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

[DrvFrShow]

If he would say, "I'm shooting in the high 70s and occasionally in the low 80s. That's not good enough. I need to consistently shoot in the high 60s to low 70s. I have a long way to go," I'd have a lot more respect for his goal. But then that doesn't sound as good as giving out his best handicap streak.

[Lihu]

6 minutes ago, DrvFrShow said:

If he would say, "I'm shooting in the high 70s and occasionally in the low 80s. That's not good enough. I need to consistently shoot in the high 60s to low 70s. I have a long way to go," I'd have a lot more respect for his goal. But then that doesn't sound as good as giving out his best handicap streak.

It does to me because it shows that he is working on his swing and on improving rather than  trying to make a fake show of being better. His handicap listed in his website under statistics is 5.5 as of 4/1/15. If he keeps claiming to be a 2.6HC every time he's interviewed, someone's going to challenge his integrity. Handicaps change over time. Especially when you are improving, injured, or whatever. . .

 

[Patch]

What ever style of swing  instruction he is using, just get to a 5 is pretty decent swing instruction. If he has been lower then it' s "darn good" swing instruction.  What ever works. 

[Lihu]

11 minutes ago, Patch said:

What ever style of swing  instruction he is using, just get to a 5 is pretty decent swing instruction. If he has been lower then it' s "darn good" swing instruction.  What ever works. 

From what I understand, he instructed himself for most of the time.

[Patch]

15 minutes ago, Lihu said:

From what I understand, he instructed himself for most of the time.

I looked him up. He gets free equipment from Nike, and he started with a putter and worked his way backwards from the green to the tee box. I know some folks who went from scores in 100s to mid 80s in very short time using this type of instruction. I even like it myself. Dont know if teaching himself will get him into the pro ranks, but being a 5 is still pretty good. 

[Lihu]

40 minutes ago, Patch said:

I looked him up. He gets free equipment from Nike, and he started with a putter and worked his way backwards from the green to the tee box. I know some folks who went from scores in 100s to mid 80s in very short time using this type of instruction. I even like it myself. Dont know if teaching himself will get him into the pro ranks, but being a 5 is still pretty good. 

Given he instructed himself and is not competing weekly in club tournaments, are you sure that he learned all the proper rules of golf to get to be a true 5?

[Patch]

29 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Given he instructed himself and is not competing weekly in club tournaments, are you sure that he learned all the proper rules of golf to get to be a true 5?

I have no reason to doubt the guy. I don't know him. If he is, or isn't, it was an interesting read about him. Does anyone on here know him personally? If so, then you should ask them. All I shared is what I read on wikipedia, when I googled his name. I got the number 5 from this thread. 

Now it's time to eat Santa's snacks. Good Night. 

[Lihu]

28 minutes ago, Patch said:

I have no reason to doubt the guy. I don't know him. If he is, or isn't, it was an interesting read about him. Does anyone on here know him personally? If so, then you should ask them. All I shared is what I read on wikipedia, when I googled his name. I got the number 5 from this thread. 

Now it's time to eat Santa's snacks. Good Night. 

I don't doubt he considers himself a 2.6, but I'm not fully convinced that he is a 2.6 or a 5?

Merry Christmas to you too. I'm signing off as well. . .

[bkuehn1952]

I checked on on Dan's website to see if he had surfaced since his trip to Finland.  Surprise, surprise, he is tweeting from the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.  A zillion years ago when I first heard of Dan and his "Plan" I was both intrigued and slightly jealous.  Many of us would love to just ditch work and devote ourselves to fitness and golf.  As he naively set out on his journey to master golf, he was a sympathetic character.  One had to sort of root for him even as one sensed his goal was far fetched.

