An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

Going pro shouldn't be the mark of success on this endeavor. There are a very limited number of seats and very likely pros have committed well more time.

The fact he got to a 2 handicap is evidence you can become a master. Especially since he suffered a physical limitation after about 6k hours.

Talent matters. Age matters. The ability to "get it" faster matters. Access makes you get it faster.

But to go from no game to a 2 handicap is proof extremely hard work pays off. To be in the top 5% of anything makes you elite even if it doesn't make you a pro in an extremely selective occupation. A top-5% engineer can work anywhere and make top money.

I remember when I found out that Gladwell was a journalist not a scientist. In science, cherry picking your data is malfeasance, and in journalism it is just good story telling. Which made me sad because I'd like to believe that you could 'practice your way' into some amazing profession.

I also followed Dan's progress for the first couple of years. Here was a guy who was putting things to the test in a way that had not been done before. I expect if he writes a book on the topic I would not be the only one who bought it.

So it is with some surprise that I read that Dan didn't know how to 'end it'. He did an amazing thing, and the results weren't what he expected or hoped but they were authentic and that is important. I don't think anyone who followed his story would say "oh he just slacked off for years" or any of that. I would hope he could sit back and evaluate it not as someone who 'failed to make the PGA' but rather as someone who tested this hypothesis of 10K hours and found it wanting. That is an excellent achievement and I hope he can see it that way.

I actually randomly looked this guy up months ago after thinking about him and wondering whatever became of his experiment. Sad to see how it ended.

Side note: the Atlantic's shit-tastic anti-ad blocker wouldn't let me in even though I'm a paying subscriber, AND I whitelisted them, so here's the AMP link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article...

Absolutely true story: A friend of mine could make a golf ball do just about anything and was a wonder to watch. He was a scratch player or better (I don't recall his exact handicap). On paper, he was professional standard. He could sink 10 foot putts all day long (my hyperbole), but what he could not do was sink a 10-foot putt, when it counted. By his own admission, he just did not have the match temperament to perform when the pressure was really on.

Golf at professional level is not just about skill, but also mental preparedness, fitness and probably a lot of other factors.

"The Sports Gene" [1] is an excellent book on this topic backed up by not only research but entertaining stories as well. It has a section about Dan but also has stories about a world champion high jumper who dedicated his life to high jumping only to be surpassed by someone who wasn't really interested in it and had been practicing for less than a year.

I think the lesson to take away from Dan's experience and what the author of this book argues as well is that yes, practice can make you a lot better. But to be among the best in the world, you'll need to have some sort of genetic advantage.

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Sports-Gene-Extraordinary-Athletic-Per...

I highly recommend people reading a similar story by Lyle McDonald, called No Regrets [0]. He drops everything to become a world-champion short-track speed skater, which is miles and miles less competitive than professional golf.

[0]: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/no-regrets-part-1....

I sort of did a similar experiment from 15-35 with boxing. Trained a lot and became pretty competent. But to get to the top hard work is not enough. You also need talent. There are people in the gym that had speed and strength without any training that I couldn't reach with daily hard training.

But I think doing this was probably still the best thing I did in my life. Doing something that seems out of reach and then becoming competent is great. Even without having success in the sense of winning.

Would have been a different story and probably had a better chance if would have started at 20. You'll find kids in high school and younger that have 2 handicaps, alot of physical abilities but less mental aspects for the game.

Steph Curry (basketball star) carries a 2 handicap so just having athletic talent can really make a difference, give him <2000 hours of practice and I'd bet he could play on the web.com tour.

I wonder how much the back problem mattered here. Because you see the same, in fighting sports. Every 3 years or so someone comes and starts intense practice, thinking they can just do this. And you can ...

But not if you practice hard enough to dislocate your knee in (the current record is) 2 months. Unless you're a kid, you need regular, long (as in a week minimum) breaks in practice. Every few months.

After spending some time machine learning golf for daily fantasy wagering, I came to the conclusion that I will never take up the sport. As a social activity it has its positives, but on the sporting side consistency and improvement are hard to come by.

* Professionals miss the cut n times in a row, then win next tournament.

* The ridiculous "tips" videos with all the machinations and methods they put forth to help you with your game - I'd rather play Twister.

* Equipment - costs and technology changes. Drivers are getting closer to looking like a sawed-off bowling ball attached to a shaft.

However, I do enjoy watching the pros play and Spieth's 13th hole in the British Open and follow up was a memorable event.

The PGA has to be commended for making public a great amount of super-detailed data for use in analysis. I wish the bigger sports did this.

The book "Every Shot Counts" by Mark Broadie may help guide you to improve your game, if you are interested in a data analysis approach.

Cheers

"There is golf, and then there is tournament golf." - Bobby Jones. Dan picked one of the most ridiculously hard endeavors to 'master' and never even had a cup of coffee at a mini-tour event, let alone advancing in any of his state qualifiers or local invitationals. Even the pros who have their tour card but are not in the field for the next tournament sometimes play in a 1-round Monday qualifier, and they have to shoot in the mid to low 60s to top a field of 125-185 players to grab an open slot. Even then they likely will miss the cut at the event, as most tour players do week in week out - except the true superstars. A 2-handicap shows you can manage your way around a course, but it's miles away from tour-level. Tour players are in the +5 to +8 range at their home clubs, and those are all championship tracks they play from the tips - just for practice.

