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

[Lihu]

Average 245 carry is enough to get to scratch, but I don't think he carries that far.

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

We just saw a guy w/similar build and older than Dan Plan win the Open Championship. In the playoff, the burly over 6 foot guy came in last. DJ failed miserably. Bubba burnt out.

What I meant by that is Dan is pretty scrawny by the looks of things. He even describes himself as less than average height and weight and only carries his driver 245, and hits 40% of fairways (based on last trackman stats when he was a 6 HCP). Statistically over time this isn't going to get you on tour, when the average swing speed is at least 10mph faster. ZJ is still probably swinging a good 8mph faster than Dan. Obviously I agree that Dan's swing needs looking at too.

I may be incorrect but to me you need to get your swing speed up to tour average (113mph?) by the time you get to scratch (providing it's within your possible scope etc) to stand the best chance of getting/ staying on tour. I know it's not the be all and end all but a slow swing speed improvement along with any other improvements will make a massive difference. 10mph is about another 30 yards for total driver distance and if the S/S is in the tank you can always loft up to improve accuracy, Dan can't afford to do that to get to where he wants to be, which is probably one of the reasons he misses a lot of fairways.

I would say it wasn't a big deal years ago (Drive for show, putt for dough etc), but now it obviously is or you just get left behind.

I agree with most of your points @ChrisWev , but I didn't provide some of the context of my thinking that might bear out why I wrote what I wrote as I'm thinking of Dan Plan's more realistic end goal is getting to scratch which is my fault. I think @iacas said somewhere in TST that 240 yards total is the minimum you need to get to scratch w/other parts above average.

If you enlarge the photos in the tweet, you'll get a good idea of Johnson's build. This is not a personal issue for me. I'm not trying to overcompensate for my size as I'm not short and scrawny. It irks me to see Dan Plan's size being mentioned as a limitation as ya'll have probably noticed a little. :-) And the official PGA site lists ZJ's SS @ 108.

http://www.pgatour.com/players/player.24024.zach-johnson.html/statistics

So we just had a 39 yo of slight frame win over young 6 foot+ 350 yard driving brutes. Yay for the average (in physicality) guy!

[Nosevi]

But I think that tweet you've posted says it all @nevets88 - Zach Johnson works hard to improve upon what he naturally has in terms or physical strength. I don't think you need to be 6 foot plus (Rory is hardly a giant and those who followed his early career will know he was not a large build back then) but I do think with the way the top of the professional game has gone (and Dan is aiming at the top, not scratch) you need to work at it to give yourself the best chance of success.

I think it's like any other aspect of game improvement to the level Dan is aiming for - getting a good coach, using the right tech, focused practice, financially planning properly, proper physical conditioning - it all counts. If you leave out one aspect you are seriously hurting your chances of accomplishing  your goal and you probably only have one shot in a thousand of accomplishing it if you do all these things.

Truth is I have no clue if Dan has a physical regime or not. I have no clue how far he carries his driver or how he hits his irons. I don't know how long he practices chipping or putting or how he goes about practising them. I know almost nothing about how he swings the club other than a couple of videos posted in the last couple of years, zero about what he's working on to make that better and less about how he's going about it. I don't know his stats since he stopped recording them, I don't know how he goes round a course since he stopped using Game Golf (he does have a set but only recorded a few rounds) and I have no idea how he plans to improve.

In short, I know almost nothing about Dan's plan. I know what the end goal is and I know where he wants to get to. I just don't know about how he plans to get from one to the other.

[nevets88]

But I think that tweet you've posted says it all @nevets88 - Zach Johnson works hard to improve upon what he naturally has in terms or physical strength. I don't think you need to be 6 foot plus (Rory is hardly a giant and those who followed his early career will know he was not a large build back then) but I do think with the way the top of the professional game has gone (and Dan is aiming at the top, not scratch) you need to work at it to give yourself the best chance of success.

I think it's like any other aspect of game improvement to the level Dan is aiming for - getting a good coach, using the right tech, focused practice, financially planning properly, proper physical conditioning - it all counts. If you leave out one aspect you are seriously hurting your chances of accomplishing  your goal and you probably only have one shot in a thousand of accomplishing it if you do all these things.

