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

[flopster]

That's my goal anyway. 8-10 handicap would be really awesome.

IMHO, he should have saved up $500,000 just for living/travel expenses and another $500,000 for a club membership at a difficult course for ten years. It probably costs at least a million dollars for someone with talent to become a pro golfer.

I'm not so sure that would be the dollar amount, in fact what I think is the springboard for a lot of the top talent in the world is collegiate golf, they play some of the best courses in the world and constantly play in tournament formats, that age of 18 -22 is where the real top tier emerge. Dan on the other hand appears to once again take another backwards step or to be more realistic is realizing just where he is ability wise, his index appears to be rising back above 5 and more precisely 5.3. He's now down to 4500 hours and is still a long ways from scratch level IMO, also I'm noticing he's not putting in the hours like he used to, burn out very well may be on the horizon as well.

[Lihu]

I'm not so sure that would be the dollar amount, in fact what I think is the springboard for a lot of the top talent in the world is collegiate golf, they play some of the best courses in the world and constantly play in tournament formats, that age of 18 -22 is where the real top tier emerge. Dan on the other hand appears to once again take another backwards step or to be more realistic is realizing just where he is ability wise, his index appears to be rising back above 5 and more precisely 5.3. He's now down to 4500 hours and is still a long ways from scratch level IMO, also I'm noticing he's not putting in the hours like he used to, burn out very well may be on the horizon as well.

Agreed, my thinking is that the cost of putting a kid into collegiate golf on a scholarship is on the order of $500,000.

[CraiginKSA]

He doesn't have the game to get into a Division 1 school.  And the other divisions don't offer scholarships for golf.  A 5 HC is not going to even get him onto the JV squad at a community college.  If he's out of money, he needs to take his bucket of balls and find a mowed field somewhere and go with the "secret in the dirt" strategy.

[Lihu]

He doesn't have the game to get into a Division 1 school.  And the other divisions don't offer scholarships for golf.  A 5 HC is not going to even get him onto the JV squad at a community college.  If he's out of money, he needs to take his bucket of balls and find a mowed field somewhere and go with the "secret in the dirt" strategy.

Not even to place in regional level high school level tournaments.

[iacas]

He doesn't have the game to get into a Division 1 school.  And the other divisions don't offer scholarships for golf.

You can get an athletic scholarship to play for a Division 2 school.

[CraiginKSA]

You can get an athletic scholarship to play for a Division 2 school.

Yes, you can, but even in Div. 1 the golf scholarships are sometimes either partial or shared.  The Div. 2 and 3 in the minor sports like swimming, wrestling, lacrosse, golf, Call of Duty etc. are not always full rides.  Sometimes just tuition, or tuition and books, or a meal plan.

Amyway, Dan is not getting any scholarships unless he lowers his index about 5-6 strokes.

[David in FL]

1 Sept revision.....

Anti-hcp is 10.7.

Name:

Dan McLaughlin

Club	Handicap Index	Effective Date	Low H.I.
Riverside Golf & Country Club Oregon Golf Association	5.3	9/1/2014	2.6

Revision Scores Recent Scores H.I. History C.H. Calculator

Used	T	Date	Score	CR/Slope	Diff.
*	H	8/14	77	71.9/131	4.4
*	T	8/14	80	72.3/130	6.7
	T	8/14	86	72.3/130	11.9
	H	8/14	88	71.9/131	13.9
*	AI	8/14	73	71.5/121	1.4
*	I	8/14	80	71.9/131	7.0
	H	8/14	84	71.9/131	10.4
*	H	8/14	80	71.9/131	7.0
*	AI	8/14	79	72.0/128	6.2
*	I	8/14	80	73.0/133	5.9
*	AI	8/14	78	74.0/139	3.3
	I	8/14	83	71.9/131	9.6
	T	8/14	83	71.9/131	9.6
*	H	6/14	81	71.9/131	7.8
	H	6/14	81	71.9/131	7.8
*	T	6/14	80	73.0/133	5.9
	H	6/14	86	71.6/130	12.5
	T	6/14	87	72.5/135	12.1
	T	6/14	86	72.5/135	11.3
	T	6/14	88	72.5/135	13.0

T = Score Type (H - Home, A - Away, T - Tournament, P - Penalty,
C - Combined, I - Internet)
U - Used for USGA Handicap Index® Computation
Low H.I. = Lowest Handicap Index over the last 12 months.

