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

[nevets88]

I think he looks pretty well grounded. Not a bad swing, just a little too slow for an aspiring pro. I suppose everyone has slumps, I'm still wondering if the motivational golf therapy will help him. He might be able to break into the mid/low single digits but only with serious help.

Yeah, I was only looking at the slow motion vids. Realtime looks nice and smooth. What the hell do I know but that swing looks better than what he's been scoring lately. It would have been better if he was at this point 2 years ago.

[Lihu]

Yeah, I was only looking at the slow motion vids. Realtime looks nice and smooth. What the hell do I know but that swing looks better than what he's been scoring lately. It would have been better if he was at this point 2 years ago.

Agree, at least he is doing the right thing seeing a golf head doctor.

I still think he's going to plateau around an honest 6 handicap, which would be really good. So, we should expect that he can shoot in the mid to high 70s after this golf seminar gets through with him?

[LuciusWooding]

I think he should try to get to 10,000 hours of therapy; that should do him more good than trying to reach his goal.

[Lihu]

I think he should try to get to 10,000 hours of therapy; that should do him more good than trying to reach his goal.

Funny, I would suggest this to all marketing folks.

For those who are in marketing, please accept my sincerest apologies, you guys are different because you golf.

[flopster]

His hands initially aren't going in they're actually going out but he's not sucking the clubhead way way inside. It just looks like he's swinging out of his shoes. Should be able to swing easier and get similar distance.

If it were me, I would be publishing more video. He'll get more scrutiny but if I were donating money, which I'm not, I'd expect more vids and photos. So much wall of text in his blog entries I just skim, get to the d@mn point, video says 1,000 words.

Well this is what I was getting at.

[narmno]

Somewhat encouragingly, Dan is taking a step into "common sense" territory. He asked Mark Broadie about strokes gained and said he would check out his book:

https://twitter.com/thedanplan/status/480360173865668608

"Strokes gained" is a solid statistic. It will unequivocally tell him his long game sucks and is not trending towards Tour-level.

The previous stats he's been using have been worse than useless. They've given him the freedom to 'weasel' with stories like "my long game was good, but I just couldn't get into the hole with my X putts per round."

If Dan can find the courage to internalize Broadie's book and use his stats, it will be a lot harder for him to lie to himself about the state of his game.

But sadly I doubt it will happen, because of (a) Dan's deep investment in his flawed goals, (b) his intellectual inability to analyze golf* and (c) his pattern of poor decisions and attitudes.

*using books, quantitative intuition and a clear mind

[nevets88]

Well this is what I was getting at.

Okay I've been criticizing the guy but it's apparent I haven't watched all of his vids or I skipped over this one. This lesson was mid 2013. His swing in spring 2014 shows clearly he's not doing what his instructor showed him which made sense. That said I got that same exact lesson too many moons ago way before I was on TST but didn't understand it. It took awhile for my, for lack of a better phrase, golf IQ to increase to really understand what that meant, hopefully I really do understand it now but I digress. I dunno maybe his instructor needs to head butt him (in reference to a recent piece going around on golf instruction) or something, ha ha. If I saw my dtl vid after that 2013 lesson and my hands were still going out I'd try and figure some way to fix that. Use video and mirror work to do backswing experimentation lots of swings without ball. I dunno how he missed Brodie's work and is just learning about it now. Broadie got a lot of attention in the NYT, WSJ and major golf publications, tv. I was reading long form articles about strokes gained in 2011. But imho he needs to learn to read greens better and improve his wedge game based on the info I read in addition to the long game. Maybe I'm not accounting enough for the time he has to spend updating blog, handling media, etc...

[Phil McGleno]

Someone should show this Dan feller the book everyone here talking about.-Tweet at him (is that right?) and tell him to get a copy.
 

Quote

 

Somewhat encouragingly, Dan is taking a step into "common sense" territory. He asked Mark Broadie about strokes gained and said he would check out his book:

"Strokes gained" is a solid statistic. It will unequivocally tell him his long game sucks and is not trending towards Tour-level. The previous stats he's been using have been worse than useless. They've given him the freedom to 'weasel' with stories like "my long game was good, but I just couldn't get into the hole with my X putts per round." If Dan can find the courage to internalize Broadie's book and use his stats, it will be a lot harder for him to lie to himself about the state of his game. But sadly I doubt it will happen, because of (a) Dan's deep investment in his flawed goals, (b) his intellectual inability to analyze golf* and (c) his pattern of poor decisions and attitudes. *using books, quantitative intuition and a clear mind

 

Still waiting on my copy-Got through a friend.

