Bowden Ken - Golf my way: the instructional classic, revised and updated

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Copyright 1974, 2005 by Jack Nicklaus

Copyright renewed 2002 by Jack Nicklaus

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in whole or in part in any form.

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition 2005

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nicklaus, Jack.

Golf my way : the instructional classic, revised and updated / Jack Nicklaus with Ken Bowden; illustrations by Jim McQueen.1st Simon & Schuster trade pbk. ed.

p. cm.

1. Golf. I. Bowden, Ken. II. Title.

GV965.N496 2005
796.352'3dc22 2004063531

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-6712-0
ISBN-10: 0-7432-6712-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9596-0 (ebook)

by Jack Grout

Professional at La Gorce Country Club,
Miami Beach, Florida, and Jack Nicklaus
one and only teacher

Strength, intelligence, an enormous capacity for hard work, and unswerving adherence to sound fundamentals are the factors behind Jack Nicklaus fantastic successes as a golfer.

Strength may not be essential to play fine golf, but it is a priceless asset. The strong man can with comparative ease secure the height that is essential to carry the golf ball a long distance, and he also has the muscular capability to power the ball. These are critical factors at the highest reaches of the game, as is the stamina to practice and play day after day after day. It has been my privilege to observe or be associated with every great golfer of the twentieth century with the exception of Harry Vardon. Almost all of them were strong men. During my time in golf there have been some wonderful performances by men not gifted with great physical strength, but in the long haul they have run second to the powerful players. I believe that few men in the history of the game have possessed greater strength or more natural athletic ability than Jack Nicklaus.

Intelligence is necessary to a tournament golfer because the game is so difficult and inconstant that it can destroy anyone who lacks the capacity to control his emotions and to reason logically. Intelligence is necessary, too, in the acquisition of a profound knowledge of techniqueprofound enough to allow the player to be his own swing mechanic. The golfer who must fall back on a teacher every time any little thing sours in his game cannot but have a limited future. Jack Nicklaus still likes to come to me every year for a checkup, but, beyond that, he has asked for my help only when he hasnt been able to solve a problem after weeks or months of intense personal study and work. Such occasions have been rare.

Today Jack plays such sensational golf with such apparent ease that many people who watch him probably gain the impression that his skills are heaven-sent rather than self-developed. That isnt true. No one ever worked harder at golf than Nicklaus during his teens and early twenties. At the age of ten, in his first year of golf, Jack must have averaged three hundred practice shots and at least eighteen holes of play daily. In later years, he would often hit double that number of practice shots and play thirty-sixeven fifty-fourholes of golf a day during the summer. I have seen him practice for hours in rain, violent winds, snow, intense heatnothing would keep him away from golf. Even a slight case of polio failed to prevent him from turning up at Scioto for a golf match. With this kind of dedication, and all his other assets, it would have been surprising if he had not become a great player.

However, I believe the most significant of all the factors that have contributed to Jacks success has been his unswerving adherence to sound swing fundamentals. It was my good fortune to be the professional at the Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio, when this young man first became really keen on golf in 1950, and I take modest pride in having introduced him to many of the fundamentals that I consider to be the key to consistent play. But the credit for mastering those fundamentals, and for sticking to them through thick and thin, must go entirely to Jack. It is true that I have never had another pupil with so much natural talent for golf, or one so determined to excel at it. More significantly, I have never had another pupil who, once he was convinced about a fundamental, would so resolutely stick to it. The proof of that iron-willed commitment is to be seen in the fact that his basic swing is exactly the same today as it was fifteen years ago, when he won his first U. S. Amateur Championship at age nineteen. The benefits of it are evident in the present repetitiveness of his swing, and in the immense confidence he has in his technique today.

During forty years of teaching golf I have had a lot of naturally talented people pass through my hands. I feel I was able to help most of them, but none of the others progressed even halfway to what Nicklaus has achieved. I believe I can pinpoint a number of specific reasons why not.

First and probably foremost, the golf swing is, in my view, the most unnatural action in sport. It is extremely hard to teach, and even more difficult to learn. Consequently, unless a person has unusual amounts of ambition and dedication, the sheer difficulty of golf generally causes him to give it up long before he has attained his full potential at it.

Another reason there arent too many budding Nicklauses to be found on the lesson tee is that most people take up golf too late in life. The ideal age for starting is in the early teens. And then, even when a really promising youngster comes along, you have to be realistic about the distractions he will face in relation to the amount of time and concentration golf demands. I have always insisted that youngsters should not take golf lessons until they are ready to concentrategive the game their undivided attention and interest. I had no problem in this area with Jack. He was more single-minded about golf than any other youngster Ive ever known has been about anythingeven the opposite sex! For a very long period I dont think the young Nicklaus ever really thought about anything other than golf, and the better he became at it, the more he thought about it and the harder he was inspired to work at it.

However, I think the best clue to why Jack went on from where others with comparable natural talent have stopped lies in a brief sentence from his book The Greatest Game of All: I was fortunate to learn the fundamentals at an early age. Jack and I both know countless promising golfers who have become hopelessly confused through failing to learn these fundamentals at the outset, usually with the result that they start confused and then compound the confusion by switching from method to method or from teacher to teacher, until eventually they end up trying to play a dozen different ways all at once. Jack never fell into that trap, and I believe that his evasion of it is one of the less-recognized factors behind his greatness.