[Pretzel]

Yes, you can, but even in Div. 1 the golf scholarships are sometimes either partial or shared.  The Div. 2 and 3 in the minor sports like swimming, wrestling, lacrosse, golf, Call of Duty etc. are not always full rides.  Sometimes just tuition, or tuition and books, or a meal plan.

Amyway, Dan is not getting any scholarships unless he lowers his index about 5-6 strokes.

You can get full rides to division II schools, you just have to be on the cusp of getting into a division I school on a scholarship for it to happen. The reason that full rides are less common than the other types are because schools, per NCAA regulations, are only allowed to give out so many scholarships each year for a given sport. They are allowed to split scholarships between multiple people such that it totals out to the number of full scholarships they are allowed to give, but they can't give out any more than that number. It prevents the rich schools from having a massive advantage by being able to give out full rides to every single athlete.

As for him placing in regional high school tournaments, I would say his chances are pretty doubtful with his tournament scores. I'm currently the second place player in the 4A Northern League conference (it goes league, then regionals, then state) and my worst tournament score was a 78. The guy in 8th (our #3 player) is only a few strokes behind me. The guy in first is miles ahead of me, but he shot a 63 at a league match and has finished over par only once so far this year (luckily, he's our team's #1 so we don't compete against him). The thing is, even though our high school team has the #1, #2, and #8 players, we're placed third in the league because of our #4 player scores. High school tournaments usually (around here) end up stacked in the high 70's, so you don't have a chance if your other players are shooting high 80's or in the 90's.

The winning team for the regional tournament will have a score between -3 and +5 overall, and to win state at Walking Stick (in Pueblo, a pretty easy course) I imagine the team will need to be at or under par. Dan is nowhere near that currently.

[Lihu]

Agreed, Dan plays tournaments as well as a typical high school kid who practices and plays 200 hours a year.

[flopster]

You can get full rides to division II schools, you just have to be on the cusp of getting into a division I school on a scholarship for it to happen. The reason that full rides are less common than the other types are because schools, per NCAA regulations, are only allowed to give out so many scholarships each year for a given sport. They are allowed to split scholarships between multiple people such that it totals out to the number of full scholarships they are allowed to give, but they can't give out any more than that number. It prevents the rich schools from having a massive advantage by being able to give out full rides to every single athlete.

As for him placing in regional high school tournaments, I would say his chances are pretty doubtful with his tournament scores. I'm currently the second place player in the 4A Northern League conference (it goes league, then regionals, then state) and my worst tournament score was a 78. The guy in 8th (our #3 player) is only a few strokes behind me. The guy in first is miles ahead of me, but he shot a 63 at a league match and has finished over par only once so far this year (luckily, he's our team's #1 so we don't compete against him). The thing is, even though our high school team has the #1, #2, and #8 players, we're placed third in the league because of our #4 player scores. High school tournaments usually (around here) end up stacked in the high 70's, so you don't have a chance if your other players are shooting high 80's or in the 90's.

The winning team for the regional tournament will have a score between -3 and +5 overall, and to win state at Walking Stick (in Pueblo, a pretty easy course) I imagine the team will need to be at or under par. Dan is nowhere near that currently.

That may be the case with a kid I know that will be going to Hawaii next October to take a look at the school that is offering a full ride, I'm not sure what school it is because it's div2 and I don't know if Hawaii is 1 or 2. Anyways he's been playing for just less than 2 years and already shoots high 60's so he may be on that cusp I'm not really sure but seeing where he is in his time frame compared to Dan just proves how big of a joke Dan is IMO, Dan and his blind followers are in their own little bubble thinking he still can reach his goal, it's going to be real entertaining when he's down to that last 1000 hours and still spraying his driver, I think the weight of reality will be pressing very hard by then.