[Lihu]

Someone should show this Dan feller the book everyone here talking about.-Tweet at him (is that right?) and tell him to get a copy.

Still waiting on my copy-Got through a friend.

I was tempted, but didn't really want to subscribe to his website to do so.

It looks like he's at least going to start tracking his stats in a more meaningful manner a la Mark Broadie.

[nevets88]

I was tempted, but didn't really want to subscribe to his website to do so. :-X It looks like he's at least going to start tracking his stats in a more meaningful manner a la Mark Broadie. :smartass:

It's easy enough to Tweet him or message him on FB. In this way I think he is inundated with advice.

[GHIN0011458]

I think we should just send him a link to this forum.

[nevets88]

I think we should just send him a link to this forum.

I bet someone already did (not me,) He must be swimming in spam.

[marvin]

But now a team led by David Hambrick have published a forceful challenge to the 10,000 myth. " We found that deliberate practice does not account for all, nearly all, or even most variance in [elite music or chess] performance, " they write.

...

The take-out was clear - some people failed to achieve the highest level even after completing substantially more than 10,000 of practice ; others achieved the highest level with only relatively modest practice.

...

"The bottom line," write Hambrick and his colleagues, "is that deliberate practice is necessary to account for why some people become experts in these domains and others fail to do so, but not even close to sufficient ." What else matters? Another relevant factor, they say, is starting age. This correlates with amount of completed practice, but crucially, it remains a predictive factor even after subtracting the influence of practice. "This ... suggests that there may be a critical period for acquiring complex skills ," the researchers said.

Source: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/06/exploding-10000-hours-myth-its-no.html

[nevets88]

Apply the 10K hypothesis into areas - sports/language/math & science/arts/business - because that rule is going to apply differently to different areas. It's crazy to apply it to everything.

[Zeph]

Of course applying 10,000 hours of practice or work on a subject or task isn't going to magically make you an expert or master at it. Sure, putting in hours is a good way to accomplish one's goals, but there are far more factors at play than merely how many hours you put in.

[MS256]

Apply the 10K hypothesis into areas - sports/language/math & science/arts/business - because that rule is going to apply differently to different areas. It's crazy to apply it to everything.

IMO it's crazy to apply it to anything. The more somebody works and practices at anything the better they should get but that doesn't mean they are going to pass people with more talent.

I've been a welder my whole life and have worked with many really good welders. Some had been welding for many, many years but the very best welder I ever worked with had been welding for 9 months when I first met him. The man was a tremendous talent and a natural artist with a welding rod. Could do things that we would have considered impossible.

All of the practice in the world can't give what he had.

[krupa]

But now a team led by David Hambrick have published a forceful challenge to the 10,000 myth. "We found that deliberate practice does not account for all, nearly all, or even most variance in [elite music or chess] performance," they write.

...

The take-out was clear - some people failed to achieve the highest level even after completing substantially more than 10,000 of practice; others achieved the highest level with only relatively modest practice.

...

"The bottom line," write Hambrick and his colleagues, "is that deliberate practice is necessary to account for why some people become experts in these domains and others fail to do so, but not even close to sufficient." What else matters? Another relevant factor, they say, is starting age. This correlates with amount of completed practice, but crucially, it remains a predictive factor even after subtracting the influence of practice. "This ... suggests that there may be a critical period for acquiring complex skills," the researchers said.

Source: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/06/exploding-10000-hours-myth-its-no.html

Social science is hand-wavy at best.  You will always find enough evidence to support a theory while someone else finds enough evidence to refute your theory.

The only mistake is when everyone else reads these studies (suitably paraphrased to make nice quotes in an article) and take them as fact.

[marvin]

Hambrick and his team say these 10,000 hours claims are simply "incorrect". Their findings suggest that " some normally functioning people may never acquire expert performance in certain domains, regardless of the amount of deliberate practice they accumulate. " This may sound disheartening, but there is a "silver lining". People can avoid wasting time on futile dreams, say Hambrick et al, and "gravitate towards domains in which they have a realistic chance of becoming an expert through deliberate practice."