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

[Osmond]

To say Dan has come a long way is absolutely laughable. Well, as a golfer he certainly hasn't. I'd love to see a talented athlete try this.

[Golfingdad]

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?

Sounds about right.  According to Game Golf, my average score is 80.5 (over the last or so rounds) and my handicap come Thursday will be 5.6

To say Dan has come a long way is absolutely laughable. Well, as a golfer he certainly hasn't.

Seriously?  He's come from never EVER having played golf in his life to being a single digit handicap of some kind in 4 years.  2?  Probably not.  5 or 6?  More likely.

It's perhaps not where a lot of people think he should be at this point given his original goal, but the overall goal should not take away from the current accomplishments.  If he started a plan 4 years ago to say that in 5 years he wants to become a 1 handicap, would you still say that he HASN'T come a long way?

With all due respect, THAT is laughable.

[Dave2512]

I agree he's gotten to a place some golfers never get to in a somewhat short period of time.

[Pretzel]

I noticed a fairly large exclusion from the driver numbers he posted. Anyone else notice something missing?

(image from his blog)

[b101]

I noticed a fairly large exclusion from the driver numbers he posted. Anyone else notice something missing?

(image from his blog)

Yeah... the lack of video record column confused me too

[Covert]

Rather than start a new thread for a small point, I thought I would post it here. Like Dan I resolved to play good golf starting at 70 years old, last spring. I fooled around with somebody else's club or two when I was a kid, but never had my own set or took learning anything seriously. So I essentially just started by buying a set of namesake clubs (Covert) and employing coaches. I would like to get an opinion or two of my strategy.

First I practice a lot, but nothing like 6 hours a day, instead four days a week for an hour or so, besides playing two or three times a week when the weather is nice here in the Northeast, and four times a week during the winter in Florida (we rent a condo on a golf course).

But I purposely don't read much about golf or watch the golf channel. Right away I found a lot of conflicting opinions so I took this approach instead: I go out and play and whatever I am doing worst I take to my coach to fix. Right now I am not doing anything wrong that I know of if I concentrate on what I know. That's the hard part, remembering everything. If the ball goes right, I didn't follow through pointing at the target, or I am not transitioning slowly enough from the back to the forward swing. If it goes left, I didn't finish up, but around too much, etcetera. If I start having a problem I can't fix myself, I will again take it to my coach.

Lastly I adopted a zero-sum, tautological strategy, i.e., if I can hit greens in regulation I can play good golf. The main supporting tactic is to practice 80%, or more, of the time with fairway irons. The drive can go a little right or left, but if I can hit the green in regulation on my second shot (on par fours) with a fairway iron, I don't need a short game besides putting; which is quite good due to the simple instruction my coach gave me, i.e., practicing with parallel sticks to make sure I am stroking straight, and lining the line on the ball properly with the line of the putt. Target practicing with pistols as a kid makes aiming the ball easy. And my coach made drives easy by teaching me to keep my wrists straight, or cocked slightly forward, never back. I never sliced again and only hook a little or pull left if I hit the ball with the heel of the club, which I just make sure I don't do - twice in a round, anyway. If I do miss a green with a fairway iron, having practiced a lot with middle irons makes wedge shots feel easy without practicing them much per se. And bumps and runs are essentially putting.

Like Dan I set a quixotic goal. I told my wife I wanted to play better than Tiger Woods by the end of my second year. (I didn't pick Rory because I have all artificial shoulders and hips and end stage degenerative disc disease, which I mentioned on another post.) She said that was delusional, but on my second-to-last day out last year, with my wife caddying and keeping score, Tiger played on the same day and I bested his score by one stroke. I pointed it out to my wife and she said he had a tougher course. That's tongue in cheek, of course, insinuating that I achieved my goal, because any pro can have a bad day and any duffer an in-the-zone day. But my great one-off score gave me hope and I am going to work very hard this winter to become a good golfer using my strategy, unless someone knows a better one. Oh, and I work out regularly in a gym, especially with the torso rotating machine, which added maybe 20 yards to my drive.

[Lihu]

I noticed a fairly large exclusion from the driver numbers he posted. Anyone else notice something missing?

(image from his blog)

Of course.

I was going to post something in his blog, but decided that anything I state could be taken as negative.

He stated that he drove a few 170 yards further down in the blog. With his swing and an Xstiff graphite shaft? Not surprising.