[nevets88]

I was looking at videos of his swing - it really hasn't changed much. Backswing is shorter. I can't put my finger on it. The BS from dtl looks wonky. And the follow through, ouch, my back.

His improvement process - I was hoping he would do side by side video of old vs new swings. And he shouldn't be afraid to show videos of bad swings. That's part of deliberate practice, right? Make mistakes to make progress.

Instead of doing the Vision mental thing, if his putting was off, perhaps the time spent on Vision would be better spent learning Aimpoint?

I wanna learn how to learn better! Give me some ideas Dan Plan!

[Shorty]

I wanna learn how to learn better! Give me some ideas Dan Plan!

I'd be looking anywhere but there.

He has no ideas.

His mission at the moment seems to be to a have a positive mindset. That's it.

[Slice of Life]

I'd be looking anywhere but there.

He has no ideas.

His mission at the moment seems to be to a have a positive mindset. That's it.

Yup. If I spent as much time and money as he has so far, I'd be very disappointed to not be at least a scratch golfer.

[nevets88]

Yup. If I spent as much time and money as he has so far, I'd be very disappointed to not be at least a scratch golfer.

That's the thing. He didn't have a lot of money. Since he's not flush with cash, it's not like he could occasionally fly to Florida, California, or where any of the hotbeds of really good teaching reside. It would also let him try out lots of different pros. And just spend a lot on instruction. I wondered if he tried online lessons as that's the cheaper way of trying out instructors. I think one the things exposed by the Dan Plan is you need money or need to really luck out on finding a instructor who will fast track your game.

[flopster]

That's the thing. He didn't have a lot of money. Since he's not flush with cash, it's not like he could occasionally fly to Florida, California, or where any of the hotbeds of really good teaching reside. It would also let him try out lots of different pros. And just spend a lot on instruction. I wondered if he tried online lessons as that's the cheaper way of trying out instructors.

I think one the things exposed by the Dan Plan is you need money or need to really luck out on finding a instructor who will fast track your game.

Actually I think it's more along the lines if you have limited athletic ability you should keep your aspirations tempered when it comes to achieving world class ability at a sport. 99.9% of golfers with any ability at this game which I would say would be players in the 5 and below index range saw this guy absolutely had zero chance in reaching the goal he set for himself very early on. Hand eye coordination is either there or it isn't and in Dans case it isn't and by a long ways at that. I can only imagine how good someone with real ability could get at even 1000 hours, I would dare say single digits for sure and possibly scratch by 2000. Dan has put forward an extreme amount of time and has had very little in return for someone with real ability.

[Pretzel]

He could get a better return if his practice wasn't as mindless as it seems to be.

[Lihu]

He could get a better return if his practice wasn't as mindless as it seems to be.

Now you know how engineers feel about marketing.

He is a really good marketing type, and his ability to sell things is really good. He could make a lot of money with very little effort if he chose to do so. I am wondering what kind of spin he's going to use?

We know that he's about as good as a run of the mill high school freshman player, but does the rest of world believe his word or our word? Keep in mind that he has many people convinced that we are just a bunch of nay saying, jealous, evil golfers that took years to get where we are and he's done it in less than 4 years. According to him anyway. The saga continues. . .

[newtogolf]

Now you know how engineers feel about marketing.

He is a really good marketing type, and his ability to sell things is really good. He could make a lot of money with very little effort if he chose to do so. I am wondering what kind of spin he's going to use?

We know that he's about as good as a run of the mill high school freshman player, but does the rest of world believe his word or our word? Keep in mind that he has many people convinced that we are just a bunch of nay saying, jealous, evil golfers that took years to get where we are and he's done it in less than 4 years. According to him anyway. The saga continues. . .

That's a good point.  The average person that hears about Dan, probably doesn't care but also probably doesn't know much about golf.  When they hear that he's playing in "tournaments" after "only" 4500 hours of practice they might think it's a great achievement.

I have to think that anyone who's seriously tried to get better at golf will side with us "naysayers" rather than be amazed at his accomplishment.  Some of the accomplishments of our own sandtrappers are more impressive than what Dan has done.