<story><title>Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?</title><url>http://www.tampabay.com/features/can-a-complete-novice-become-a-golf-pro-with-10000-hours-of-practice/1159357</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasonwilk</author><text>I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I&apos;ve played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport.&lt;p&gt;I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why.&lt;p&gt;1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both strength and muscle memory). Even if this guy can learn to hit the ball 300 yards, it will take him at least 10 years if not longer to get the mental comfort required to play effectively in front of thousands of people and successfully place or win an event.&lt;p&gt;2. The 10,000 hour rule is best applied to things like coding or langauge learning, in other words, low pressure learning environments that have structured guidelines to success. Golf, beyond mental and physical, requires great feel. To be able to know that in 15 mile an hour wind, with your ball half buried by sand, and water in front of the green, how would one hit that shot? There are millions of variations of what you could end up with on the golf course, none that could be figured out in 10,000 hours. We haven&apos;t even talked about the putting green yet. Yikes&lt;p&gt;3. I&apos;ve seen this before, over a dozen times. Guy gets tired of his job, has some talent and decides to take a ton of golf lessons and practice hard to go for the tour. At least the guys Im referring to played college golf. This guy didn&apos;t so much as do that.&lt;p&gt;4. Golf is seriously hard and the difference between the best players and the mediocre pro players most of the time is just an average difference of a few shots. To shave off those few shots is next to impossible once you&apos;ve reached your peak potential.&lt;p&gt;Golf is not for everyone. This guy is wasting his time.&lt;p&gt;Update ( I forgot something):&lt;p&gt;Here is another reason why this is a pointless ambition.&lt;p&gt;5. 10,000 hours of golf is a lot different than 10,000 of something like...learning a language (we&apos;ll use this again). To become good at golf does not mean that you can sit on the driving range and hit golf balls every day until your hands bleed. To become a great player, one must get great at playing the golf course. To play one round of golf takes between 3-5 hours (depending on where you play), and there is no guarantee that those 5 hours spent on the course are in any way productive to your progress. That is not a good use of time spent in his quest for 10,000 hours. Someone could certainly guarantee that in 5 focused hours of a spanish tutoring session that they have progresses. With golf, a bad round could send you right back to the drawing board.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ctl</author><text>You&apos;ve made an extremely weak argument.&lt;p&gt;You&apos;re saying:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Golf is mostly mental.&lt;/i&gt; That certainly isn&apos;t a problem: you can train mentality. In fact what you&apos;ve just argued is that golf is &lt;i&gt;well&lt;/i&gt;-suited to be conquered purely through training (among sports). Dan would have a much harder time becoming effective in basketball, where normal-size people are at a huge disadvantage off the bat.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Golf requires feel.&lt;/i&gt; Where do you think feel comes from? (Training!) Again, you&apos;ve actually argued that golf is well-suited to Dan&apos;s approach, not the opposite.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;You&apos;ve seen this before.&lt;/i&gt; No you haven&apos;t. Come on.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Golf is hard.&lt;/i&gt; That&apos;s tautological. Anything that can reasonably be called an endeavor is in some sense infinitely hard. (Also: how do you know that shaving off those last few strokes is impossible once you&apos;ve achieved your potential? Did you dedicate &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; life to golf?)&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Sometimes you&apos;ll have a day of training that won&apos;t contribute to your progress.&lt;/i&gt; Anybody trying to learn anything will experience days like that.&lt;p&gt;This is a cool and ballsy experiment and you&apos;re being a bit of a hater. Do I think Dan will become a PGA golfer? No, but I&apos;m looking forward to seeing him try.</text></comment>
<story><title>Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?</title><url>http://www.tampabay.com/features/can-a-complete-novice-become-a-golf-pro-with-10000-hours-of-practice/1159357</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasonwilk</author><text>I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I&apos;ve played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport.&lt;p&gt;I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why.&lt;p&gt;1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both strength and muscle memory). Even if this guy can learn to hit the ball 300 yards, it will take him at least 10 years if not longer to get the mental comfort required to play effectively in front of thousands of people and successfully place or win an event.&lt;p&gt;2. The 10,000 hour rule is best applied to things like coding or langauge learning, in other words, low pressure learning environments that have structured guidelines to success. Golf, beyond mental and physical, requires great feel. To be able to know that in 15 mile an hour wind, with your ball half buried by sand, and water in front of the green, how would one hit that shot? There are millions of variations of what you could end up with on the golf course, none that could be figured out in 10,000 hours. We haven&apos;t even talked about the putting green yet. Yikes&lt;p&gt;3. I&apos;ve seen this before, over a dozen times. Guy gets tired of his job, has some talent and decides to take a ton of golf lessons and practice hard to go for the tour. At least the guys Im referring to played college golf. This guy didn&apos;t so much as do that.&lt;p&gt;4. Golf is seriously hard and the difference between the best players and the mediocre pro players most of the time is just an average difference of a few shots. To shave off those few shots is next to impossible once you&apos;ve reached your peak potential.&lt;p&gt;Golf is not for everyone. This guy is wasting his time.&lt;p&gt;Update ( I forgot something):&lt;p&gt;Here is another reason why this is a pointless ambition.&lt;p&gt;5. 10,000 hours of golf is a lot different than 10,000 of something like...learning a language (we&apos;ll use this again). To become good at golf does not mean that you can sit on the driving range and hit golf balls every day until your hands bleed. To become a great player, one must get great at playing the golf course. To play one round of golf takes between 3-5 hours (depending on where you play), and there is no guarantee that those 5 hours spent on the course are in any way productive to your progress. That is not a good use of time spent in his quest for 10,000 hours. Someone could certainly guarantee that in 5 focused hours of a spanish tutoring session that they have progresses. With golf, a bad round could send you right back to the drawing board.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>An interesting response. This statement however is demonstrably incorrect:&lt;p&gt;&quot;This guy is wasting his time.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you believe his hypothesis, you cannot deny that he is not rigorously testing it. And one of two things will be true at the end of his experiment; He&apos;ll be playing in the PGA, or he won&apos;t. In both cases he has learned a number of valuable things, and he will have advanced the understanding of expertise in some small way, and perhaps he will have opened up some new avenues for exploration.&lt;p&gt;Personally I don&apos;t know if I could put 10K hours into something that I wasn&apos;t really enjoying, coding? sure, golfing? not so much. (even though I was employee #9 at GolfWeb :-)) So on that level I think his experiment is doubly valuable.</text></comment>