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Advice from Jack Nicklaus

In the Foreword of THE BOBBY JONES STORY, version 2003, Jack Nicklaus comments on great advice that he got from Bobby Jones Jr.
It came to me secondhand, through my father. Bobby Jones said “I think I was a fairly good golfer but I never became what I would call a really good golfer until I had been competing for quite a few seasons. Whenever anything went wrong I’d run home to Stewart Maiden, our pro at East Lake. Finally, I matured to the point where I understood my game well enough to make my own corrections during the course of a tournament, and that’s when I’d say I became a good golfer.”
Jack continues “When my dad relayed this to me, it made a particularly strong impression because whenever something had gone wrong in a tournament, I had run home to Jack Grout…I was always running back to Jack Grout to fix me up. This is why Jones’ statement hit me so right, it made me much more determined to learn everything I could about my swing so that, to some extent, I could diagnose my own errors and put myself back on my game. I cannot tell you how big a factor this is in tournament play. It may be the biggest factor of all in shaping success or failure in the crucible of competition.”
O.B.Keeler’s book is a superb golf story.
[photopress:B_Jones_Gene_Sarazen_23_US_Open_InwoodGC.JPG,full,pp_image]
Jones and Sarazen 1931

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Robert Thompson

A bestselling author and award-winning columnist, Robert Thompson has been writing about business and sports, and particularly golf, for almost two decades. His reporting and commentary on golf has appeared in Golf Magazine, the Globe and Mail, T&L Golf and many other media outlets. Currently Robert is a columnist with Global Golf Post, golf analyst for Global News and Shaw Communications, and Senior Writer to ScoreGolf. The Going for the Green blog was launched in 2004.

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