Fast forward to today.  He has acquired a certain amount of savvy as respects getting invitations to travel round the world. Perhaps he paid his own way to Hawaii but my gut feeling is he is there by invitation or his family picked up the tab.  He probably now realizes that his blog essentially gives his story away for free and generates little income so that activity has been minimized.  As his back injury recuperation enters its 9th month, it does not appear he has a job or even any "plan" other than to kick back, travel a bit and relax. 

It will be interesting to see if & when his back ever mends itself whether he has the energy to re-start his "Plan."  Unless he has been generating a substantial income from free lance photography over the past 9 months, his finances can't have improved.  Does he have the money and passion to finish the last 4,000 hours?  I guess we will know when May rolls around.

[Lihu]

2 hours ago, bkuehn1952 said:

I checked on on Dan's website to see if he had surfaced since his trip to Finland.  Surprise, surprise, he is tweeting from the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.  A zillion years ago when I first heard of Dan and his "Plan" I was both intrigued and slightly jealous.  Many of us would love to just ditch work and devote ourselves to fitness and golf.  As he naively set out on his journey to master golf, he was a sympathetic character.  One had to sort of root for him even as one sensed his goal was far fetched.

Fast forward to today.  He has acquired a certain amount of savvy as respects getting invitations to travel round the world. Perhaps he paid his own way to Hawaii but my gut feeling is he is there by invitation or his family picked up the tab.  He probably now realizes that his blog essentially gives his story away for free and generates little income so that activity has been minimized.  As his back injury recuperation enters its 9th month, it does not appear he has a job or even any "plan" other than to kick back, travel a bit and relax. 

It will be interesting to see if & when his back ever mends itself whether he has the energy to re-start his "Plan."  Unless he has been generating a substantial income from free lance photography over the past 9 months, his finances can't have improved.  Does he have the money and passion to finish the last 4,000 hours?  I guess we will know when May rolls around.

My guess is he hit a wall in his swing speed, and that his back injury is a direct result of trying to overcome that limitation?

Regardless of his reported handicap or whatever other objections we might have, he did do something that most of us couldn't do. I'm not jealous because I happen to love my family and work, so I don't mind splitting my time among all the other things in life that are important to them and me. If he is more talented than me that's great, if he's better only because he's spending all his time doing golf, that's also great. If I never reach his level of golf, that's fine, if I do, that's great.

I do find that his plan is a little bit "deceptive" because it doesn't really pass the sniff test to real golfers, but it does have a good side and that's what all these people are paying him to discuss. It's more about diligent time spent on something "paying off".

[RandallT]

On 1/11/2016 at 9:39 AM, bkuehn1952 said:

I checked on on Dan's website to see if he had surfaced since his trip to Finland.  Surprise, surprise, he is tweeting from the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.  A zillion years ago when I first heard of Dan and his "Plan" I was both intrigued and slightly jealous.  Many of us would love to just ditch work and devote ourselves to fitness and golf.  As he naively set out on his journey to master golf, he was a sympathetic character.  One had to sort of root for him even as one sensed his goal was far fetched.

Fast forward to today.  He has acquired a certain amount of savvy as respects getting invitations to travel round the world. Perhaps he paid his own way to Hawaii but my gut feeling is he is there by invitation or his family picked up the tab.  He probably now realizes that his blog essentially gives his story away for free and generates little income so that activity has been minimized.  As his back injury recuperation enters its 9th month, it does not appear he has a job or even any "plan" other than to kick back, travel a bit and relax. 

It will be interesting to see if & when his back ever mends itself whether he has the energy to re-start his "Plan."  Unless he has been generating a substantial income from free lance photography over the past 9 months, his finances can't have improved.  Does he have the money and passion to finish the last 4,000 hours?  I guess we will know when May rolls around.

Good post. Interesting he's in Hawaii! Maybe he's angling for his dream job: motivational speaking for PGA Tour photographers.

