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Will I ever be a great golfer?


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I am appalled by your insensitivity and haste to judge me without even considering the fact that I didn't mention money once within everything I said. The reason I am asking "random strangers" is because this seemed like a very helpful and knowledgable community, although it doesn't seem like you are upholding that reputation. I have a passion for the game of golf and want to spend my life playing it, that is why I am asking this. I want to have the chance to play golf for a living, which means yes, I want to make money from it. But this is only so that I can survive all while doing my favourite thing in the world for the rest of my life. Perhaps you should try not being so stuck up, and the last time I checked, most people don't enjoy beating down the dreams of a 14 year old boy.

Have a nice day.

Sorry, I just want to make something clear. That last statement was in reply to Shorty. Thank you to the rest of you for the advice. I guess I'm not one to judge my own ability, but I believe I have the "natural ability or something" to play great golf. My question was more like if there were two me's, and one started playing golf 5 years before the other, latter have less of a chance of making the PGA. That's all, thank you again everyone!


If you use the "quote" button, it will identify the person you are responding to.

With any internet forum, you may get blunt responses.  I usually choose to ignore those and focus on the helpful ones. I think your response above was well written and very mature for your age.  Well done.

Scott

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Don't underestimate how many bitter old men are on this site who will try to kill the motivation of a kid to feel better about their own lack of talent and wasted years. People who feel the need to be an ******* to a child on the Internet must not be respected by anyone in the real world, so for all of you that this applies to, I pity you, I really do.

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That is my point. Your "point of the post" is very negative and not appreciative of encouraging me. Instead you decided to take the route that many other people do and tell me I will never reach my dream of excelling in golf. You essentially told me I should never attempt to play golf professionally as I may as well win the lottery. Cold.

I'm confused. Was the point of your original post to ask for honest opinions, or to seek blind encouragement?

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Don't underestimate how many bitter old men are on this site who will try to kill the motivation of a kid to feel better about their own lack of talent and wasted years. People who feel the need to be an ******* to a child on the Internet must not be respected by anyone in the real world, so for all of you that this applies to, I pity you, I really do.

Perhaps you should read the actual posts. There has been nothing at all even remotely like you have suggested. Yours is the rude and disrepectful one.

In the race of life, always back self-interest. At least you know it's trying.

 

 

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Don't underestimate how many bitter old men are on this site who will try to kill the motivation of a kid to feel better about their own lack of talent and wasted years. People who feel the need to be an ******* to a child on the Internet must not be respected by anyone in the real world, so for all of you that this applies to, I pity you, I really do.

Nobody is doing that. But just to make up for your perception danL how about this: You can do anything if you simply believe it! You can win 19 majors, be the President of the United States, marry Miss Universe 2018 AND 2019 at the same time, and cure cancer all by the time you are 36! Just put your mind to it and believe! Good luck!

"The expert golfer has maximum time to make minimal compensations. The poorer player has minimal time to make maximum compensations." - And no, I'm not Mac. Please do not PM me about it. I just think he is a crazy MFer and we could all use a little more crazy sometimes.

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That is my point. Your "point of the post" is very negative and not appreciative of encouraging me. Instead you decided to take the route that many other people do and tell me I will never reach my dream of excelling in golf. You essentially told me I should never attempt to play golf professionally as I may as well win the lottery. Cold.

Not cold at all. You may understand as you get older. Even at 14, you gotta be tough enough to take this kind of honest opinion and use it to your advantage.

Don't underestimate how many bitter old men are on this site who will try to kill the motivation of a kid to feel better about their own lack of talent and wasted years.

People who feel the need to be an ******* to a child on the Internet must not be respected by anyone in the real world, so for all of you that this applies to, I pity you, I really do.

I think the @Shorty post should do the opposite. Of the few professional athletes I know, they are all extremely competitive. Telling someone like that he or she has little chance of succeeding should add fuel to their fire, not put it out.

To the OP, give it 100% and see what happens. As an adult, I don't think you want to look back and tell yourself you could have done more. Chances are you'll end up being pretty good at a very difficult sport.

As others have said, put as much effort into the academics. You're young enough to control much of your future - if you're smart about it.

Jon

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For quite a few years now I have played golf, slowly getting more serious as the seasons progressed but never fully caring. I am 14 years old now and just recently have found a passion for golf. I've been doing what I can to get better, but I feel like it will never be enough. Here is what I am doing or will do -

- Practicing 2-3 hours a day

- Playing 2-3 rounds a week

- I will be applying to a program in school that allows you to do academics in the morning and then your desired sport in the afternoon. This would essentially turn my 2 hour a day practice into 5 hours a day and might allow me to get in more rounds

- I will be getting lessons from a coach who was referred to me by one of my golf friends.

The reason I feel this won't be enough is because I feel like I'm too late. I look at all these kids my age that are winning regional championships and such and feel like they were the early birds that got the worm (It's notable that I aspire to be on the PGA Tour one day, which is the main reason I am asking this question). If you look, many if not all the players on the PGA tour say they've been swinging a club since they were 3 and how they "naturally seemed to be attracted to it and do well" and such. I've seen many people talking about making the PGA Tour and how you need to win such tournaments and things by certain ages and feel like I've missed the boat. Is my late blooming something the will never allow me to be a great golfer? I don't want to put my heart in to the game and then come out with nothing because there's kids out there that just happened to know they loved golf 10 years before me. Thank you in advance.

Having read through this thread, I wanted to offer some additional clarity of what a few others have said and that you seemed to bristle at.

