'Sometimes the biggest problem is in your head. You’ve got to believe you can play a shot instead of wondering where your next bad shot is coming from.'

The greatest golf shots of all time

Television began capturing golf shots in 1954 when NBC first aired the US Open. Since then, cameras have captured the once-in-a-lifetime shots of the Tour's top players. Watch this Mojo video to learn which golfer hit the only sudden-death-ace ever, see Jack Nicklaus hit the flag at the 1972 US Open, and Tiger Woods' iconic chip at the Masters in 2005.

A quote from sports journalist Stuart Scott

"In football, as in life, the hits you don’t see coming are the ones that do the most damage."

'Reputation is what others think about you. What’s far more important is character, because that is what you think about yourself.'

- Tennis champion Billie Jean King (1943-present)

'Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.'

- Willie Nelson (1933-present)

Examining golf's problems with race

In 1961, the PGA removed the "Caucasian-only" membership clause, marking the last major professional sports organization to desegregate. But unlike other sports, golf didn't see an influx of Black players following the change. This article from The Ringer's Lex Pryor examines golf's complicated history with race and gender, showing both the progress made and the challenges that remain.

"Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution."

- Baseball star Hank Aaron (1934-2021)

'It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.'

- Legendary boxer Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

'When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.'

- Author Jacqueline Susann (1918-1974)

'The minute you start talking about what you're going to do if you lose, you have lost.'

- Diplomat George Shultz (1920–2021)

How Charles Blair Macdonald changed the design behind golf

Macdonald's contributions to golf course design, including 21 principles still used today, are just as legendary as the game's players. This deep dive into the mostly forgotten figure explores his legacy, including why he never charged for his services.

'You only go around once, but if you play your cards right, once is enough.'

- Frank Sinatra (1915–1998)

'In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.'

- Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen (1953–2018)

'The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.'

- Roger Bannister (1929-2018)

'Practice, which some regard as a chore, should be approached as just about the most pleasant recreation ever devised.'

- Legendary athlete Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

A quote by Lucille Ball

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

A Guardian writer turned midlife chess slump into an obsession

Journalist Stephen Moss embarked on a chess self-improvement journey described in "The Guardian." Not a how-to, but a reflection on loss, drive, and whether mastering chess can mean mastering oneself.

'Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a persons own mind—than on the externals in the world.'

- George Washington (1732-1799)

'Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.'

- Harper Lee from "To Kill a Mockingbird"

'You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.'

- Actress and comedian Tina Fey (1970-present)

'Without goals, training has no direction.'

- Twelve-time Olympic swimming medalist Natalie Coughlin (1982-present)

Ranking life's biggest decisions

Psychological research presents some unsurprising wisdom about how to make big decisions without regret: focus on people, don’t miss opportunities, and stay true to yourself.

Understanding college basketball's guru, UCLA's John Wooden

John Wooden coached UCLA to an unprecedented 10 NCAA titles, including seven straight from 1967 to 1973. He studied the characteristics that made people successful and, in 1948, created his iconic triangular diagram with 25 common behaviors. This article unpacks the 25-block framework that makes the "Pyramid of Success" and shows how Wooden's off-court wisdom shaped future champs like Bill Walton and Steve Kerr.

Addressing psychological barriers to building wealth

Almost half of adults in the US report owning no investable assets. For many, the barrier to entry is the belief that investing is too complex for them to get involved. Consulting with a financial psychologist, this article addresses the cognitive bias that causes so many people to miss out on financial opportunities, and offers tips on how to get past the anxieties and just begin.

How to write a great speech

Before walking onto a stage or booting up a Zoom meeting to deliver a speech or presentation, you have to know what story you want to tell. This story acts as a keystone, providing an ideological foundation on which the rest of the speech balances. This story should be bigger than the moment it's delivered, giving listeners the ability to connect to expressed concepts across time.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Doctors differentiate between a phobia and fear by asking patients whether their fear interferes with their day-to-day activities.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.