I'm still curious what his diagnosis with his back was. I don't believe he ever got an MRI (nor a bone scan that he said would be better). I think he just went with the idea that rest would cure it, with some PT that he was given by some experts in personal training. Isn't it possible that the condition he has (maybe herniated disc?) would be liable to rear its head again, if not corrected? Oh well, his plan, he can handle it how he likes, and he made the call that maybe his limited financial resources precluded medical tests.

I think @Shorty foresaw one conclusion that many will take away from this whole thing. Have a listen:

http://vitalityhackers.com/tag/the-dan-plan/ from September 2015 (the best starting point is 25:30 for the truly vomit-inducing part). I had to even make a transcript for those who don't want to listen:

Quote

(STARTING at 25:30)

This isn’t just a story, this is legit real. (“yah, this is real”)

And he’s going on this journey. 

Dan is just over 6000 hours at the moment. when he hit 5000 hours , I haven’t seen an update after 5000 hours yet, but when he hit 5000 hours, his handicap was at 3.3.

Now what that means is that as a golfer he is statistically better than 95.5% of all other golfers.

This is huge. (“That’s massive”)

He’s in the top 4 and a 1/2 percent in the world (“from nothing”). From never having exercised! (“Wow”) In just 5000 hours. So it’s about 5 years in, about 5000 hours.

He was originally planning to do it in 7 years, but after speaking to Dr Ericsson, he’s like: yah, it’ll probably take a little bit longer.

But he’s on track for his set PGA Tour debut date, which is pretty cool.

Yah, so that’s amazing. That’s taking all of this to the extreme.

That really does demonstrate the power of having a goal, chunking it down into things, and focusing on one thing at a time.

@Shorty predicted that the details of the plan would get fuzzier over time, and the gist is that Dan was a guy who started from nothing and got to the top 99.x% of golfers in the world by applying the "10,000 Hour Theory." And that he achieved a level of proficiency that was only a hair away from the PGA. If only that pesky back injury had not occurred. What an inspiration. What proof that if you set your mind to it, you too can achieve what you set out to do.

Of course, this thread debunks that general perception, but I think that perception will live on. And that might be partly why the site updates are getting less frequent, @bkuehn1952- Dan wants to leave it all very vague and make you read very deep to get to the heart of it. Who has time for a deep read (not journalists who do stories on him apparently)? Likely, he'll stop paying to host the site or it will take a different form that is more promotional of his "post"-Dan Plan endeavors, highlighting his achievements in broad form.

I'm sure the vitality hackers podcasters team is a wonderful resource for getting healthy, but in this instance, I think they didn't dig deep enough into the truth of Dan's progress. They wanted to hear what they thought would be motivational for their own purposes, and the details were unimportant- particularly if those details contradicted their premise. In fact, they say they haven't heard an update after 5000 hours... um, check his web site (which they even link to), it shows the latest progress. I didn't listen to the entire podcast, but I don't think they even mentioned his back injury.

What's odd is that at 5000hrs, that was April 2014, and he was indeed 3.3 then. By June 2014, he got it down to 2.6. Why didn't they use that? It would've sold their message even better. Of course, by April 2015, Dan was injured and had climbed back up to 5.5. Maybe they should fire their interns who did their show research, because the point in time they chose to discuss was old and not even their best argument.

 

 

 

[Lihu]

1 hour ago, RandallT said:

Good post. Interesting he's in Hawaii! Maybe he's angling for his dream job: motivational speaking for PGA Tour photographers.

I'm still curious what his diagnosis with his back was. I don't believe he ever got an MRI (nor a bone scan that he said would be better). I think he just went with the idea that rest would cure it, with some PT that he was given by some experts in personal training. Isn't it possible that the condition he has (maybe herniated disc?) would be liable to rear its head again, if not corrected? Oh well, his plan, he can handle it how he likes, and he made the call that maybe his limited financial resources precluded medical tests.

