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

[Lihu]

I'm convinced 99% of all amateur golfers are so jealous of this Dan guy, they want him to fail. Lol

I'm not, because I need work to take the boredom out of my golf day.

[Pretzel]

I'm convinced 99% of all amateur golfers are so jealous of this Dan guy, they want him to fail. Lol

Why would I be jealous of someone who appears to not enjoy what he does every day? I kind of feel bad for him since it seems like he doesn't have a lot of fun playing golf.

[nevets88]

I'm convinced 99% of all amateur golfers are so jealous of this Dan guy, they want him to fail. Lol

I don't wish any ill will or failure. Just looking for good info that might help others to come out of it.

@nevets88 - his score graph looks like your goal jpg above. He wanted it linear from his goals but he got this instead.

The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray. - Robert Burns

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by golfbarefoot

I'm convinced 99% of all amateur golfers are so jealous of this Dan guy, they want him to fail. Lol

Why would I be jealous of someone who appears to not enjoy what he does every day? I kind of feel bad for him since it seems like he doesn't have a lot of fun playing golf.

Maybe that's part of his plan. He wants us to think it's not fun for him and yet he thinks we think he is so good at it?

[acerimusdux]

I'm sorry Shorty, 'he is probably on the Asperger's spectrum'? That came out of nowhere tbh. Being rude/ not very sociable (in your experience, mine are different) is far from having an autism spectrum disorder.

Yeah, I think someone with Asperger's would probably be obsessed with detail. And would tend to be obsessively focused when interested in something. Moe Norman very probably had something like Asperger's, but never diagnosed. Moe probably became such a great ball striker partly because he enjoyed repetively hitting golf balls on the driving range.

I think Dan is more the opposite of that, not as focused, but more big picture stuff and long term planning. The project itself is really about the big concept. His background before this was a photographer for a marketing company.  His updates tend to be about how he's playing, how he's feeling, the weather, and pyschological stuff like motivation, etc. He is disciplined enough to have continued this far, and will probably see this through wherever it leads. But he seems very aware of the emotional and psychological end of things, and that rather than in depth details about his game or practice routine is what he's mostly providing his readership on his blog.

[Lihu]

From the Dan Plan. I think he is starting to realize that his driving is short of where he wants to be. He did not really state what the length of his drives were, but he had all the other information posted. He had some comments that alluded to his distance: 20 yard height drives. He used an Xstiff and only got 170 yards? Not sure what was going on there.

Golf is such an unpredictable thing. He should just come out with the truth of where he is distance and accuracy wise and post his swings so people can help him improve. He would need to filter out bad information from the good, but that's just part of getting his swing out there for people to see and maybe help him improve?

He can at least get help to become the best golfer he can be, then he'll pick up his confidence and enjoy the game more. He should also remove any aspirations to become a PGA pro, and just play some golf.

EDIT: http://thedanplan.com/inspiration-in-a-time-of-a-golfing-low/

[flopster]

I'm convinced 99% of all amateur golfers are so jealous of this Dan guy, they want him to fail. Lol

I think he's failing just fine who needs to be jealous? I average at least 4 months off a year so it's not like he's getting tons more golf than I do, it's got more to do with his unrealistic goal and his entry into this with little or no research into what this really takes to achieve that level. He just came off day one that I don't have any golf experience period but I'm going to become one of the worlds most elite players because of my plan. It's just funny that he thinks this arbitrary number will get him to the promised land of golf while I'm sure the vast majority of players currently playing on the tour not only put in more hours than him but all of them had immense talent. This whole thing is just a crazy notion on his part now and he seems to feel slighted for some reason because golf companies will not sponsor him or give him free stuff but in reality he has gotten some so I don't what he's crying about, he's not even in the top 10,000 amateur rankings and he expects companies that know he has zero chance to sponsor him......come on now.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by golfbarefoot

I'm convinced 99% of all amateur golfers are so jealous of this Dan guy, they want him to fail. Lol

I think he's failing just fine who needs to be jealous? I average at least 4 months off a year so it's not like he's getting tons more golf than I do, it's got more to do with his unrealistic goal and his entry into this with little or no research into what this really takes to achieve that level. He just came off day one that I don't have any golf experience period but I'm going to become one of the worlds most elite players because of my plan. It's just funny that he thinks this arbitrary number will get him to the promised land of golf while I'm sure the vast majority of players currently playing on the tour not only put in more hours than him but all of them had immense talent. This whole thing is just a crazy notion on his part now and he seems to feel slighted for some reason because golf companies will not sponsor him or give him free stuff but in reality he has gotten some so I don't what he's crying about, he's not even in the top 10,000 amateur rankings and he expects companies that know he has zero chance to sponsor him......come on now.