When people tell you the long odds of becoming a professional golfer, whether you view that as being discouraging is entirely on you. All they're doing is giving you as much realistic information as they can so you can make an informed decision. It'd be irresponsible of them to say, "Go for it! If you try your best, I'm sure you'll make it!" Conversely, just because you know how hard it is doesn't mean you shouldn't try. It's meant to give you a realistic idea of what it means and what it takes, so you can plan accordingly, both for what you'll have to do to succeed and for what you need to do in case you fail. The most realistic path to becoming a professional golfer is to go through a major college program and develop that way. That involves getting recruited to get into those programs. That's happening right now at all those tournaments you say kids your age are winning. That's the biggest hurdle you face. That and getting good, obviously. But the point is you're behind on the path to having the next step available to you. So you need to understand that you need to get really good really fast or you'll have an even harder time developing as a player without a top college program and the coaching and tournament experience that offers. Not to mention the opportunity to get a degree you can fall back on. In other words, you need to not only get your game in order very quickly, you need to get on college coach's radars very quickly as well. They start getting verbal commitments as soon as junior or even sophomore year.

If you don't get into a college program, now you're talking about fronting a lot of money for coaching and tournaments yourself, and finding time for it all. Can be done, but now you've made a very hard thing even harder.

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2 things I want to clear up, entirely calm though, I'm not calling anyone out. One thing is that I was not mad at anyone or discouraged by them telling me my odds of making it, as some other people have said it should do, it just made me want to go out and practice more. The reason I was mad at Shorty was because of his delivery of the information. I'm sure he could have delivered the same kind of information in a more kind hearted manner. The second thing is that I believe I'm shoot 40 for a reason. When I say I've been playing for fun, I mean I'd probably do a one week camp and one round of golf in a whole season. In other words, I'm pretty much just starting to play golf for real. I've been told I have a good swing, in fact I've noticed it's quite similar to Na Yeon Choi's swing (Not to toot my own horn or anything, I just noticed that a lot of the motions in her swing are similar to the ones I make in my own). If my short amount of experience still convinces some of you I don't have the chops for the PGA, I get it, but that doesn't make me love the game golf any less ;-) . I will still pursue the game and excel as far as I can.

If you use the "quote" button, it will identify the person you are responding to.

With any internet forum, you may get blunt responses.  I usually choose to ignore those and focus on the helpful ones. I think your response above was well written and very mature for your age.  Well done.

Also, thank you boogie, I try to carry myself well. You never know the kind of connections you might make.

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If you're shooting 40 over your swing is not good. Kid, look. Go prove @Shorty wrong. K? How about that? The odds are incredibly stacked against you. 20 people born the year you were born will play 3+ years on the PGA Tour. You probably aren't one of the 20.

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Well, all I have to say is where do I find an 8 hour golf training plan? I would be more than happy to train that much in a day, although I do have school, I have a week of spring break ahead of me so I'm all for it.

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Well, all I have to say is where do I find an 8 hour golf training plan? I would be more than happy to train that much in a day, although I do have school, I have a week of spring break ahead of me so I'm all for it.


Rather than hourly updates on a quest to break 110 as a fast track to the PGATour, do the following:

Start a swing thread -There are excellent teachers here who, amazingly, give free advice and actually help those who want to listen.

Spend as little time on the internet as you can and as much time on the golf course as you can.

Reach the point where you can regularly shoot in the mid 60s on decent courses in decent conditions and then see if that puts you in the top 1000 players within 100 miles of where you live.

And finally, accept the fact that for the vast majority of people in all fields, simple desire means nothing when it comes to the actual acquisition of the goal.

My initial advice - that you are playing a game that lasts a lifetime where you make great friends wasn't what you wanted to know and it offended you. I accept that, but get out of the "poor me" mindset and think about what people are actually saying to you.

At the moment, there is nothing that supports the idea that you may one day be in the top  .0001% of golfers. That's the honest truth, so get used to reality in golf because there is no better teacher than the game itself.

Alternatively, I can say "Go for it, you can do it, Ricky Fowler did it so why not you?" Not quite sure how that'll help, but  it seems to be what you want to read.

As for the swing comparisons, let's talk about scoring in four years time instead.

In the race of life, always back self-interest. At least you know it's trying.

 

 

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Wow, I was really off, I don't know where I got a 40 handicap from but my scoring average is about 100.

12 strokes is a lot. . .A score of 100 puts you somewhere around a 23HC give or take a few strokes depending upon how hard is the course on which you score 100.

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It is quite a lot, but I think I could be shooting under par in the next 2 months. I'm regularly shooting bogey's on holes simply because of my short game. If I'm able to improve on my putting and my chipping accuracy, I definitely think I could do it. I've been practicing putting for about 5 hours every day.

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It is quite a lot, but I think I could be shooting under par in the next 2 months. I'm regularly shooting bogey's on holes simply because of my short game. If I'm able to improve on my putting and my chipping accuracy, I definitely think I could do it. I've been practicing putting for about 5 hours every day.

This is what most people wish. . .

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Callaway XR16 9 degree Fujikura Speeder 565 S
Callaway XR16 3W 15 degree Fujikura Speeder 565 S, X2Hot Pro 20 degrees S

"I'm hitting the woods just great, but I'm having a terrible time getting out of them." ~Harry Toscano

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It is quite a lot, but I think I could be shooting under par in the next 2 months. I'm regularly shooting bogey's on holes simply because of my short game. If I'm able to improve on my putting and my chipping accuracy, I definitely think I could do it. I've been practicing putting for about 5 hours every day.

1. Go from 100's to under par in two months is pretty much impossible. You're going to get frustrated real fast if you set unattainable goals like this.

2.Don't practice putting 5 hours a dayhttp://thesandtrap.com/t/58816/65-20-15-practice-ratios-where-to-devote-your-practice-time

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Note: This thread is 3274 days old. We appreciate that you found this thread instead of starting a new one, but if you plan to post here please make sure it's still relevant. If not, please start a new topic. Thank you!

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