Williamevanl

I still think his post makes sense. There is something strange about how people think you can't see aptitude in golf and an extreme aptitude can only be realized after years of practice. I would think a pro instructor would recognize immediately someone that has an unnatural aptitude for the game. Put another way the OP is just saying if you had the ability to be a pro you would likely be one and you would know. I mostly agree with this.

Unlikely it's the equipment. His 9 iron also averaged 2 yards farther than his PW and his 3 hybrid 1 yard farther than his 4 hybrid. I think he only has the ability to hit the 6 iron semi-properly and that 5 iron is likely too long for him. I'm sure he found early on that a regular 3 and 4 iron were way too difficult which is why he switched to hybrids. (but the problem with the 5 iron remains).

I almost missed those. I agree those numbers are really interesting. I'm surprised after all this time that he has such strange gaps, several clubs that go the same distance and what looks like a pretty wide dispersion even with his SW. Well this is where you end up, you turn to your coach and ask things like "Well what do I need to improve on?" and the answer is Everything, by a lot! That collection of data shows just why he is hitting the wall he is. With a 6 iron that carries a yard short of his 5 iron (168 vs 169) and 20 yard gap to his next 2 clubs (hybrids) that also go the same distance what is he doing on mid length par 3s? Is everything from 170-190 some kind cut off hybrid shot? This has been the point all along, smoke and mirrors will only get you so far. In some ways the Dan Plan will be how low of a handicap you can you get to with very little ability and a ridiculous amount of practice. I'm already surprised that Dan can post the scores that he does given all the inconsistencies in his game. It's going to be a painful road ahead though.

It's tough, like you I always blow it. I'm almost always just playing 9 holes and frequently shoot 1-3 over but when I get the rare chance to play 18 and I'm close I just come apart it seems. The worst was 3 over with 3 to play and I thought, wow I'm on pace to shoot a 75 with a really easy par 5 coming up. Well missed the fairway, punched under a tree, lost my ball in light rough, walked back to the original spot punched out, think I took a triple. (and promptly fell apart) I also have distant memories of just needing to par out several times with a couple to play and hitting all time worst shots ever like 60 yard drive that caroms off a tree. Anyway don't worry that was several years ago, ever since then I practice hitting balls almost daily and work on my short game constantly and well, still haven't broken 80 legitimately on 18 holes. :) Oh well there's always next year!

Not sure how this is funny, but it I seriously cracked up at the end. "not sure if this is the same course..."

Right, well I understand that ultimately if you bogeying half of the course than it's not your lack of birdies that's killing you. I'm just saying his inability to make birdies is indicative of his skill level. (And I know he just had the round of his life). His scores have dropped drastically in the last few rounds (is he doing winter rules?) ever since he said he was no longer keeping his handicap because it shuts down this time of year. It's seems like a big leap and it looks like he'll have a chance of hitting my original prediction of being a 4 handicap at 5000 hours. (Which sounds nice, but I've got him at a 2 at the end of this thing) Some people might thing, "hey a two is pretty good". Sit back and consider the time and money that has gone into this. With the lost earnings and the savings spent it's over a half a million dollars and 6-7 years of his life.

Nope, and that's why I when I wrote it I thought to very careful with my words and said, "to shoot even par". I understand there's a cushion there provided by the handicap system for a scratch handicap that lets you screw up 10 of 20 times, get rid of blow up holes (ESC) that kind of thing.

