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

[ChrisWev]

Haha, that leaflet is brilliant :)

Anything mentioning a combination of "free", "get healthy","xx day plan", "biblical principles" is:

• Not going to be free
• Not going to work
• Not be backed up by any meaningful evidence

[RandallT]

Not going to be free

Not going to work

Not be backed up by any meaningful evidence

Just like the Dan Plan. We've come full circle.

Ouch- I've gotten harsh. I joined TST a while back via Dan Plan google search leading me here, and I was a hopeful skeptic, very newly returned to golf in my own life. Now here I am googling Dan Plan again, a little more golf experience under my belt, with a nastier attitude and negative disposition about it all. Shame on me!

[ChrisWev]

In all honesty I actually feel sorry for Dan and wouldn't expect the guys form over the pond to be this critical.

Here in the UK many love to shoot a trier down,especially the press, it's poor form really.

I would love to see how many critical people on here have done as well as he has in similar time frames, starting late in life (which is certainly harder) and with limited physical ability.

At a guess he's probably been going 5 years and 6000 hours which is about a 3hr per day average.

There's a lot of guys on here who will have been playing 10 years at 2 rounds per week and be on similar time frames and not broke 80 yet, some won't have even broke 90.

I've seen guys on my course that are about 50, have been members 20 years, play three times a week and have handicaps of 20 (not sure how) but you never see them shoot less than 100 in stroke play.

Then again that proves the 10,000 hour thing just doesn't work. They've probably put in 50,000 hours and are still crap.

On another note: https://twitter.com/TheDanielPlan

[nevets88]

[QUOTE name="ChrisWev" url="/t/45853/the-dan-plan-10-000-hours-to-become-a-pro-golfer-dan-mclaughlin/3450_30#post_1201365"]   [LIST] [*] Not going to be free [*] Not going to work [*] Not be backed up by any meaningful evidence [/LIST] [/QUOTE] Just like the Dan Plan. We've come full circle. Ouch- I've gotten harsh. I joined TST a while back via Dan Plan google search leading me here, and I was a hopeful skeptic, very newly returned to golf in my own life. Now here I am googling Dan Plan again, a little more golf experience under my belt, with a nastier attitude and negative disposition about it all. Shame on me!

But you found a place w/smart guys and straight shooters who are working very hard to figure this game out. I'd say you came out ahead.

[newtogolf]

Dan never appeared to have a real plan that laid out specific skills he'd work on and the method he'd use to determine if he'd acquired them.  In the last two years he seemed to lose interest or realize that he wasn't likely going to achieve his end goal.  Instead of re-evaluating his plan he seemed to focus on gaining and exploiting his fame.  This year has been a waste due to an injury but who knows what he's really doing?   Is he really injured or just using this time to be "off the clock" and improve his swing so he doesn't have to fudge his handicap.

[RFKFREAK]

Dan never appeared to have a real plan that laid out specific skills he'd work on and the method he'd use to determine if he'd acquired them.  In the last two years he seemed to lose interest or realize that he wasn't likely going to achieve his end goal.  Instead of re-evaluating his plan he seemed to focus on gaining and exploiting his fame.  This year has been a waste due to an injury but who knows what he's really doing?   Is he really injured or just using this time to be "off the clock" and improve his swing so he doesn't have to fudge his handicap.

And this right here is what's turned me off to him.

[RandallT]

In all honesty I actually feel sorry for Dan and wouldn't expect the guys form over the pond to be this critical.

Here in the UK many love to shoot a trier down,especially the press, it's poor form really.

I would love to see how many critical people on here have done as well as he has in similar time frames, starting late in life (which is certainly harder) and with limited physical ability.

At a guess he's probably been going 5 years and 6000 hours which is about a 3hr per day average.

There's a lot of guys on here who will have been playing 10 years at 2 rounds per week and be on similar time frames and not broke 80 yet, some won't have even broke 90.

I've seen guys on my course that are about 50, have been members 20 years, play three times a week and have handicaps of 20 (not sure how) but you never see them shoot less than 100 in stroke play.

Then again that proves the 10,000 hour thing just doesn't work. They've probably put in 50,000 hours and are still crap.

On another note: https://twitter.com/TheDanielPlan

To be clear, we mostly wish him well with his golf endeavors. We'd likely enjoy a beer with him to talk about golf and life.

What we are critical of is the way the project was carried out, as has been amply described in the thread (and @nevets88 has briefly mentioned). It's not about whether he has improved, or whether he is better than us. Those things- we applaud him for, and wish him well.

If you're going to create a Dan Plan for the world, it had better be a good plan. It had better be executed well. It is very visible to us, and we are eager to learn about all things golf: swing learning techniques, goals setting, measurements, tips for a new player to improve body movements that aren't natural (deliberate practice!). It was here that we focus our disappointment. The initial goal was absolutely ridiculous in hindsight (many called it from the start). And the pursuit of that goal was not really modified, nor documented as it clearly was falling short.  Sadly, we haven't learned a lot.

