19. I always like to have a couple of short 4s on my courses. They create variety and make the golfer think.
20. With so much money in the pro game, conservative mediocrity sort of prevails. The goal is to make a good living more than it is to win. Yes, there’s a lot of depth in the pro game. If you took a large group of today’s players and put them against the group from my prime, today’s group would probably beat their brains out. But I think our four or five top guys, as a group, would have beaten the brains out of the players of today.
21. It’s not that I wouldn’t get nervous, but I could always think straight under pressure. I know some people tend to go blank.
22. On a second-shot course, you use the tee shot to truly create your second. This type of design happens to be my favorite.
23. If you start with the club grounded, the natural tendency is for it to return to that spot at impact. In other words, you’re pre-setting a fat shot.
24. I shot my age for the first time at 64 in Hawaii.
25. I never hit a shot, even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a color movie.
26. The key to playing well is to first understand who you are as a person, and then manage that.
27. I’m finding now, more than ever, that the game of a lifetime can give you the time of your life without ever striking a shot.
28. I know I have to make the putt. There is no alternative. It has to go in.

Source: golfdigest.com

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Stop me if this sounds familiar. You set up to hit a chip. You’ve got your weight forward, the shaft leaning toward the target, and you’re playing the ball off your back foot. When you swing, you catch the ball super low on the face, and skull it across the green. On the next attempt, you gouge a chunk of sod behind the ball, and it goes nowhere.

This might surprise you, but although the results of those two mis-hits are very different, they’re often caused by the same mistakes. The first is the bottom of your swing is in the wrong place, and the second is the club is not interacting with the turf the way it’s designed.

The name of this page is Gimme One Thing, but I’m going to give you two things to think about the next time your chipping issues flare up. Remember the words bottom and bounce. What do they mean and how do they apply to better chipping? When you think bottom, your focus should be on getting the club to hit the turf consistently in the same place. For chipping, that should be slightly ahead of the ball’s position on the ground. You can help make sure that happens by checking your shirt buttons and nose at setup. They should be slightly closer to the target than the ball. I like to say, as the nose goes, so does the bottom of your swing.

The second word to think about, bounce, means how the club interacts with the turf. You want the club to glide along the grass, not dig into it. The leading edge and trailing edge of the clubface should contact the ground evenly. The beauty of this technique is that the swing bottom can be a fraction off, and you’ll still likely hit a decent chip shot. No one will be the wiser.

So set up with your weight favoring your front foot, the ball in the middle of a narrow stance, and your nose and shirt buttons slightly closer to the target. Now when you swing, focus on letting the leading edge and trailing edge of the club make contact with the ground simultaneously right below your nose. Fixate on that, and your body and arms will intuitively move to get the bounce just right.

You’ll notice that I’m relatively still with my body going back; it’s mostly an arm swing. I do that to make sure my swing bottom won’t change from where I want it to be.

And when I swing down, I’m letting my body rotate toward the target. This rotation guides the club through impact on a shallow approach. There’s no chopping into the turf; it’s the right amount of interaction between the leading edge and the trailing edge. One final tip: Keep your body rotating long after the ball is gone like I am here.

Next time you struggle around the greens, remember: bottom and bounce.

SURVIVAL GUIDE
Golf instruction on the range is great, but sometimes you need help while you’re playing—stat! In his video series, “Bad-Ass Short Game,” Ritter tackles many of the issues regular golfers have around the greens and gives his unique—and bold—approach to correcting them.

Source: www.golfdigest.com