Nope, and I think you missing the point I'm trying to make. (to be fair, I'm probably not describing it very well). Dan requires the skill to make birdies but is nowhere near having it. It is telling that he is basically unable to make them. The slam your head against the wall frustration of golf exists because you can make so many pars without possessing the skills necessary to make birdies. (maybe think of it as good pars vs bad pars) Basically there's a tipping point in golf where you possess such a high amount of skill that you can occasionally cross that par/birdie threshold and it means two things, one even when you are making pars that are end of the scale pars where you have tight shot dispersion and you are two putting from 12-15 feet and two you are able to offset the (now unusual) bogie. I'm basically saying that the scoring is set up in such a way that you can't see the enormous gap between 6 over with 6 singles and even with three birdies and three bogeys. In summary trying to turn bogies into pars is off the mark. If you are in the arena of making bogies and trying to push them in the par zone then you are simple nowhere near shooting even par. You aren't event playing the same game. You are in the red zone and worlds away from where you need to be to have a chance at scratch. This is also to blame for that period where you get better and better at golf but you score doesn't really change how can it, you aren't near the tipping point. A lot of the pars you do make aren't very good pars and your MO is really not making bogies. Birdies are not a side affect of anything other than a high level of skill/talent, an amount of skill that is miles away from a 6 handicap.

The Birdie I realized in another thread that there was a better way to explain why Dan has almost no chance of ever reaching scratch let alone professional golf. Here's the problem with golf, you don't realize how far you are at any time and here's why: Consider a graph that plots the difficulty of each score for a given ability (amount of skill). Dan's handicap is roughly a 6 but consider what that means in terms of skill. The problem as you reach scratch is that you can get to a pretty low handicap without possessing the skill necessary to offset you mistakes by making birdies. A good portion of your attempts result in par as par is a huge catch all department that can be reached via several routes. Birdie on the other hand is more indicative of skill as it shows an un-broken chain of highly skilled ability. Imagine someone who consistently shoots scratch, they are just as likely to make a birdie as they are a bogey, or two birdies as they are a double. Now look at Dan's numbers. On any given hole he has a 48% chance of making par, 39% chance of making bogie, 8% chance of making double and a measly 4% chance of making a birdie. (less than one a round) A 6 handicap sounds nice but it is masked by that catch-all par monster. It hides that fact that Dan is nowhere near scratch. Currently on any given hole he has a 47% chance of bogie or worse and only a 4% chance of a birdie. There is a huge difference between a bogie and a birdie. There isn't going to be a rapid conversion of bogies to birdies and the reason is that huge amount of skill required to span that bogey to birdie stretch.

One other thing, I don't know if anyone else has thought about why it's misleading but my thought is that it has to do with the difference between pars and birdies. Hear me out. :) It's pretty easy to make pars after you get semi-decent at golf, you can hack it around and make pars. Birdies on the other hand are much much more difficult to consistently pull off. I feel like this is a chasm between the birdie and the par that really creates that separation as you approach scratch. You need to be technically much more perfect to pull out even a handful of birdies (maybe just 3 a round) and this is where I think it really breaks down for people that are 5-6 handicaps. If nothing else consider this, at some point to shoot even par you have to be just as likely to make a birdie as you are a bogey. (think about that, it's crazy, and I suppose just similarly make two birdies for every double). It's not necessarily about more fairways and greens. It's about a huge leap in the level of playing ability on several holes to jump that chasm between par and birdie. If you are technically very skilled and can hit a lot of shots to 10-12 feet and sink those putts than you can offset your mistakes and be scratch. The majority of people are not. You are not close with your 12 pars and 6 bogeys, not close at all. The enormous gap in the skill required to convert 3 of those bogies to birdies is ENORMOUS. It is not simply 6 strokes.

You realize that's the point of it all right. It's deceivingly easy to get to an 8 or a 12 and it seems like better golf is right around the corner but that's right around the end of the road for a lot of people. I'd say a 10 is just about the exact handicap where everyone decides "hey this isn't easy I'm just going to keep practicing and I should be low single digits/scratch in no time. Then the vast majority (99+%) stall out well before scratch. Don't take my word for it though, see for yourself. Again just like my comment above about Dan going from a 6.1 to a 6.3 over half a year of practicing as a full time job. That's what happens! There's a wall awaiting for the majority of people which is why hardly anyone is scratch.