This is all spelled out in the long thread, so I don't want to rehash. Just wanted to reiterate that we're not all a bunch of big meanies. We're just geeks for golf, and if you're going to put yourself out there, then you should expect scrutiny. Praise when it's praiseworthy, but critiques when it falls short. There's no sense in sugar-coating a failed project, in my mind.

[MrFlipper]

In all honesty I actually feel sorry for Dan and wouldn't expect the guys form over the pond to be this critical.

Here in the UK many love to shoot a trier down,especially the press, it's poor form really.

I would love to see how many critical people on here have done as well as he has in similar time frames, starting late in life (which is certainly harder) and with limited physical ability.

At a guess he's probably been going 5 years and 6000 hours which is about a 3hr per day average.

There's a lot of guys on here who will have been playing 10 years at 2 rounds per week and be on similar time frames and not broke 80 yet, some won't have even broke 90.

I've seen guys on my course that are about 50, have been members 20 years, play three times a week and have handicaps of 20 (not sure how) but you never see them shoot less than 100 in stroke play.

Then again that proves the 10,000 hour thing just doesn't work. They've probably put in 50,000 hours and are still crap.

On another note: https://twitter.com/TheDanielPlan

I have no particular feelings for Dan either way. But in my personal experience I went from beginner to 3 handicap in about 4 years, average athletic ability, yes I was young (15-19) but I didn't spend all my life playing golf, certainly not more than Dan. And he's still in his 30's, not like he's old or anything (I'm 58 now so I can say that haha). I was a 3 in my 30's as well. Big deal, my club was full of people in their 30's with low handicaps at the time.

And although I was younger, my experience is certainly not extraordinary. Played a lot with a scratch friend as a beginner but no lessons from a pro or Leadbetter school or anything. You dug it out of the dirt by yourself.

I'd bet there are many many people with similar experience on this website, probably got better way faster than I did once they started.

I am just a regular guy. What I did was nothing special. Got to believe that folks who have played much golf at all are just are not that impressed with what Dan has "accomplished".

[RandallT]

Friendly reminder of his goal (in GREEN ), with his actual score (in BLUE ). Average score goal to average score actual. You can ignore the "handicap" lines in red and yellow.

In Jan 2013, he had some scores that brought his 10-day moving average down to his goal, but never again.  In fact the trend line for his 10-day moving average never really got close to his goal. Just squint and focus on the smoothed green and smoothed blue lines. They diverged nearly from the start.

But you'd never know that from reading about the plan.  All you hear is that his handicap got down to "a 2-something." Technically true. But unless some miracle strikes, the plan is dead.

[DrvFrShow]

He hit a plateau. Everyone hits a plateau. That's what this guy who wrote the 10,000 hrs book doesn't mention. What gets people over the plateau is one's talent level + dedication. Dedication alone doesn't cut it, nor does talent alone cut it.

[nevets88]

It's a simplification, but you can cull this whole thing down into three words and I'll say quote it again. Golf is hard.

[RandallT]

It's a simplification, but you can cull this whole thing down into three words and I'll say quote it again. Golf is hard.

He hit a plateau. Everyone hits a plateau. That's what this guy who wrote the 10,000 hrs book doesn't mention. What gets people over the plateau is one's talent level + dedication. Dedication alone doesn't cut it, nor does talent alone cut it.

Yes, two years of happiness to start.  Until January 2013, things were looking great. Scores improving, lots of video blogs, lots of updates on the site. Engagement with fans. Riding high with TONS of encouragement. The pop psychology media was touting this as a feel good story that would empower us to follow our dreams!

Then the plateau sinks in January 2013. Golf gets hard. Probably hitting his limit due to his innate physical abilities. Any improvement after that would require a TON of dedicated resources, practice, and an intelligent approach to pick the right things to work on.

We soon thereafter saw the video productions drop off. The optimism seemed a bit more forced (can't say I blame him). The discussion ramped up about needing to change things would require steps backwards in scores to ultimately get them lower. We all felt it was stalling, but awaited some sort of burst of improvement.

I vividly recall that one guy in Australia pointed out to him at that TV show. Remember that? He basically scoffed at the plan and said Dan would get marginally better but not even sniff anywhere near the professional ranks- he had experience in grooming athletes). Dan's face was priceless as he listened. He said what most of us were thinking. Found the video:

Golf is hard, and academics in their ivory towers cannot intellectualize any formula for success in the endeavor. If you rewind to the start of the clip above, you see Anders Ericsson avoid the question about whether Dan would make his goal (saying that's the wrong question). It seemed like he didn't want his research work to be invalidated by Dan. But Dan admits himself that he started the plan on "more or less a whim." So the success/failure of just this one plan would neither validate nor invalidate Ericsson's theory- just provide one miniscule data point.

[flopster]

Undoubtedly a larger sample size of participants is needed to really get a good idea of talent versus hard work, Dan IMO was a below average talent sample, there are too many out there that many of us have seen that if they were to dedicate themselves at a similar plan I believe they could achieve much more.

