The Dan Plan - 10,000 Hours to Become a Pro Golfer (Dan McLaughlin)

[flopster]

Holy cow, his hips start creeping back forwards in the turn once his arm hits parallel in the backswing. That almost looks painful to do.

That's definite manipulation going on there, he's still got a very closed face on the takeaway, also his weight is way out on his toes and it looks like all these moves are only there to keep him from falling forward. He will never be able to hit a driver for any consistency until he learns how to swing the club with more body, right now he's doing everything with his hands and arms.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pretzel

Holy cow, his hips start creeping back forwards in the turn once his arm hits parallel in the backswing. That almost looks painful to do.

That's definite manipulation going on there, he's still got a very closed face on the takeaway, also his weight is way out on his toes and it looks like all these moves are only there to keep him from falling forward. He will never be able to hit a driver for any consistency until he learns how to swing the club with more body, right now he's doing everything with his hands and arms.

It does not look like he can hit his driver 270 yards as measured on the Trackman Combine tests, but apparently he does it somehow?

[nevets88]

I don't have the patience to read through his blog to see how he developed his full swing. I couldn't tell much from his YouTube channel. It's like all of a sudden it was there.

[flopster]

It does not look like he can hit his driver 270 yards as measured on the Trackman Combine tests, but apparently he does it somehow?

Dan can produce club head speed but he doesn't deliver it on a very consistent plane or face angle it seems, on the rare occasions everything comes together and he can hit some good drives but his misses are way worse than first cut it sounds like.

[Pourputt]

Where is Dan?! Over 3 weeks with no updates...

[Pretzel]

Where is Dan?! Over 3 weeks with no updates...

He mentioned going somewhere for family over the holidays, but he also talked about golfing wherever he was going. I would have at least expected a recap of how it went golf-wise, but perhaps it went poorly enough that he doesn't feel like sharing or never intended to share in the first place to take a "break" of sorts.

[flopster]

Every time I see posts on this topic I check it out, so nothing going on? wasn't he going to Myrtle beach? The fact there is no entries can't be good, this project may be folding it up but who knows it is winter so give it a couple more weeks.

[divot dave]

Every time I see posts on this topic I check it out, so nothing going on? wasn't he going to Myrtle beach? The fact there is no entries can't be good, this project may be folding it up but who knows it is winter so give it a couple more weeks.

https://twitter.com/thedanplan/status/550049993462386688

don't get your hopes up

[Osmond]

It is, but full time? Many people work full time jobs and accomplish the same. It's an achievement, but imho, he could have done it faster.

With that amount of practice he should have been close to scratch in a year if he were to have even the slightest chance of making it to the tour, imo.

[Osmond]

Wow, I can only hope that my swing will go from the ugliness it is to the smoothness that is yours.

I'm a 22 handicapper with zero chance of getting anywhere close to any kind of tour BUT I have literally hundreds of hours of video of my swing on the range and golf course and see it as a valuable part of learning this damned infernal game! :)

This is also what I find slightly frustrating about this guy, the lack of video footage of his practice or game time.

I'd love to see what progress he has made from the first videos I saw of him playing in a tournament from ages ago but it like like he no longerupdates his blog with videos any more??

So if I as a high hcper can do something like this in 10 minutes why can't he?;

Regards

Mailman

What on earth do you do around the greens to still be a 21 handicap? :D

[nevets88]

New blog post, planning on Aimpoint. Going to focus on driver and putting, thinks iron play is ok.

[RandallT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

New blog post, planning on Aimpoint. Going to focus on driver and putting, thinks iron play is ok.

http://thedanplan.com/a-fresh-start-to-2015/

The comments are interesting. Our friend, Richard Chen (who lurks here at TST apparently) posts one of his characteristically long and technical responses. Then "Pete" tries to figure out Richard's background and includes this:

....Richard, I’d love to have a long chat with you offline about a lot of your posts – they are extremely technical (which can be a good thing – I use a lot of tech to help me improve) but don’t you think sometimes it can go too far? ...