It's easy to get to a 12 and an 8. While it's not impossible to get to scratch, hardly anyone does it. According to the USGA: 0.13% of golfers that have a handicap on the plus side of scratch. So, that's ~.13% scratch and better. So 1 out of 1000 people that take golf seriously enough to have handicaps are able to get there. Maybe I'm missing something. I don't know know how else to explain this without sounding patronizing. Think of a histogram, people that get near 0 are extreme outliers. Maybe forget about golf and think height. The scratch golfer as rare as a person that is 6 foot 9 in. The % of golfers that are scratch or better is .13% the % of people that are over 6 9 is .1% as well. It's clear to me that people just don't realize how freaking rare scratch is.

Thanks for the contribution.

Yea, I was just thinking that might be the best way to calculate talent, by figuring out the lack of talent based on how many hours you have practiced and how bad you still are :P. I played with a kid a couple years ago that was pretty committed to golf, he spend a fair bit of time on the range with me and we both had memberships so we played a lot together. I beat him every time we played pretty handily but he started getting better and then about a year later after I hadn't played with him for awhile he came back and could all of sudden shoot in the 70's pretty easily. He certainly didn't out practice me though, he just got really good really fast after taking the game up. It just got more consistent and pretty quick too. He kind of flighted all his shots really well, like a really straight low to high climbing ball flight without much fade/draw and perhaps the most important thing when he got within a 100 yards he always thought of it as a birdie opportunity and often times turned it into one where I'd be thinking don't blow this. I've practiced that crap way more than he has but I'd say he had more talent for it.

? Can you find me where this happened? Dan's first handicap was a 12. He was a 11.6 when he first got a full set of clubs. I don't remember anybody saying that was the end of the road. I also don't remember him bouncing around between a 10 and 12 for 6 months either. And to get back on topic even if we had 1000 Dans with professional coaches they would all bottom out somewhere most would be nowhere near scratch. This is interesting as there are just various levels of naivety. Non-golfers are like, "oh my god, he was a 12 and now he's a 6 he should be a 0 soon. Mid handicappers think, well if he just keeps practicing he should be scratch before much longer. The 4 handicap that has practiced 10,000 hours easily and recognizes how ridiculously hard it gets as you approach scratch knows he will likely never get there. .. And then there's your highschool kid that played/practiced for fun for a couple years, is scratch and wonders what all the fuss is about.

This guy is doing all those things, >30 hours a week practicing, going to the gym and playing: What do the no such thing as talent folks think will happen with his handicap over the next several years? I can tell you, It's going to get painful. It's called diminishing returns on practice and it's a killer. At some point all of that practice will only enable him to stay as good as he currently is. That's the wall. If you don't understand how someone can be a 6.1, then spend the next half a year practicing 6 days a week all day only to be a 6.3 then you don't get it.

It's difficult for me to understand where the 'no such thing as talent' folks are coming from. I guess if you view golf in a simplistic enough way then you it seems like a procedural thing that can be mastered by learning the right procedure. Talent clearly exists in the world. Some things simply can't be explained without talent. What about people that can play entire songs after hearing them once, perfect pitch, human calculators, (basically all savants like abilities). World class archers have characteristics about them that make them the best in the world. With the exponential rise in speed and affordability of genotyping we will see over the next couple decades genetic evidence for the majority of talents. This is easy to see in some areas like muscle make up and oxygen use in east African runners. (They are clearly genetically predisposed to dominating the sport as they do) Do you believe a poodle will learn to attack someone as quickly as a German Shepherd if the right training is applied? Why does one learn faster? Genetic variation, that's why. It's what drives the evolution of everything, some things are better at some things. I get it, you don't have to be fast or strong to play golf well. Don't let that fool you into thinking that a person can not be genetically stacked in regards to golfing ability. Let someone sequence the genomes of the top 250 pro golfers against the standard population. Anything that boosts mechanoreception, steadiness of movement, fine motor coordination will be more prevalent in the pro golfers.