Truth is I have no clue if Dan has a physical regime or not. I have no clue how far he carries his driver or how he hits his irons. I don't know how long he practices chipping or putting or how he goes about practising them. I know almost nothing about how he swings the club other than a couple of videos posted in the last couple of years, zero about what he's working on to make that better and less about how he's going about it. I don't know his stats since he stopped recording them, I don't know how he goes round a course since he stopped using Game Golf (he does have a set but only recorded a few rounds) and I have no idea how he plans to improve.

In short, I know almost nothing about Dan's plan. I know what the end goal is and I know where he wants to get to. I just don't know about how he plans to get from one to the other.

If anything, this plan has made me believe more that talent, has more to do with getting to be the best more than hard work. Hard work is a requirement, but pretty much anyone can work hard. Talent, and a good head on the shoulders. Not just mental, but common sense and intelligence. I know it goes counter to what was set out to be proven, but believe you me, I wanted it to go the opposite way.

As for deliberate practice, the plan makes me think that deliberate practice helps those w/less talent and innate skills even more than those with.

[Nosevi]

I don't think we're that far apart in our thinking @nevets88 , personally I think talent is a prerequisite to success in this endevour. Yes you need to work hard and yes you need to put all the other things in place like good coaching etc but if you don't have the potential to succeed you won't do. It's no different than other fields. In Air Traffic we have aptitude tests to see if someone has the potential to become a controller. At the end of the day if they can't resolve a 2D picture on a radar screen into a 3D reality, or have the mental dexterity to calculate height differences based on pressure differentials or learn books worth of rules and regs or stay totally chilled when under pressure, they will never become a controller - they simply don't have the natural atributes to fo it. Golf is a little different in that it's physical rather than mental but I still think you need certain natural abilities in order to succeed. Hard work is only part of the equasion IMO.

[tdiii]

You know how when you see some women or kids take a backswing, you can sense them fighting to stop the club momentum and get it redirected into the downswing?  It's like the club move them around.  I see a bit of that in Dan.  He's so small and weak, that he does not have control of the club.  [Of course, there is the problem of a poor swing which may only exacerbate this phenomenon.]

I don't observe this at all in Zach Johnson, who may be of similar size.  He has the innate power or strength to not get thrown around or off balance by the club. ZJ controls the club.  He doesn't, like Dan, react to it.

[nevets88]

[QUOTE name="Nosevi" url="/t/45853/the-dan-plan-10-000-hours-to-become-a-pro-golfer-dan-mclaughlin/3310_10#post_1174308"] I don't think we're that far apart in our thinking @nevets88 , personally I think talent is a prerequisite to success in this endevour. Yes you need to work hard and yes you need to put all the other things in place like good coaching etc but if you don't have the potential to succeed you won't do. It's no different than other fields. In Air Traffic we have aptitude tests to see if someone has the potential to become a controller. At the end of the day if they can't resolve a 2D picture on a radar screen into a 3D reality, or have the mental dexterity to calculate height differences based on pressure differentials or learn books worth of rules and regs or stay totally chilled when under pressure, they will never become a controller - they simply don't have the natural atributes to fo it. Golf is a little different in that it's physical rather than mental but I still think you need certain natural abilities in order to succeed. Hard work is only part of the equasion IMO.[/QUOTE] Yes, @nosevi, looks like we're on the same page - talent and hard work it is. Just because you can't see it or measure it. Doesn't mean it's not there (in reference to Dan Plan saying he didn't see what differentiated a PGA player from the average person.)

[Lihu]

I'm wondering if there's something we're missing in gauging talent? It probably takes a lot of talent to be able to judge other's potential ability? I doubt anyone can really do it by just watching someone either, only the person hitting the ball can tell if he feels like he's maximizing his potential. Assuming he has the talent to tell.

