Nicklaus shares his knowledge in new book

BY iseekgolf.com | 07 Nov 2002

Before Tiger Woods was performing superhuman feats on the golf course, dominating the game so completely that his competitors could only shake their heads, there was Jack Nicklaus. Twenty major championships, comprising two U.S. Amateur titles, six Masters, four U.S. Opens, three British Opens and five PGA Championships, plus 19 seconds in the “Big Four” and 100 career victories. Indeed, for 17 consecutive years, not a season went by when Nicklaus didn’t win a PGA tournament. And that’s not even counting his domination of the Senior PGA Tour, with a record eight major championships there as well.

If you’re an average amateur golfer, the gap between your game and Jack’s may seem unbridgeable. But there’s only one way to play more like Nicklaus: one step at a time.

Nicklaus’s first instructional volume in many years, My Golden Lessons (Simon & Schuster) contains more than 120 time-tested tips to help you improve your entire range of golfing skills and greatly increase your enjoyment of the game. The topics cover the full spectrum of the game, from choosing the right equipment, on through the fundamentals of stance, grip, and setup, to the pursuit of power and the subtleties of the short game and putting.

Targeting amateur players who mostly already have some playing experience, Nicklaus distills a lifetime of superlative golf into concise, practical, easy-to-use lessons that he calls “Golden” because of their immense value to him personally over more than a 40-year competitive career.

Like the textbook Nicklaus swing, each lesson is a model of clarity and concision. Indeed, for anyone looking for extended anecdotes about the PGA Tour, or heavy doses of “golf mysticism,” this is not the book for you. But if you’re serious about learning exactly what it takes to improve your game, and getting a lot more fun from it, then look no further.

My Golden Lessons is a book that took a lifetime to prepare, but one that will improve your game from the first few minutes it spends in your hands. These are the techniques that made Jack Nicklaus the golfer he is, and his clear, bite-sized pointers will show you the path to hitting better shots, shooting lower scores, and enjoying the game more every time you play. The book will sell in Australia for around $50. (ISBN: 0-743-24107-X)