Bob Rotella

You need to dream bigger than most people think is possible. To be exceptional and ultimately achieve greatness, you need a vivid and unlimited imagination about how good you can get.

I’ve never seen a top player who didn’t have a consistent pre-shot routine and a consistent routine before and after every competitive round. Stay committed to whatever routine you develop—keeping it simple and intuitive—and you’ll be on your way to playing the best golf of your life.

I tell a lot of players I work with that you have to learn to see yourself the way I see you—loaded with talent and potential.

You don’t want to be careless, but there is a benefit to caring less.

You must remember that when you are chasing a dream and going for greatness, it’s all about possibilities, not about probabilities.

Golf is a game of adversity. Yes, you have to go through the fire, but if you want to be a great golfer, you also have to love the bad, you have to expect the bad, just as you have to love the good and expect the good. It’s all part of chasing your destiny.

You will never believe in your ability if you are trying to be someone else.

In golf, as in other sports, the real heroics take place when no one else is watching. If you want to see how great you can be your belief in your dreams must match your day-to-day commitment to making those dreams a reality.

People with confident, optimistic outlooks tend to succeed. People who are pessimistic, who lack confidence, tend to fail.

I’m always telling people that I don’t care what their families or their schools or their communities said or thought about them. I tell them, ‘You’re an adult now, and you get to decide.’ So what’s the decision going to be? You get to write your life story. Will you be heroic or just someone trying to get by? Will you be the star or someone sitting on the end of the bench?

Striving to be exceptional is never easy. But when people tell me that what I’m suggesting they do won’t be easy, I just say, ‘You’re right!’ Going after big ideas takes sweat. It takes persistence, patience, and a bedrock belief in yourself. Not everyone will do it. That’s why we call it being exceptional.

After years of thought and research about the human mind and human behavior, William James wrote this: ‘People tend to become what they think about themselves.’ There is enormous wisdom in that sentence. And there is enormous hope.

It’s almost as if exceptional people belong to a special club. In this club, the members know that the average person limits himself. They know that the exceptional person is exceptional in large part because he doesn’t limit himself.

Jack [Nicklaus] told the golf team... ‘You have to be a legend in your own mind before you can be a legend in your own time.’

In sports or in business, if you’re not aspiring to dominate, to be the very best, you’re coasting. And you can only coast in one direction.

People who go for greatness are going to get knocked down a lot. They’ll have difficult times. They’ll struggle with doubt and uncertainty. People around them will question the wisdom of their quest. The issue is not whether you’ll fail, because you will. It’s whether you’ll get back up and keep going. It’s whether you can sustain your self-confidence and your belief in yourself and keep bouncing back. Failure is only final when you stop striving.

But as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm. Somewhere and somehow, exceptional people find the way to bring that enthusiasm to what they do, and they find it every day.

I don’t see a lot of exceptional people whom I’d characterize as well-rounded. I see a lot more people who are very single-minded. They have a passion for one thing, and they pursue it zealously. They generally reserve time for family when they’re not pursuing their passion. But that’s about all the spare time they have.

Once an individual has a philosophy, he should be ready to answer the question ‘What if I fail?’ He should understand that over the span of a lifetime, the only lasting failure is the failure to try. He appreciates the opportunity to find out what he can do with his life and career.

Courage is fear turned inside out. It is impossible to be courageous if at first you weren’t afraid.

Before playing any shot, a golfer must lock her eyes and mind into the smallest possible target.

A golfer must learn to enjoy the process of striving to improve the short game.

A golfer must train his swing and then trust it.

When great athletes stop trusting, they stop being great.

A golfer can and must decide how he will think.

If a golfer chooses to compete, he must choose to believe that he can win. Winners and losers in life are completely self-determined, but only the winners are willing to admit it.

But they and other champions all have a few common characteristics. They are strong-willed, they all have dreams, and they all make a long-term commitment to pursue those dreams.

The challenge lies not in understanding the concepts I teach, for, as I’ve said, they’re simple and make common sense. The challenge lies in thinking this way every day on every shot.

There is no such thing as a golfer playing over his head. A hot streak is simply a glimpse of a golfer’s true potential.

I don’t see a lot of exceptional people whom I’d characterize as well-rounded. I see a lot more people who are very single-minded. They have a passion for one thing, and they pursue it zealously.

When an athlete locks his eyes and mind onto a small target, the ball naturally tends to follow.

People with confident, optimistic outlooks tend to succeed. People who are pessimistic, who lack confidence, tend to fail.

In sports or in business, if you’re not aspiring to dominate, to be the very best, you’re coasting. And you can only coast in one direction.

People who go for greatness are going to get knocked down a lot. They’ll have difficult times. They’ll struggle with doubt and uncertainty. People around them will question the wisdom of their quest. The issue is not whether you’ll fail, because you will. It’s whether you’ll get back up and keep going. It’s whether you can sustain your self-confidence and your belief in yourself and keep bouncing back. Failure is only final when you stop striving.