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You've made an extremely weak argument.

You're saying:

Golf is mostly mental. That certainly isn't a problem: you can train mentality. In fact what you've just argued is that golf is well-suited to be conquered purely through training (among sports). Dan would have a much harder time becoming effective in basketball, where normal-size people are at a huge disadvantage off the bat.

Golf requires feel. Where do you think feel comes from? (Training!) Again, you've actually argued that golf is well-suited to Dan's approach, not the opposite.

You've seen this before. No you haven't. Come on.

Golf is hard. That's tautological. Anything that can reasonably be called an endeavor is in some sense infinitely hard. (Also: how do you know that shaving off those last few strokes is impossible once you've achieved your potential? Did you dedicate your life to golf?)

Sometimes you'll have a day of training that won't contribute to your progress. Anybody trying to learn anything will experience days like that.

This is a cool and ballsy experiment and you're being a bit of a hater. Do I think Dan will become a PGA golfer? No, but I'm looking forward to seeing him try.

An interesting response. This statement however is demonstrably incorrect:

"This guy is wasting his time."

Whether or not you believe his hypothesis, you cannot deny that he is not rigorously testing it. And one of two things will be true at the end of his experiment; He'll be playing in the PGA, or he won't. In both cases he has learned a number of valuable things, and he will have advanced the understanding of expertise in some small way, and perhaps he will have opened up some new avenues for exploration.

Personally I don't know if I could put 10K hours into something that I wasn't really enjoying, coding? sure, golfing? not so much. (even though I was employee #9 at GolfWeb :-)) So on that level I think his experiment is doubly valuable.

And one of two things will be true at the end of his experiment; He'll be playing in the PGA, or he won't. In both cases he has learned a number of valuable things

Though one could argue that "learning an important lesson" isn't enough payoff for six whole years of your life. "Well," he can say, "I spent six years of my life, and fuck-knows-how-many hundred thousand dollars in lost earning potential, and I still didn't get good enough to be anything other than a children's golf instructor at a suburban course in Ohio, but... hey, I learned that I'm actually not all that good at golf."

Its an interesting argument hugh3, that the learning is insufficient payoff for 6 years of your life, but the cynic in my says the same could be said of going to college and coming out with a masters degree is Celtic Literature of the medieval period. (6 years, little employment in the field, not a Phd so you probably can't get a teaching job, etc etc).

Lets say he does make it into the PGA, and plays for four years and doesn't win a single tournament but finishes in the money in all of them. (note that generally the top 70 or so players all get some money [1]) Depending on his walk through that distribution he has a good shot at making a million dollars over four years ($250K/yr). Which would be the equivalent of having made 100K/yr for 10yrs.

The payment schedule is another area where the PGA differs greatly from other sports which appear to have a much shallower 'money' pool. (I'm familiar with Golf, less so with say Nascar racing or Tennis for example).

The other assumption in your response is this one "but... hey, I learned that I'm actually not all that good at golf." which is at the heart of the whole Expertise/Outliers debate.

The hypothesis is that there is a 'base level' of expertise which anyone can achieve with 10,000 hrs of focused practice. And once you have invested that time the difference between your performance and that of someone who was 'gifted from birth' will normalize out, or more precisely winning or losing becomes more statistical rather than expertise related.

No doubt he's getting some sponsorship money from Nike and others who are betting that he will generate enough publicity like this to put their brand in front of others who are attracted by his story, so earning potential isn't exactly 'wasted' so much as 'different.' It wasn't clear from the original article to me what sort of pay scale he might expect 'working for the man' as it were. So its hard to evaluate the opportunity cost of that path.

So if the hypothesis is correct, and he's rigorous in his training/practice, then he will make back much more than his 'earning potential' over those 6 years. Much like an investor listening to a start-up pitch which will take 6 years to disrupt the market. Give the guy credit for going 'all in'.

[1] http://frankosport.us/golf/Purse/index.html

I'm thinking a book deal.

He's already on the lecture circuit...

That was my first thought as well.

Well, chances are you'll have a better tan & more vitamin D. Yet I can't imagine that you can get a masters in Celtic Literature of any period without studying something other than Celtic Literature. You will have a bachelors degree as well, with more to it than quite a few of the degrees out there.

How is this different from sinking 6 years of your life into a startup? Are the skills you acquire from running a startup more transferable to other businesses, and therefore makes it okay even if you fail and learn that you're not that good at running your own gig?