Yes, I'd say they are. They aren't quite as tangible as other physical attributes like strength and speed but they certainly exist. I'd image pro golfers would also be measurably better at horse shoes, darts, free throws, basically anything that requires you to repeat the same movement with x amount of precision. To your second point, I'd also posit that performing at such a high level of skill likely requires everything coming together and is a very 'sensitive' state. I'm not at all surprised that people can fall out of it and not be able to get back. And finally it's not to say anybody that fails at pro golf doesn't have the right physical make up, there are lots of reasons why someone would fail but clearly there are some things that you need to be exceptional at. I'd say there are some optimal characteristics that lend themselves to golf, interesting example of that, I was prescribed beta blockers for something and found that it drastically helped my golf game, I was steadier over all shots, calmer and was just able to make smoother movement. It just made everything easier. These are of course banned on the PGA (for this reason) but people clearly have varying degrees of natural steadiness so there's a clear advantage there.

I had said that for a couple reasons when he hit 5.9. One it came right around the time that he started deciding score rounds vs fun rounds so I was predicting that his handicap to rebound back up AND to illustrate that he isn't just going to keep getting better (at some point). Again, I don't understand how anyone has him at scratch at 5000 hours. " Will he be a "real" scratch type guy who can start showing up at US Open & US amateur type qualifying without totally embrassing himself? " ?! Is there seriously any real chance of this 1400 hours from now?

got worse and 6.9 (so close...) This is of course just kind of bouncing around now and he's back to a 6. I'm sticking with my dismal prediction of a 4 handicap at 5000 hours but I'm becoming concerned.

It's absolutely silly to think that a 5.8 handicap is somehow 1/3 of the way to professional. If he were a +4 now I'd say he was getting somewhere. Quickly getting down to the same handicap that every that other yahoo who has done this exact thing is not progress (see the rest of this thread). BTW he was a 6.1 six months ago and if you check GHIN his handicap now is 6.0 and his most recent score is 90. I don't even think he'll ever make it past a 2 handicap.

Easy, you don't keep getting better and at some point you might even get worse. I stopped getting better and even got worse at around a 5 handicap even though I was practicing as much as ever. See http://www.thedanplan.com I love referencing this site, guy practices 1000's of hours, 6 hours a day 6 days a week for years and it looks like his last 18 hole score was an 89.

always thought that having a coach that can shoot 65 in 45 minutes with 5 clubs might be discouraging (Christopher Smith holds speed golf record) for someone that thinks that just a little more practice is going to get you to pro playing ability. Think about it, Chris doesn't just have to tell Dan that what he is doing is stupid he can demonstrate why. Check this Dan, I'm going to run through this course in less than an hour and shoot mid 60's with 5 clubs. Could I make it on the pro tour? Not a chance in hell! (This is obviously incompatible with Dan's aspirations)

There's a lot of things I don't like believing either because they are discouraging. Unfortunately that doesn't make them any less true. People start to decline physically at ~26.

You said in one of your blogs that you were going to be scratch before the end of the year. How's that going? If I am right, you will find that your handicap isn't moving much. Also why the spin out at the bottom? I noticed you do a lot of the same crap I do, super short backswing, failing to turn around your spine properly, poor extension through the shot (almost looks like a little chicken wing :) ), and lastly spinning out, although yours is quite extreme. (wonder if that's symptomatic of self-teaching) I don't doubt that you are an intelligent person which is why you think you can just 'figure' all this out, but I think the smartest people are often the most delusional. :P Things we have in common are hitting lots and lots of golf balls and having a swing that is reasonably on plane so we can hit a lot of great shots, draw and fade at will pretty easily and get in grooves on the range where everything is going where you want it. Unfortunately an unbalanced swing where you are kind of all over will never be consistent. But don't take my word for it, go play 18 on a fairly difficult course... Point made.