[Lihu]

Undoubtedly a larger sample size of participants is needed to really get a good idea of talent versus hard work, Dan IMO was a below average talent sample, there are too many out there that many of us have seen that if they were to dedicate themselves at a similar plan I believe they could achieve much more.

No, start with the group of golfers using LSW, then look for those with talent.

[Nosevi]

you see Anders Ericsson avoid the question about whether Dan would make his goal (saying that's the wrong question).

I actually think it's the first half of the right question. If Ericsson's reseach says anyone and everyone can reach 'mastery' in any given field given the correct training it shouldn't matter who the subject is, his answer should basically be yes as long as the training is right. The second half of the question would obviously be "Is Dan's training right?" [quote name="Lihu" url="/t/45853/the-dan-plan-10-000-hours-to-become-a-pro-golfer-dan-mclaughlin/3480#post_1201938"][QUOTE name="flopster" url="/t/45853/the-dan-plan-10-000-hours-to-become-a-pro-golfer-dan-mclaughlin/3474#post_1201933"]   Undoubtedly a larger sample size of participants is needed to really get a good idea of talent versus hard work, Dan IMO was a below average talent sample, there are too many out there that many of us have seen that if they were to dedicate themselves at a similar plan I believe they could achieve much more. [/QUOTE] No, start with the group of golfers using LSW, then look for those with talent. :-)   [/quote] Ok, but what we're really saying (I agree with you if this is your view) is that talent in some form is important in the equation. My understanding is that Ericsson was saying it wasn't.

[Williamevanl]

Lovinitall, again I think you provide great posts but here's my reasoning. (It's late but I'll do my best :) ))  BTW I wanted say some stuff about course ratings and being way over that for a given handicap but let's skip it.

I think the learning curve of golf is obviously asymptotic, ( I suspect most would agree with that to varying degrees) You can imagine it looks something like this:

This learning curve will be different for all people, a professional golfer might have had a learning curve that looked more like:

The point is that we don't have to 'wait for the finish line' to gauge the progress in anything that becomes increasingly difficult as this is not linear. It becomes exponentially more difficult as you approach scratch (hence asymptotic curve) so this doesn't have to be guess work. If we had 1000 people we could eventually get to a place where we could gauge (roughly) where each person would be after so many hours given this asymptotic regression.

When I took a crack at estimating Dan's progress at 3000 hours as being a 6.0, I just started plugging his scores into Excel to see where we were headed. That curve, however, doesn't put him anywhere near a plus handicap at the end of this thing (relative, 2-3 is what I expect).

Just going to go ahead and say "called it", about 3 years ago.

[Nosevi]

[QUOTE name="Williamevanl" url="/t/45853/the-dan-plan-10-000-hours-to-become-a-pro-golfer-dan-mclaughlin/324#post_754439"]   Lovinitall, again I think you provide great posts but here's my reasoning. (It's late but I'll do my best :) ))  BTW I wanted say some stuff about course ratings and being way over that for a given handicap but let's skip it. I think the learning curve of golf is obviously asymptotic, ( I suspect most would agree with that to varying degrees) You can imagine it looks something like this: [URL=http://thesandtrap.com/content/type/61/id/57842/] [/URL] This learning curve will be different for all people, a professional golfer might have had a learning curve that looked more like: [URL=http://thesandtrap.com/content/type/61/id/57843/] [/URL] The point is that we don't have to 'wait for the finish line' to gauge the progress in anything that becomes increasingly difficult as this is not linear. It becomes exponentially more difficult as you approach scratch (hence asymptotic curve) so this doesn't have to be guess work. If we had 1000 people we could eventually get to a place where we could gauge (roughly) where each person would be after so many hours given this asymptotic regression. When I took a crack at estimating Dan's progress at 3000 hours as being a 6.0, I just started plugging his scores into Excel to see where we were headed. That curve, however, doesn't put him anywhere near a plus handicap at the end of this thing (relative, 2-3 is what I expect). [/QUOTE] Just going to go ahead and say "called it", about 3 years ago.

Good call :-) Here's a question though - what happens if you constantly reassess and change up the plan as you go along? Say you start shallowing so you dramatically increase your driving distance, in effect shortening the course, start shallowing again so you integrate LSW into your course management, start shallowing again and so you go to a short game guru for help? Could you keep boosting the effectiveness of the plan at points along the way by looking at where you need to focus effort in order to repeatedly steepen the curve at those points? I think you probably can to an extent but you'll still plateau at some point when you hit your potential but that point will be lower than it looked like it would be at the beginning of the plan. I'm not sure that Dan really changed what he was doing that much along the way. Still, that was a very good call :-)

[CraiginKSA]

Then again that proves the 10,000 hour thing just doesn't work. They've probably put in 50,000 hours and are still crap.

These numbers don't add up.  50,000 hours is 40 hours per week (normal work week) for 25 years. Even Vijay thinks this is too much golf!