I think @Shorty foresaw one conclusion that many will take away from this whole thing. Have a listen:

http://vitalityhackers.com/tag/the-dan-plan/ from September 2015 (the best starting point is 25:30 for the truly vomit-inducing part). I had to even make a transcript for those who don't want to listen:

@Shorty predicted that the details of the plan would get fuzzier over time, and the gist is that Dan was a guy who started from nothing and got to the top 99.x% of golfers in the world by applying the "10,000 Hour Theory." And that he achieved a level of proficiency that was only a hair away from the PGA. If only that pesky back injury had not occurred. What an inspiration. What proof that if you set your mind to it, you too can achieve what you set out to do.

Of course, this thread debunks that general perception, but I think that perception will live on. And that might be partly why the site updates are getting less frequent, @bkuehn1952- Dan wants to leave it all very vague and make you read very deep to get to the heart of it. Who has time for a deep read (not journalists who do stories on him apparently)? Likely, he'll stop paying to host the site or it will take a different form that is more promotional of his "post"-Dan Plan endeavors, highlighting his achievements in broad form.

Interesting thoughts, and I agree that @Shorty called it pretty well. That is, from a golfers understanding of the situation.

What I see as the major difference in perception is a fundamental understanding of this game. The non-golfer is not going to be critical of Dan, and in fact will probably think his achievements are praiseworthy.

For starters, I think Dan is a true 7 HC or better? If we go with the general consensus that he is a 7HC then we can estimate that he is in the upper 21% of the people with handicaps and that about 1/5 of all golfers have handicaps then we can reason that he's in the top 5%? We might disagree within a +/-2% value, but he's up there in the 93% to 97% range. What the general public reading about Dan understands about the difference between the top 95% and the top 99% is that they are "close, and that what we golfers feel is kind of  "splitting hairs".

The general public would probably view his progress as a success because he's used up only half of his hours and is now better than 19 out of 20 other golfers on any course or better. If a scratch player played against him, Dan could win some holes from him. To the average person looking in, they could conclude that he's "pretty close" to scratch.

The general non-golfing perception is that he's pretty close to scratch already and that pro-level is not that far off. In terms of strokes, he would lose about 12 strokes to a tour player. Statistically, Dan could probably even still take a couple holes from a tour player. Not sure how many rounds that would take, but if that ever happened it would be "proof" that Dan is "close" to pro level even though we all know that that's far from the case.

[flopster]

I have been away for a while but it sounds as if this plan has stalled in the past year, from what little I have learned is his back injury has stopped any further progress, I just hope people don't think the reason he didn't make it was because of the injury, it was a simple lack of physical golf talent and something Dan needs to accept.

[Lihu]

22 minutes ago, flopster said:

I have been away for a while but it sounds as if this plan has stalled in the past year, from what little I have learned is his back injury has stopped any further progress, I just hope people don't think the reason he didn't make it was because of the injury, it was a simple lack of physical golf talent and something Dan needs to accept.

Welcome back! I kind of wondered where you went?

[flopster]

On ‎2‎/‎16‎/‎2016 at 0:52 PM, Lihu said:

Welcome back! I kind of wondered where you went?

Nowhere just been a little preoccupied with the new house/moving but did peek in for a look from time to time just didn't post.

[tdiii]

Dan is no longer keeping a handicap.  Nothing on GHIN.  (The only Dan McLaughlin in Oregon is a different Dan.) 

[mchepp]

1 minute ago, tdiii said:

Dan is no longer keeping a handicap.  Nothing on GHIN.  (The only Dan McLaughlin in Oregon is a different Dan.) 

It is very possible he lost or has given up the membership at the club he was playing at. He was playing at a pretty nice country club and either ran out of money or goodwill with the membership.

If he joined a new club, even some kind of internet one, in Oregon it wouldn't go active until March 1. Our GHIN's go dormant from November 1 to March 1. 

[DrvFrShow]

GHIN doesn't go active season in Oregon until next week, and I seriously doubt anyone is playing for keeps for a while. And solo rounds don't count anymore.