[DrvFrShow]

I'll speak from an area where I'm an expert: music, particularly classical piano. There are people like me who are very good. We can learn a very complex piece of music that is well beyond the ability of the average person even if they were to put in the 10,000 hours. Why? Because I know people who have put in the 10,000 hours and they still can't play worth a damn because they simply lack the manual dexterity to perform the task.

Then beyond my level are two more tiers: the journeyman performer who has a greater degree of manual dexterity than I do and the ability to grasp more complex works. Beyond this are the freaks. I don't mean this in a negative sense. They have a freakish amount of talent. These are the true masters of the instrument - they have names like Vladmir Horowitz, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, etc.

Think about this with golf in mind.

[nevets88]

Talent is in the words of Justice Potter Stewart, a I know it when I see it thing. The more you're around it, the better you are at identifying it. Those in the industry were pretty sure about Woods and McIlroy and they were correct though there are many flameouts due to injuries, head cases, what have you.

[tdiii]

I'll speak from an area where I'm an expert: music, particularly classical piano. There are people like me who are very good. We can learn a very complex piece of music that is well beyond the ability of the average person even if they were to put in the 10,000 hours. Why? Because I know people who have put in the 10,000 hours and they still can't play worth a damn because they simply lack the manual dexterity to perform the task.

Then beyond my level are two more tiers: the journeyman performer who has a greater degree of manual dexterity than I do and the ability to grasp more complex works. Beyond this are the freaks. I don't mean this in a negative sense. They have a freakish amount of talent. These are the true masters of the instrument - they have names like Vladmir Horowitz, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, etc.

Think about this with golf in mind.

And only people with your level of expertise can readily distinguish between the expert, the journeman and the freak.

[DrvFrShow]

The basketball player who was a standout in high school and college. He makes it to the NBA dev league and that's it. Never makes it to the show.

The guitar player who is really good, but not good or lucky enough to play in a touring and ends up having to take a day job and is now lucky to get a band together and get a weekend gig playing "Mustang Sally" at the local bar. - we musicians joke about this crap all the time. We hate that song. Someone always requests it.

Dan McLaughlin never stood a chance. He stood a very good chance of getting to a 5 handicap with an occasional dip below that and an occasional peak above that. He had the deck stacked against him: age; talent; and the fact he never good at any kind of swing move when he was young. Now he has a back injury.

[nevets88]

Gotta slap the wrist or more, of the publishing industry for hyperbole w/respect to talent/practice/10K rule books. And Gladwell, he's a great read, but after reading any of his books, you're like, wow, but then when you stop to really think about his ideas, you're like, wait a minute ...

Of course I realize writing you can be better at doing stuff w/better practice techniques, but you're never going to be the next superstar ain't gonna sell, but that's basically it in a nutshell.

[Lihu]

Age is not as much a factor as talent, but of course, it factors in.

[natureboy]

I agree with most of your points @ChrisWev, but I didn't provide some of the context of my thinking that might bear out why I wrote what I wrote as I'm thinking of Dan Plan's more realistic end goal is getting to scratch which is my fault. I think @iacas said somewhere in TST that 240 yards total is the minimum you need to get to scratch w/other parts above average.

If you enlarge the photos in the tweet, you'll get a good idea of Johnson's build. This is not a personal issue for me. I'm not trying to overcompensate for my size as I'm not short and scrawny. It irks me to see Dan Plan's size being mentioned as a limitation as ya'll have probably noticed a little. :-) And the official PGA site lists ZJ's SS @ 108.

http://www.pgatour.com/players/player.24024.zach-johnson.html/statistics

So we just had a 39 yo of slight frame win over young 6 foot+ 350 yard driving brutes. Yay for the average (in physicality) guy!

I'll speak from an area where I'm an expert: music, particularly classical piano. There are people like me who are very good. We can learn a very complex piece of music that is well beyond the ability of the average person even if they were to put in the 10,000 hours. Why? Because I know people who have put in the 10,000 hours and they still can't play worth a damn because they simply lack the manual dexterity to perform the task.