Also, practicing a sport is always good for other reasons. Maybe he can add a year to his life and enjoy living outdoors for six years. Not bad.

I think you're missing a few key points:

1. It helps to get started out right with no bad habits to unlearn. For example, I started playing disc golf and I got on a forum and everyone said "Start with a putter and nothing else." Two years later I have what might be called a fairway driver(innova Gazelle) as my fastest disc in the bag. I can play against guys that are throwing discs 2x or even 3x faster than I am and I compete against them pretty well. My shots aren't as far, but they are better shaped and more accurate. I can also putt much better than them. If you start out how he did learning how to putt first and working backwards you will have a very solid game. Did you do this?

2 You need dedicated practice, not just any practice. The time you dick around with friends, try trick shots, go out and drink some beer don't count. Most people spend a large part of their 'practice' doing this. I was putting 1,000+ times a night to improve my putting game and that was deliberate, dedicated practice.

3.I would agree with you if you would have said, "This guy has no history of sticking with anything." The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. It's going to take a lot to change his behavior and stick with it. But the fact that he hasn't touched a golf club isn't going to hold him back.

I believe this guy is adding significantly to the sport of golf, human behavior research, and just doing awesome experiments. Congrats to him, and I wish him the best!

But do you not think it possible that your perspective (as a golfer from a young age) is skewing the reality of your statement? I specifically state this because you talk in such absolutes.

One's brain will typically dismiss a "n00b" trying to become good at something that one is good at without the experience that one has. I believe this is possible because if they do succeed it will invalidate ones own experience which can be a reality our brain wishes to shelter us from.

To make this more relevant to our industry I occasionally bump into the same problem when applying for coding jobs due to my lack of degree and the possession of a degree by the person advertising for the position.

Exactly - look at TV shows like MTV's 'Made' and similar, where people 'focus' (in the case of 'Made', not even very hard) and get to a respectable level, just by having a coach and putting in some time. There are other TV shows where people actually take 10 weeks or so to do something full time - things that the 'pros' say of that it's so hard to learn (like dancing, or hairdressing, or whatever). They usually compete with serious amateurs or pros at the end, and often cannot be picked out as the 'amateurs'.

People want to believe that what they do is so hard that it requires many years of practice, but in reality it's often just not true.

That made me think of a show that was on the golf channel where they tried to make Charles Barkley into a respectable golfer.

Despite a highly competent coach and many hours of practice, it ended badly IIRC.

With Barkeley there was something else going on. Barkeley is an extreme example, read this:

http://www.golf.com/golf/tours_news/article/0,28136,2056371,...

This in particular was useful to read:

"That was the weird thing about Barkley. You did fix him. On the range and on the simulator, he had 300-yard drives. He couldn't take it to the course. He had the mental full-swing yips, and you had him killing it.

Yeah, the change was that before he couldn't do it on the range. Now he can do it on the range, but still can't do it on the course. So he's playing left-handed now. He's actually pretty good.

It's bizarre that a professional athlete wouldn't be physically able to do it.

He is physically able to, he isn't mentally able to. It's bizarre when somebody shoots less than 50 percent from the foul line, it's bizarre when Chuck Knobloch can't throw it to first base, it's bizarre when Rick Ankiel throws 18 pitches in a row to the backstop. But it happens."

I had to look up Rick Ankiel. Interesting story of what sounds like a complete mental breakdown of a skill. Tiger Woods seems to be going through a minor form of this now.

I'm not sure it will work. I expect golf rewards basic aptitudes like co-ordination, strength and stamina, etc., and that pros' endowments on these are four or five standard deviations from the population norm. They were likely selected for those endowments prior to most of their practice. Where is Dan on that curve? But I suppose how much these endowments matter, or whether work can enhance them, is a rough part of this experiment.

I am sure that I like his approach a damn sight better than yours. The guy is _working_. He'll have to beat all sorts of inner demons to get to 10,000 hours. He'll end up knowing a lot about learning, and himself, when he's done. That's my kind of guy.

Meanhwile, you are lobbing poorly thought-out downerisms. "get great at playing the course"? Gee, do you think maybe he'll budget some of his 10k for that? or that the ability to hit his shot straight _every_single_time_ might help? or that all those hours will do something for his mental chops? Coding "has structured guidelines for success"? None of this is intelligent, never mind constructive.

You're only 25, you were clearly a good athlete, you made YC, congratulations. No doubt worked your ass off up to this point. Well, some people have to grind it out even harder than you've had to. If you can't spare the time to think through helpful commentary, respect their dedication and keep your mouth shut.