[Osmond]

Sounds about right.  According to Game Golf, my average score is 80.5 (over the last or so rounds) and my handicap come Thursday will be 5.6 Seriously?  He's come from never EVER having played golf in his life to being a single digit handicap of some kind in 4 years.  2?  Probably not.  5 or 6?  More likely. It's perhaps not where a lot of people think he should be at this point given his original goal, but the overall goal should not take away from the current accomplishments.  If he started a plan 4 years ago to say that in 5 years he wants to become a 1 handicap, would you still say that he HASN'T come a long way? With all due respect, THAT is laughable.

You do realize what it takes to go from 5 or 6 to 1? I'd say, having seen Dan's swing and "progress", it's highly unlikely that he ever makes it to 1 hcp. In the four years he's played, he has played more than the regular player in 20 years. A 5 or 6 handicap in four years of total dedication to the sport every day is not an achievement, sorry. I'd go on to say that if a person is even a little athletic, they can't do worse than what Dan has done. A truly gifted player is scratch in a couple of years, you can't even mention Dan in the same sentence. If this was the 100m sprint, I'd say Dan was a 12 second guy. Usain Bolt would be as far ahead as the tour golfers are now.

[Osmond]

And yes, a 1 hdc in 5 years would be an achievement. Maybe not a "wow that guy is crazy talented" but a respectable achievement nonetheless. However, since that is not the case, I'm not sure why you brought it up.

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

Sounds about right.  According to Game Golf, my average score is 80.5 (over the last or so rounds) and my handicap come Thursday will be 5.6

Seriously?  He's come from never EVER having played golf in his life to being a single digit handicap of some kind in 4 years.  2?  Probably not.  5 or 6?  More likely.

It's perhaps not where a lot of people think he should be at this point given his original goal, but the overall goal should not take away from the current accomplishments.  If he started a plan 4 years ago to say that in 5 years he wants to become a 1 handicap, would you still say that he HASN'T come a long way?

With all due respect, THAT is laughable.

You do realize what it takes to go from 5 or 6 to 1? I'd say, having seen Dan's swing and "progress", it's highly unlikely that he ever makes it to 1 hcp.

In the four years he's played, he has played more than the regular player in 20 years. A 5 or 6 handicap in four years of total dedication to the sport every day is not an achievement, sorry. I'd go on to say that if a person is even a little athletic, they can't do worse than what Dan has done. A truly gifted player is scratch in a couple of years, you can't even mention Dan in the same sentence. If this was the 100m sprint, I'd say Dan was a 12 second guy. Usain Bolt would be as far ahead as the tour golfers are now.

Imho, I think he was let down by his golf instructor, whomever told him to putt only, then chip. Maybe it was a combination of instructor and academic/ivory tower advisors. I think he lost a year there. I think there's a case to be made it's amazing he's gotten to where he is now despite some the not optimal information he was given. I don't read enough of his blog to say definitively, but from the based on what I've read, it feels like he doesn't get to the range enough.

[b101]

Imho, I think he was let down by his golf instructor, whomever told him to putt only, then chip. Maybe it was a combination of instructor and academic/ivory tower advisors. I think he lost a year there. I think there's a case to be made it's amazing he's gotten to where he is now despite some the not optimal information he was given. I don't read enough of his blog to say definitively, but from the based on what I've read, it feels like he doesn't get to the range enough.

Agreed - that was terrible, terrible advice. Unless he decided that himself in a bad interpretation of 'start at the green and work backwards'?

[golfbarefoot]

Agreed - that was terrible, terrible advice. Unless he decided that himself in a bad interpretation of 'start at the green and work backwards'?

I agree. Waiting an entire year to even start a full swing is a little nutty.

[Golfingdad]

You do realize what it takes to go from 5 or 6 to 1?

Yeah, exponentially LESS than it takes to go from a 1 to a +5 (or whatever it takes to make the tour).  I brought it up because I think you are unfairly measuring his current accomplishments based on his stated goal, not on his actual accomplishments.  If his stated goal were considerably less than the original, I'd be willing to bet people would sing a different tune regarding his current progress.  Even though that makes little sense.

In the four years he's played, he has played more than the regular player in 20 years. A 5 or 6 handicap in four years of total dedication to the sport every day is not an achievement, sorry.

You're a 2 handicap.  What do you think the collective opinion of the 90-95% of all golfers in the world - some casual, some serious, some extremely dedicated - who have not, and many of whom never will, reach a 5 handicap?  Do you think that they'd consider what Dan's done an achievement?