Then beyond my level are two more tiers: the journeyman performer who has a greater degree of manual dexterity than I do and the ability to grasp more complex works. Beyond this are the freaks. I don't mean this in a negative sense. They have a freakish amount of talent. These are the true masters of the instrument - they have names like Vladmir Horowitz, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, etc.

Think about this with golf in mind.

Talent is in the words of Justice Potter Stewart, a I know it when I see it thing. The more you're around it, the better you are at identifying it. Those in the industry were pretty sure about Woods and McIlroy and they were correct though there are many flameouts due to injuries, head cases, what have you.

Zac Johnson's story is really interesting in the context of this thread and these posts in terms of the bigger questions of talent v effort. Was he enough of a a standout athlete in HS to get heavily recruited. Did he rank well on his college team. Would someone have dismissed him as below average talent early on vs. Wood and Mcilroy. Likely Zac will never accumulate a similar career record than either, but at the early stage 'talent' assessment would any golf insider have tabbed him to have a potential HOF career?

He almost seems like the classic example of what they are calling the 'growth mindset' / grit character in education circles...students who succeed because they believe they can get better and enjoy the process of improving so work to maximize, hone, and compensate for their innate skills. They often academically outperform (over time) those who believe that 'you are either smart or not'. I am sure that his faith and his passion for the game and competition helped him immensely in that stead progress toward the top of the (current) world's best.

I think (like many dialectics) that an either / or viewpoint of talent / effort is myopic. Both are obviously important. If you have freakish innate talent and don't work to develop it and then diligently build on it, you may not succeed to your potential. If you have a talent for hard work or perhaps cumulative learning talent like Zac Johnson you can surpass those with more exceptional initial / innate physical talents. At the same time there may be hard physical or mental ceilings for your particular talent level in an important skill that may or may not be possible to work around. Good and bad breaks have an impact too. If you have freakish talent and work feverishly hard at your craft you could be a genius or a burnout. There are many potential paths.

Exceptional talent, plus hard work, plus passion for the field / craft is probably the sweet spot to statistically likely high level success.

[nevets88]

I posted a video from abman in the instruction forum. I was expecting to see something like this from someone doing a deliberate practice plan, someone w/a lot of time to devote, thinking it through. I can't speak for the correctness of everything abman is saying, but he sure is making a concerted effort to figure things out, w/o the benefit of an instructor. You don't need expensive equipment (not even using a tripod, but a basket as a stand) to make a video like this, just some technical know how. And he's not afraid to show his bad swings and he's documenting his thoughts in the video.

[Nosevi]

I'm wondering if there's something we're missing in gauging talent?

It probably takes a lot of talent to be able to judge other's potential ability? I doubt anyone can really do it by just watching someone either, only the person hitting the ball can tell if he feels like he's maximizing his potential. Assuming he has the talent to tell.

You get talent scouts in most sports, in fact I know one for golf, he lives 3 doors down from me and used to work with Nick Faldo running the Faldo Series. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong, it doesn't seem to be an exact science.

A young lad called Ashley Chesters gets some of his coaching where I do and I've hit balls next to him and chatted golf etc. He has real talent, you may have seen him do pretty well in The Open Championship (British Open). What sets him aside from some of the other guys I've seen who at least appear to have similar talent is how hard he works though. He'll be the one still out there when most of the other young national squad players are having a break. Interestingly my coach said he's also the one who pushes himself hardest when practising short game - always gives himself the hardest shots to play where some of the other lads practice shots they are more comfortable with. Similarly one day I was in the range and it was absolutely hammering it down with rain. Looked over and there was a girl practising on the short game area. An hour and a half later she was still out there in the torrential rain. She's called India Clyburn and is now playing for England, probably shortly to follow her sister Holly onto the Ladies European Tour.

I think you need talent but you also need a strong work ethic. You may find examples of super talented guys who didn't work as hard as some but I've yet to see an example of a PGA Tour pro without any talent.

I posted a video from abman in the instruction forum. I was expecting to see something like this from someone doing a deliberate practice plan, someone w/a lot of time to devote, thinking it through. I can't speak for the correctness of everything abman is saying, but he sure is making a concerted effort to figure things out, w/o the benefit of an instructor. You don't need expensive equipment (not even using a tripod, but a basket as a stand) to make a video like this, just some technical know how. And he's not afraid to show his bad swings and he's documenting his thoughts in the video.