I'm not sure it will work. I expect golf rewards basic aptitudes like co-ordination, strength and stamina, etc., and that pros' endowments on these are four or five standard deviations from the population norm.

In golf (unlike most pro sports) it isn't immediately obvious that this is the case. Sure, most golfers are in shape, but few aerobically fitter than a recreational 10K runner, and the variation in max drive length between successful pros shows that strength is pretty variable too.

As an extreme example there are players like John Daly, who is overweight, smokes and is a double major winner.

We might, on close examination, find that pro golfers have extraordinary endowments on attributes subtler than sheer speed or strength. Stuff like depth perception, coordination of full-body motions, balance, maybe some cognitive attributes like executive control of focus, etc.

As others have noted, the effort is in part a test of people's ability to enhance these endowments. I _think_ most people putting in 10,000 hours got feedback that their basic endowments give them some advantage.

I suspect that something like that will operate here. If at some point Dan hits diminishing returns, and can't punch through by varying his approach and allowing for natural human slumps, that may be a signal that he lacks the physical tools to go all the way. Even then that isn't a waste of time, he'll have learned a lot about focus, and about detecting where his natural advantages do lie. That has to inform the search for his real calling.

One way or the other, it'll be interesting.

"pros' endowments on these are four or five standard deviations from the population norm. They were likely selected for those endowments prior to most of their practice."

In the Outliers book, Gladwell also talks about the topic of how kids are selected for in sports. He uses the example of hockey. Essentially, the kids start out young and there isn't much difference in their ability in the beginning. But the 'chosen' kids get more attention, instruction and practice. So over the years they become "four or five standard deviations from the population norm", to use your phrase, but they don't start out that way.

In the hockey example, it comes down to size. A typical 6 and half year old is bigger, and that much more developed that a 6 year old, and they are slightly better players because of it. Essentially, this small advantage gets exaggerated.

So, according to Gladwell, people all start out in a very similar place, and it's the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and work that makes the difference.

I don't know if this guy will make the PGA (there aren’t too many spots), but I am confident he'll be several standard deviations better than the population norm.

The book Soccernomics touches on a similar point: how socioeconomic factors influence the pool of candidates for spending inordinate amounts of time training. In the case of the English national football club, the fact that the pool of national team players was historically concentrated among players coming from working class backgrounds shrunk the sampling of genetic talent (since kids from upperclass backgrounds had more opportunities both athletically, academically and economically) which led them out of the pool.

In the US, the position of golf within society constrains the genetic pool from which top players will emerge, which may in turn lead to tour pros being much more likely to come from classes and situations with easier or cheaper access to golf courses than due to innate ability. The range may still skew towards those with physical gifts doing better, but not as much as you would think. Given these constraints he may have a much better shot at achieving success in golf than in other sports that draw from larger genetic pools. (E.g., compare the number of kids playing competitive high school and college football to the number playing competitive golf.)

That said, there are around 22,000 people in the US who could be considered "club pros" or instructors of golf, and around 150 slots on the PGA tour. His 1 in 100 shot would just about correspond to these numbers if you figure that most of those club pros have put in close to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (allowing them to get paid to hang around the golf course) and it is certainly reasonable to believe that he will achieve that level with his current plan.

"[Pros] were likely selected for those endowments prior to most of their practice."

That is exactly the point of the 10,000 hour practice - to provide a documented counterexample to that point of view, in accordance with recent theory on expertise training.

"Golf, beyond mental and physical, requires great feel. To be able to know that in 15 mile an hour wind, with your ball half buried by sand, and water in front of the green, how would one hit that shot? There are millions of variations of what you could end up with on the golf course, none that could be figured out in 10,000 hours."

10,000 hours is a long time, what makes you think it is not enough time to acquire a great feel for golf? How long did it take you to acquire your great feel?

I still wouldn't say I have a 'Great Feel'.

How many hours of golf practice do you estimate you have under your belt, out of curiosity?

This brings to mind Arthur C. Clarke's first law[1].

There's a difference between making the case that someone can do something because you have experience in doing it and making the case that someone can't because you haven't. There are presumably quite a few people who've tried an approach similar to yours, but there aren't that many who have tried Dan's approach... yet.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

So what you are saying (whether you meant to or not) is not that it is impossible to become a pro in 10,000 hours... but rather that your training has be to be focused on what "being a pro" really means.

If he were to integrate your exact points into his training, it certainly sounds like enough time to resolve your issues.