To which Richard ignores anything about discussing his own background but launches into another long discussion about ball flight laws, with this tidbit:

Because, as said in the “thesandtrap dot com” website , that some people had the misconception of having the clubhead swing path controlling the contact point on the ball, which is not possible (sort of like Jones wrote that he had seen golfers try the impossible,) it is important for people with these impossible misconceptions to fully see how the ball and clubface interacts in actuality rather than in some faulty common sense misconception.

On an unrelated note, shall we make predictions about Dan's tournament results for 2015?  Maybe each guess how many tourneys he will enter, how many times will he finish in top/middle/bottom thirds, and what will his low/high tourney scores be.

I predict:

8 tournaments in 2015 that have results available on the web.

He will finish in middle third 4 times. Bottom third 4 times. He will not achieve even one tournament where he ranks in the top 1/3 of entrants.

His low round in a tourney will be 75. High will be 89.

His official goals are more "process" than "results," as he says. While he mentions he wants a top 5 tournament result, his focus will be on hitting 50% of his fairways. My thought is that to reach the PGA in 10,000 hours, his goals are not even in the ballpark of where he needs to be. If he gets just one top 5 this year, that is nowhere near on track to reach the PGA at the end of his hours, right????

[nevets88]

I wonder how many posts there will be here this year. The thread that just keeps on giving. :-) I think if he does Aimpoint, it'll help with those 32-40 putt rounds but the mental seminars won't help, then what does he do with his full swing?

[Osmond]

I'm sure someone has mentioned it, but I could'nt find it. What are the yardages on the courses Dan plays? Does he always play the back tees? If he does, an average of 9 GIR isn't that bad. Naturally I do think that he should be a lot better at this point and I'll be extremely surprised if he ever makes it to scratch.

[Pretzel]

I would be the enters more at the start of the year than near the end. He'll enter 5-6 and will shoot a low round of 79 early in the season, consider it a breakthrough and say it proves everything he's doing is working, the. Blow up with high 80's the next tournament and not break 80 again. I certainly don't see any low scores in his future, especially with a goal based around hitting fairways!;-)

[nevets88]

My irons are good, but my long clubs aren't. Does that sound familiar?

Imho, it basically means there's something fundamentally wrong with your swing. Fix the fundamental flaw, don't address the "driver" problem, no? Don't "fix the driver", by way of equipment or mentally, fix the swing. The sooner that's addressed, then I think it'll get better.

[Lihu]

My irons are good, but my long clubs aren't. Does that sound familiar?

Imho, it basically means there's something fundamentally wrong with your swing. Fix the fundamental flaw, don't address the "driver" problem, no? Don't "fix the driver", by way of equipment or mentally, fix the swing. The sooner that's addressed, then I think it'll get better.

Sounds familiar, but not many people will state that their irons are good unless all their irons are good.

IDK, what is his definition of good? All I know is his dispersion in the Trakman Combine shows a lot of scatter past 140 yards with his 5i being the exception.

Do you think some of us on this site could fix his swing?

Come to think of it do you think any coach could do it?

This leads to the next question of why he does not have a series of 24 hour coaches to help him with this monumental task.

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

My irons are good, but my long clubs aren't. Does that sound familiar?

Imho, it basically means there's something fundamentally wrong with your swing. Fix the fundamental flaw, don't address the "driver" problem, no? Don't "fix the driver", by way of equipment or mentally, fix the swing. The sooner that's addressed, then I think it'll get better.

Sounds familiar, but not many people will state that their irons are good unless all their irons are good.

IDK, what is his definition of good? All I know is his dispersion in the Trakman Combine shows a lot of scatter past 140 yards with his 5i being the exception.

Do you think some of us on this site could fix his swing?

Come to think of it do you think any coach could do it?

This leads to the next question of why he does not have a series of 24 hour coaches to help him with this monumental task.

@iacas said it best before, he doesn't think there's anything wrong with his "iron" swing. Of course any good teacher here or elsewhere can help him. He has to want it though and we've said it before, he's not well funded.