Lot's of good players out there. . .I would guess not even top 100,000

[Pretzel]

Lot's of good players out there. . .I would guess not even top 100,000

Well, if we go by our guys if him actually having a handicap of ~7, that would put him in around the top 21% of golfers with a USGA handicap. I'm going to assume that there are more than 500,000 golfers in the system (especially since this doesn't include any handicaps outside the U.S.), which would put him outside the top 100,000.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lihu

Lot's of good players out there. . .I would guess not even top 100,000

Well, if we go by our guys if him actually having a handicap of ~7, that would put him in around the top 21% of golfers with a USGA handicap. I'm going to assume that there are more than 500,000 golfers in the system (especially since this doesn't include any handicaps outside the U.S.), which would put him outside the top 100,000.

I think the number of golfers is around 3.6M in the HC system.

[golfbarefoot]

Regardless, I'm impressed how far this guy has come and to put it all out there for hacks to rip him apart. Some people don't realize how hard their jealousy is to hide, and root for folks to fail...in any facet really..it's comical actually. Read other sites too. This poor guy doesn't have many amateur golf fans it seems.. Personally, yes his goals are pretty lofty(Masters..) but sometimes it's the journey that makes us who we are. Kudos to the guy and I wish him luck. He was certainly ispired by Outliers..

[flopster]

Regardless, I'm impressed how far this guy has come and to put it all out there for hacks to rip him apart. Some people don't realize how hard their jealousy is to hide, and root for folks to fail...in any facet really..it's comical actually. Read other sites too. This poor guy doesn't have many amateur golf fans it seems..

Personally, yes his goals are pretty lofty(Masters..)but sometimes it's the journey that makes us who we are.

Kudos to the guy and I wish him luck. He was certainly ispired by Outliers..

Well you can always donate money and probably get a "DAN PLAN" hat or golf towel...........and make your friends jealous.

http://thedanplan.com/donations-2/

[Pretzel]

Regardless, I'm impressed how far this guy has come and to put it all out there for hacks to rip him apart.

I would say that a number of people that are hard on him are the people who are far more competent when it comes to golf than he is. You, Flopster, Shorty, Golfingdad, Dave2512, and I are some of the people who have commented in the last couple pages who nearly certainly are much better at golf than Dan is, and Lihu, Netvets88, and RandallT could probably go head to head in stroke or match play with Dan and probably come out pretty even.

The people who are most doubtful are the ones who know how hard it is to do what he thinks can be accomplished easily by anyone who puts in enough time, regardless of physical talent (or lack thereof) or dedication.

I can guarantee that I, during the school year this fall while balancing a full load of AP classes (and getting a 5.0 GPA to boot) played and practiced much more frequently than Dan, in addition to doing it with more purpose than him. That's why people are "ripping him apart", is because he obviously missed the part in Outliers where it mentioned that the 10,000 hours needed to be "deliberate practice". At this point his plan has devolved from something that could have been quasi-scientific at one point to a near-comedy about the trainwreck that his plan has become.

[Cardfather]

January 10, 2015:,Played in the Saturday men’s day at Riverside .... 4,242 remain. Random Stat: shot an 87 Barefoot, many of us aren't jealous, I truly feel sorry for Dan. I was really hoping to see him qualifying for some mini tours by now.

[golf-noob-bruce]

His latest blog is up. Looks like he's sinking deeper and deeper into suspicions about his equipment. Dan is all over place at the moment. One paragraph is about the driver, the next about how his new wedges just don't "fit his game". This will not end well...

[dsc123]

Seems to me like he's fiddling with a new club every time I check out his blog.

[nevets88]

What the hell, chorus to the song on latest post:

Broken bones and pocket change
This heart is all she left me with
Broken bones and pocket change
This heart is all she left me with
This heart is all she left me with
This heart is all she left me with

[Outro]
Oh but I, Oh but I, Oh but Ive been broken
Can't take, Can't take it down
Im going down, I'm going down today

[RandallT]

Here's a  better graph than the one I posted above of his last couple years of scoring progress. 1/1/2013 is on the left!  Present time on the right.  Again, this is raw scores only. It is based on his blog, his GHIN, and his GolfShot (http://golfshot.com/members/0974068490).

I figured out finally out to reorganize the data. Duh. But the x-axis is still funky as the dates are not to scale. It wants to plot each point equidistant, regardless of date of the round. I can't find how to tweak that in Mac Numbers. Probably something simple. But the overall meaning of the graph remains: Dan is falling behind his goal, although briefly in Summer 2014, he was getting close to where he wanted to be.

Interesting that he has for two years caught fire in March or April.  His average of 10 rounds can go down by over 4 strokes in a fairly short period of time. I would think that's unusual to see that much fluctuation over a 10 round average.

USGA says that one typically averages 3 strokes higher than their course handicap:

Quote: http://www.usga.org/handicapping/articles_resources/How-Well-Should-You-Play-/

The USGA's Handicap Research Team tells us that the average player is expected to play to his Course Handicap or better only about 25 percent of the time, average three strokes higher than his Course Handicap, and have a best score in 20, which is only two strokes better than his Course Handicap.

From this graph, is it fair to say that Dan's current average of 80 (approx 8 over par) would represent an approximate handicap of 5, if the courses he plays are somewhat average? Certainly, one cannot play off a "2" and still average 80, right?