I am (...) running a YC company and whiteyboard

How is this relevant?

Keep it up. I'm sure people who dismiss him with a laundry list of reasons why he's going to fail add fuel to his fire.

10,000 hours is an awful lot of golf - 20 hours a week for 10 years. Seems to match up with your estimates pretty well.

Not all hours are equal, it's pretty close to impossible to be as productive while you're tired as when you're well rested. Not to mention that the person you're quoting is not a professional golfer. Tiger is probably closer to 100,000 hours than he is to 10,000...

I'd be shocked if Tiger Woods has spent more than 30-40,000 hours golfing. Do the math.

He never said he wants to take on Tiger Woods. The experiment seeks to validate and analyze whether or not 10k hours of practice will get one to expertise. I find it dismissive for all expert golfers (whether pro or not) below Woods (who lies at the extreme top end of the expertise pool).

Here's some perspective: for Woods to have golfed 100,000 hours, he should have done so: - 8 hours a day every single day since he was born. or - 11 hours a day every single day since he was 10.

Let me start off by saying I clearly added an extra 0 pre-edit. Tiger hasn't been alive for a million hours.

Second, I said closer to 100,000 than 10,000. So I'm taking the over on 55k hours. Although I do think 100k is possible, even if unlikely(say 4-5 hours a day from 2-21, then 18 a day from 21-present). I do think he's probably averaged more than 8 hours a day since he turned pro if you include all activities that are meant to improve his ability on the golf course. That's clearly pretty close to the upper bound but more likely than 10k.

Finally I agree that it's dismissive towards incredible golfers and I think that's why it's so many people looked at the article and commented here. I have no doubt that if someone puts in 10k hours over 6 years they would likely be a damn good golfer(better than scratch) but touring pro level is very unlikely. The issue in my mind that this article is stupid because either 1) It's obvious that you could get very good but perhaps not incredible at something after 10k hours of practice or 2) because we go by the title and realize that becoming a touring pro after not touching a golf club in the first 30 years of your life is not at all likely.

If you play 50 hours a week you would still need almost 400 years to have played 1,000,000 hours...

It seems likely you're biased due to your experiences being isolated at a young age. Yes, this person has no chance of ever succeeding at any of your golfing accomplishments because he can't get any younger to even try them! Yet in a turn of events, he is probably more likely than you to ever make it to the pro tour (however unlikely).

If you actually read the article, he doesn't so much care about making it pro. "He grants that there's a "99 percent chance I'm not going to become a PGA golfer ... Basically, what I'm trying to do with this project is demonstrate how far you're able to go if you're willing to put in the time."

Isn't the 10,000 hour most commonly applied to things like playing the violin? I haven't seen many cases of it being applied to coding, nor language learning, in the academic papers I've read anyway...

I can recommend reading "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance", it paints a clear pictures of what Expertise actually is.

I can recommend reading "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

I upvoted your comment to agree with your recommendation of the definitive book on the subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handbo...

To answer the question you pose above about other domains, I have not seen language learning reported in the expert performance literature, but I was a language learner (native speaker of English who was studying Chinese) who perhaps arguably did reach expert level in my acquired language (I passed testing to be a contract Chinese-English interpreter for the United States federal government). It took perhaps 10,000 learning contact hours (many of those hours during a three-year stay overseas after completing my undergraduate degree in Chinese) to reach that level of language proficiency, which was confirmed by other tests. I also had excellent instruction in Chinese with some of the best materials then avaiable, and a lot of supportive help from linguistics that I studied at the time. Some of my advice on language learning

http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html

would probably help other learners get the most benefit per hour in their language learning situations that they can.

What I find most interesting about K. Anders Ericsson's research on expert performance is the suggestion that some domains have few or no experts, when experts are defined as persons with statistically reliably superior performance in the domain. The example I recall from one of his research papers is choosing common stocks in which to invest for sustained high returns. Some people beat the market for a while, but most stick-pickers do very little better than simply investing in a diverse basket of stocks chosen without conscious thought.

How many hours of golf do you estimate you have played? At what point did you become "good"?

Saying you've been playing for 19 years means nothing. That could be 1 hour a week or 40 hours a week.

To me, it's hard to know what counts as an hour of golfing anyway. Playing golf is, for the most part, a time-inefficient way of practicing golf. You take a couple of hours to go round the course, and if you're good you're only making ninety shots in that time. Go to the driving range or putting green, though, and you can practice ninety shots in five minutes.