[Dave2512]

While it may seem there are an abundance of mid single digit handicap golfers here in real life my experience there are few. But yeah his problem is the initial goal. It was so far fetched he had an army of doubters from day one.

[RandallT]

Yes, my daughter and I teamed up to add all Dan's data to the spreadsheet. Just thought it'd be very interesting, and his site is lacking on the big picture view of his progress. The info is there, but hard to get to.

Dan's first round was in August 2011. He started out better than a bogey-golfer. I didn't realize that. Guess all that short game work paid off.

The trend lines are not looking promising, however.

[Lihu]

[URL=http://thesandtrap.com/content/type/61/id/111995/] [/URL] Yes, my daughter and I teamed up to add all Dan's data to the spreadsheet. Just thought it'd be very interesting, and his site is lacking on the big picture view of his progress. The info is there, but hard to get to. Dan's first round was in August 2011. He started out better than a bogey-golfer. I didn't realize that. Guess all that short game work paid off.  The trend lines are not looking promising, however.

Nice job with the graph! I think it shows what we have all been feeling. He seems to have reached a steady state at roughly an 6-8 handicap.

[golfbarefoot]

The one true element I think is missing, is the 10k hours..should be playing, like in constant tournaments with scratch players. The graph shows that no matter how many hours you tinker with equipment and hit balls and play by yourself, you plateau a bit. You somewhat play to the level of your competition. Always playing with scratch players will make you so much better long term, playing with hacks (or alone) will not improve you. At some point you have to just play and score in tournaments. Experience in watching them, their thought process, demeanor, club selection, conversation and resilience is priceless. Not robotic practice and over analysis day after day. He seems to be stuck in a constant tinker mode. His last video he's blatantly saying he just cannot hit a driver and needs to start over with a new fitting and just got new 3degree flat irons he's trying too.....in worried that even though he's doing good from where he started... Trying to compete from the tips? Add at least 8 more strokes. The ironic thing is this is called the Dan "plan" and personally I think it's the plan part that is failing him, not lack of effort. He didn't spend enough time thinking through the plan in my opinion. He also looks to be losing a little interest over the last year and half. I still say kudos for trying this but it's difficult to see him competing in the final 6 day tournament at Q-school. To summarize, I think the 10k hour theory would be better proved to an average younger golfer and the majority of the 10k hours is spent competing and learning from pros progressively in refinement. Not learning from scratch.

[RandallT]

The one true element I think is missing, is the 10k hours..should be playing, like in constant tournaments with scratch players. The graph shows that no matter how many hours you tinker with equipment and hit balls and play by yourself, you plateau a bit. You somewhat play to the level of your competition. Always playing with scratch players will make you so much better long term, playing with hacks (or alone) will not improve you. At some point you have to just play and score in tournaments. Experience in watching them, their thought process, demeanor, club selection, conversation and resilience is priceless. Not robotic practice and over analysis day after day. He seems to be stuck in a constant tinker mode. His last video he's blatantly saying he just cannot hit a driver and needs to start over with a new fitting and just got new 3degree flat irons he's trying too.....in worried that even though he's doing good from where he started... Trying to compete from the tips? Add at least 8 more strokes. The ironic thing is this is called the Dan "plan" and personally I think it's the plan part that is failing him, not lack of effort. He didn't spend enough time thinking through the plan in my opinion. He also looks to be losing a little interest over the last year and half. I still say kudos for trying this but it's difficult to see him competing in the final 6 day tournament at Q-school. To summarize, I think the 10k hour theory would be better proved to an average younger golfer and the majority of the 10k hours is spent competing and learning from pros progressively in refinement. Not learning from scratch.

Agree with this. Regarding tournament play, your post made me realize that the periodic peaks in his scores are from his tournaments. I'll have to confirm this by comparing the spreadsheet with his narrative, but typically he scores well by himself but then has a two- or three-day tournament of mid or high 80s each round. That can really do damage to a 10-day moving average. He provably needed two separate goals: one for casual play where he was playing his familiar home courses with familiar partners; and one for real competition rounds. Those are two very different beasts. The only one of those two goals that mattered was the competition goal. He should've had goals for which tourneys he wanted to play in, and strived toward increasing their frequency until his only measurement was competition rounds. But to get there, you need to be down at a low handicap to qualify for tourneys, and he's likely not low enough yet.