I haven't read Gladwell's book, but I would imagine that time spent practicing is only one of several multipliers. Natural talent and the right coaching at the right time would be too others.

Since Malcolm Gladwell's book about 10,000 hours of practice, there must be dozens of stories that of people trying to reach that milestone in various pursuits (music, programming, arts). Would love to read a series of those (or maybe that's Gladwell's next book deal).

I started learning golf a few years ago and to me it definitely seems like something most people can master with practice. Especially if you are good at putting your mind in the right place. It's really easy to become too stressed in golf or too careless or get too focused and overthink the shot. It is most mindful than any sport I've played. [1]

With that said, I think there are two hard requirements for golf:

- Time

- Money

The first one comes with the second as someone who has f* you money can make a lot of time. I know someone who "retired" at 40 for two years to exclusively practice golf. He eventually went back to work, not because he had to but because he was bored (serial entrepreneurs have to start companies... it's an addiction)

I unfortunately am in the middle. I have been able to spend hundreds of dollars on the sport not thousands like some people I know. I have a hitting net at home I can go in my yard so I don't need to go to the driving range and that helps (a few hundred dollars well spent) but if I went to the course every weekend I'd be broke in no time. And I most certainly can't go on "Golf Vacations" half way around the country (though if I happen to be on vacation near a course I will go).

[1] I found my shot improves ridiculously if I step back, breath, and stop thinking so hard about it. I've spent a long time thinking about shots only to slice it then gone up to the tee and swung without giving it a second thought and hit a perfect shot... repeatedly.

It's the "Talent bound" vs "Effort bound" mindset.

I side with "Effort bound" as a life motto. To challenge myself, if not for correctness relatively to the reality.

We should be careful drwaing conclusions about the value of practice here.

The main problem with this endeavor is the definition of success. The outcome is strictly binary. That is either he makes a pro tour or not. Apart from publicity, there is not a whole lot that can be redeemed if Dan gets, say, only 90% there.

There are numerous ways one can challenge himself or herself and benefit enormously along the way to the top 6% in the respective field. For example, if it were finance, then he would have been very wealthy. If it were triathlon, then he'd be in great physical health. Etc.

In real life going for it is not the only thing that leads to success. It's also choosing wisely what you do.

>“We [talked] about the idea of quitting everything to pursue something single-mindedly and whole-heartedly,” McLaughlin recounts. “Did you need talent or was it all about hard work?”

Why not apply that mindset to commercial photography, the field he was already in?

If you like this story you may also be interested in the book "Paper Tiger" by Tom Coyne. Same idea of total dedication to making the PGA, but starting as a guy who played competitively in his youth, but had gotten rusty. He was shooting in the 80s, and decided to dedicate a year to it. Entertaining read I thought.

10,000 hours is taken from the book Outliers, but it's not even true mastery. It's said to be the level where Bill Gates entered Harvard. 10,000 hours is more journeyman level than mastery.

The book Mastery goes into much more detail, where it repeats that 10,000 hours is necessary, but there are other components to mastery. Among them is mentorship and creating some form of masterwork.

The pro athletes have gone far past the 10,000 hours mark, but chances are they also had mentors and they've also taken some risks and invented their own styles. Keep practicing.

He is not an average guy if he decides to do such a thing.

Pure marketing and zero professionalism it seems. A real person attempting pro will have real trainers. They will help him make plans that don't overstress his body in a way that kills his back in 5 years. Then you set goals that are hard but reachable, not outright impossible. Of course some "impossible" goals can be reached, but not without first achieving some goals from the "possible" category.

I feel like there is some confusion between being successful and being professional. You could deliberately practice a sport or music for ~10,000 and be really damn good, but that doesn't mean you will go pro. That part is about luck and connections. Just because you are very skilled doesn't necessarily mean you will be "spotted" or "discovered" for example.

There's an episode of My Name is Earl based on this premise.

Should've gotten a Meeseeks

People seem to have a maximum skill level that they can attain, and hard training keeps them at that level, but can't get them any higher. If they quit hard training their skills drop quickly.

Children's sports is a process where you have a bunch of kids play and the coach looks to see which kids have an affinity for the sport. It is essentially a weed-out process that eliminates most kids.

Natural Talent + Dedication = a chance to be great at something.

I was an over achieving 6'2" power forward in junior college. Led the team in rebounding and blocked shots, but was always matched against guys 6'5" and taller, and 20 or more pounds of muscle heavier.

So I don't care how much practice I did under what regime, I had already found my limits. 6'-2".

Neat article, I wonder how much of that concept really belonging in the athletic arena, however. Also, Gretzky is spelled with a Z

Kudos to him throwing caution to the wind and trying it. That took guts