I had a similar thought with regards to high stakes gambling (pool, poker, golf, backgammon and prop trading). When you learn to do any of these one has to learn how to deal with making decisions under time and money pressure. Everybody that has ever played a sport competitively has made mistakes under duress that are difficult to explain later because your mind shuts off during that period. This is probably a limbic response to stress - your first instinct under danger is to switch to flight/fight and may not be using the framework that 10k hours (or however much time spent) built. Everyone can get better at moderating their response to this but I suspect that some people are naturally better suited at shrugging off the blaze of autonomic responses and still be able to focus on the task at hand properly. The people who attempt to put in 10k and fail because they can't handle pressure aren't accounted for. It makes for a nice book but saying 10k hours is all it took Michael Jordan or Gretzky or Mozart to hit their "master level" ignores this survivorship bias.

I think Jason has a good point that hitting a golf ball and being able to function under pressure are two very very different abilities and professional golf is most likely selecting for both abilities.

If somebody is willing to put 10,000 hours in anything it requires dedication and the mental strength. If someone was extremely dedicated you can put in 40 hours a week it would still take 5 years to accomplish this. This guy has a decent chance to make if he does do this. My thoughts he probably won't finish.

I think you could be right about golf being a bad choice for 10000 hours, but I don't think you're looking at the challenge the right way.

Re: 1) I think the idea is that 10000 hours of practice include all aspects of the game. There is no reason why his plan can't include playing his way up through all grades of tournaments and working on his mental game.

2) That sounds exactly like the kind of experience turned into intuition that the human brain is good at. I don't think there is any reason to think that aspect is inbuilt (though of course it might be).

3) But 10000 hours? Thats 6 days a week for 6 years.

4) I think this guy would be very happy being a mediocre pro.

5) Yeah I'm not sure I get that point at all. You don't have to get a good score to practice attentively.

>To become good at golf does not mean that you can sit on the driving range and hit golf balls every day until your hands bleed.

I disagree with this part. Fighters learn to fight by sparring with each other in very controlled settings. The first time they have a situation where the other person is trying to hurt them in earnest is in the ring. "Ring rust" (the equivalent to actual course play, playing in front of people, etc.) does play a role but it's a vastly smaller role than the actual techniques which can be learned in isolation.

There was a famous pro golfer who said he used to hit golf balls on the course until he got to the green and then take the ball and move on. There was no reason for him to practice the greens because he could do that elsewhere. Isolated training seemed to work for him.

tl;dr I think you're putting way too much value on playing in front of people and putting all the techniques together. Learning the techniques themselves is the hard part in any sport.

When I read this I'm thinking of Unskilled and Unaware of It[1]. You know how hard golf is because you have som experience with golf. But probably lots of things that you don't think would be as hard as golf actually is just as hard.

[1] http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~dunning/publications/pdf/un...

I see an opportunity for taking a friendly bet here. :) Instead of debating, you guys should make bets and wait.

All of this may be true, 6 years is a long time and if he takes your guidance he should plan to spend time with a sports psychologist early on and get spectated match practice as early as feasible (say after 4 years).

It's doable, very, very unlikely I grant you, but it's doable.

Do you have more or less than 10,000 hours of golf experience?

Jason, Your insightful comments fully illustrate the 10,000 hour expertise challenge. I speculate that each of the issues you mention can be addressed by comprehensive coaching and incremental practice.

Dan had no bad golf habits to break and has been coached from the very first stroke. Suppose Dan can be coached not to lose his temper? Suppose Dan can be coached to recover mentally from a poor shot? Furthermore, with an exercise coach hopefully Dan can avoid the injuries that plague golf pros.

Update in response to your update: Coaching is what makes hours of practice productive. Bad days reinforce bad habits. Dan is already playing a variety of geographically dispersed golf courses and is accustomed to bad weather. According to his blog posts, his recent bad days result in better scores than his good days just a few weeks earlier.

Jason, think back over your golf career - wonder how much better you could have been with no bad habits to unlearn, and constant comprehensive coaching.

Nike is wise to back Dan. What a story!

I suspect Jason has allowed pride to inflate himself somewhat. He probably has come to feel that things like the 'mental game' of golf is an innate ability he posses and others do not, rather than something he has come to earn.

This is not an insult, especially as he had to earn it to even have it; it is a folly I find myself making often as well. Once you have beat something into yourself so thoroughly it feels like second nature, even you begin to suspect maybe it really was second nature after all.