Like his thinking and I use slow motion drills a lot in my training, they work for me. In fact I spent 4 hours in the swing studio this afternoon working on one particular aspect of my swing using slow motion drills.

Like you I expected at least some of this sort of thing in The Dan Plan, if not video then at least documented. I can't see any of the 'how' posted in the Dan Plan. Like I said earlier, I have no clue if Dan does any deliberate practice, certainly none is documented these days. I always scratch my head when I read or see an interview about The Dan Plan when the interviewer says words to the effect of "........ and the whole project is fully documented in his blog!" Where? Quite clearly they haven't read it and are just going on the brief they've just been handed.

In fact here's a challenge - I challenge anyone to find anything in The Dan Plan posted in say the last 2 years that tells you anything at all about how to get better at golf or how Dan has gone about doing so. Practice routine, technique, drill, practice programme, fitness regime, any ball flight data....... anything at all. Could be wrong but I think you'll come up short.

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lihu

I'm wondering if there's something we're missing in gauging talent?

It probably takes a lot of talent to be able to judge other's potential ability? I doubt anyone can really do it by just watching someone either, only the person hitting the ball can tell if he feels like he's maximizing his potential. Assuming he has the talent to tell.

You get talent scouts in most sports, in fact I know one for golf, he lives 3 doors down from me and used to work with Nick Faldo running the Faldo Series. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong, it doesn't seem to be an exact science.

A young lad called Ashley Chesters gets some of his coaching where I do and I've hit balls next to him and chatted golf etc. He has real talent, you may have seen him do pretty well in The Open Championship (British Open). What sets him aside from some of the other guys I've seen who at least appear to have similar talent is how hard he works though. He'll be the one still out there when most of the other young national squad players are having a break. Interestingly my coach said he's also the one who pushes himself hardest when practising short game - always gives himself the hardest shots to play where some of the other lads practice shots they are more comfortable with. Similarly one day I was in the range and it was absolutely hammering it down with rain. Looked over and there was a girl practising on the short game area. An hour and a half later she was still out there in the torrential rain. She's called India Clyburn and is now playing for England, probably shortly to follow her sister Holly onto the Ladies European Tour.

I think you need talent but you also need a strong work ethic. You may find examples of super talented guys who didn't work as hard as some but I've yet to see an example of a PGA Tour pro without any talent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

I posted a video from abman in the instruction forum. I was expecting to see something like this from someone doing a deliberate practice plan, someone w/a lot of time to devote, thinking it through. I can't speak for the correctness of everything abman is saying, but he sure is making a concerted effort to figure things out, w/o the benefit of an instructor. You don't need expensive equipment (not even using a tripod, but a basket as a stand) to make a video like this, just some technical know how. And he's not afraid to show his bad swings and he's documenting his thoughts in the video.

Like his thinking and I use slow motion drills a lot in my training, they work for me. In fact I spent 4 hours in the swing studio this afternoon working on one particular aspect of my swing using slow motion drills.

Like you I expected at least some of this sort of thing in The Dan Plan, if not video then at least documented. I can't see any of the 'how' posted in the Dan Plan. Like I said earlier, I have no clue if Dan does any deliberate practice, certainly none is documented these days. I always scratch my head when I read or see an interview about The Dan Plan when the interviewer says words to the effect of "........ and the whole project is fully documented in his blog!" Where? Quite clearly they haven't read it and are just going on the brief they've just been handed.

In fact here's a challenge - I challenge anyone to find anything in The Dan Plan posted in say the last 2 years that tells you anything at all about how to get better at golf or how Dan has gone about doing so. Practice routine, technique, drill, practice programme, fitness regime, any ball flight data....... anything at all. Could be wrong but I think you'll come up short.

The media folks who are writing most of the articles don't know golf, let alone deliberate practice, which is a term that can be interpreted so many ways.