Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 101 posts

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#81

Post by kdbg »

hkmurakami wrote: post #37
SamReidHughes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, a 2 handicap is far from being a master. The gap from 2 to +2 is bigger than that from 12 to 2. And a +2 is quite good. But if you're a +2, how do you get yourself to be a +3? Pray to the golf gods? The gulf there is vast. And even then, you're far, far from PGA Tour level. Those guys are good. The way I'd put it is, this guy made himself be a competent golfer. He could average 2 over the course rating on t…

2 handicap felt like "expert" but nowhere near master. As a junior golfer I peaked at 2.4 (probably put in around 10,000 hours, though I obviously didn't keep track), and I agree that being scratch felt much much harder than going from 12 to 2, and +2 seemed impossibly far away. Not to mention tour conditions for green speed, rough thickness, and length are much tougher than your average very good golf course. My hom…

I'm not a golfer, I played a bit as a youth so I'm familiar with the basics but that is all.

I'm curious how they'd toughen the course just for the tour event? Was it things like changing the size/position of hazards or were there more subtle differences?

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#82

Post by cJ0th »

candiodari wrote: post #16

I wonder how much the back problem mattered here. Because you see the same, in fighting sports. Every 3 years or so someone comes and starts intense practice, thinking they can just do this. And you can ... But not if you practice hard enough to dislocate your knee in (the current record is) 2 months. Unless you're a kid, you need regular, long (as in a week minimum) breaks in practice. Every few months.

> Unless you're a kid, you need regular, long (as in a week minimum) breaks in practice. Every few months.

Moreover, I wonder if he'd become "automatically" better after a downtime of say 2 months. I could imagine his brain still has a lot of processing to do from this extreme time.

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#83

Post by erikb »

pakitan wrote: post #53
erikb wrote: post #42

Pure marketing and zero professionalism it seems. A real person attempting pro will have real trainers. They will help him make plans that don't overstress his body in a way that kills his back in 5 years. Then you set goals that are hard but reachable, not outright impossible. Of course some "impossible" goals can be reached, but not without first achieving some goals from the "possible" category.

What it seems is that you have read neither Dan's blog nor the article you're commenting on. He did hire real trainers.

Correction: He did pay people to train him. That's different from hiring real trainers. See the word "real" in "real trainers"? It's part of their job to protect your key body parts during training.

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#84

Post by JaggerFoo »

After spending some time machine learning golf for daily fantasy wagering, I came to the conclusion that I will never take up the sport. As a social activity it has its positives, but on the sporting side consistency and improvement are hard to come by.

* Professionals miss the cut n times in a row, then win next tournament.

* The ridiculous "tips" videos with all the machinations and methods they put forth to help you with your game - I'd rather play Twister.

* Equipment - costs and technology changes. Drivers are getting closer to looking like a sawed-off bowling ball attached to a shaft.

However, I do enjoy watching the pros play and Spieth's 13th hole in the British Open and follow up was a memorable event.

The PGA has to be commended for making public a great amount of super-detailed data for use in analysis. I wish the bigger sports did this.

The book "Every Shot Counts" by Mark Broadie may help guide you to improve your game, if you are interested in a data analysis approach.

Cheers

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#85

Post by nostrademons »

petra wrote: post #41
nostrademons wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV? The stats are that the average person watches 5 hours and 4 minutes of television per day, every day, for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption

Does the average person, coming after work and taking care of family has the energy to do serious work ? TV time isn't a good measure for that.

Well, yes, IME the primary limiting factor on getting productive work done after work is energy, not time. But the article is about golf, which for many people is a relaxation pursuit akin to TV.

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#86

Post by randomdata »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #38
randomdata wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median household income is $50k. Median individual income is $30k, leaving the aforementioned year of golf taking about 10% of ones (median) income. That is a fairly large expense.

If you're trying to go pro, 10% of income is nothing compared to the time investment. Like, it's an amount. But plenty of people get by on $27K.

That's pre-tax income though. There will be some variation by location and situation, but if we say post-tax is $24k that does not even leave $21k.

That is not a lot to live on. And, since we're talking about the median, 50% of the earning population are going to be left with even less than that.

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#87

Post by arghIdontwantto »

maxxxxx wrote: post #35

I sort of did a similar experiment from 15-35 with boxing. Trained a lot and became pretty competent. But to get to the top hard work is not enough. You also need talent. There are people in the gym that had speed and strength without any training that I couldn't reach with daily hard training. But I think doing this was probably still the best thing I did in my life. Doing something that seems out of reach and then…

As a former boxer, I believe that there are a few body types that are well suited for boxing (and different types fit different styles) the same way in soccer you want different types/skills for a goalkeeper and a striker.

I started doing kickboxing but my leg speed/flexibility was a very limiting factor and I sucked at it. I would be floored by people that were training for half the time I was, but my hand and upper body agility was suited very well for a 'in-fighter' kind of style in boxing. I changed and was able to very quickly start having boxing matches and winning them.

I truly believe different sports require different body types (fast/slow, tall/short, etc etc) and sometimes is just the problem of finding the right sport for you to be proficient in. (I was a very good goal keeper when I was a teenager, top in the region, but when the other kids started to have their growth spurts and I didn't, my 'skill' compared with the other kids started to decline.)

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#88

Post by nickswan »

JaggerFoo wrote: post #84

After spending some time machine learning golf for daily fantasy wagering, I came to the conclusion that I will never take up the sport. As a social activity it has its positives, but on the sporting side consistency and improvement are hard to come by. * Professionals miss the cut n times in a row, then win next tournament. * The ridiculous "tips" videos with all the machinations and methods they put forth to help y…

How did you get on with the machine learning part of it?

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#89

Post by jack9 »

davidreiss wrote: post #51
icelancer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the "10,000" hour rule (which has obviously been debunked) isn't really about 10,000 hours of focused practice on the task alone. Focused work and previous experience in other domains transfers into the activity/goal you chase. Being a Data Scientist gave me a huge leg up about understanding data structures and statistical analysis, huge in my field. Formerly a software developer, I was able to install, configur…

But 10000 hour rule isn't about being competent. It's about being an expert. > Formerly a software developer, I was able to install, configure, and hack together a workable WooCommerce/WordPress PHP/MySQL CMS that generated content and still is our main shop, selling millions of dollars of merchandise per year. But anyone could really do that just following simple online guides/examples. CMS is child's play especiall…

> But anyone could really do that just following simple online guides/examples

That's simply not true. There's a huge sea of bad (out of date or simple ignorance) and non-working examples for all sorts of technology, which is amplified by any tech stack. Being able to sift and qualify that you're doing the right thing, or even starting over after a lengthy failure is not a common trait.

Re: An Average Guy Who Spent 6,000 Hours Trying to Be a Professional Golfer

#90

Post by valuearb »

erikb wrote: post #83
pakitan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it seems is that you have read neither Dan's blog nor the article you're commenting on. He did hire real trainers.

Correction: He did pay people to train him. That's different from hiring real trainers. See the word "real" in "real trainers"? It's part of their job to protect your key body parts during training.

"real trainers" is a marketing concept, and their knowledge is far from scientifically valid.
Post reply on HN