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Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

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Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#51

Post by ctdonath »

jerf wrote: post #18
scott_s wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not self-taught, he has a coach. They actually have what looks to me to be a non-orthodox system where he only practices shots from x feet when he is good at shots from x-1 feet. A depth-first approach to learning the game as opposed to a breadth-first approach.

What I find interesting about that is that you can only pursue it if you are really committed in advance. Someone who doesn't know that they are going to stick with it has to try to learn everything at once. Since he "knows" (for some suitable value) that he's sticking with it for 10,000 hours, if the first 1,000 are spent on putting, no problem. I don't know if this is optimal, but it's interesting.

It is interesting. I'm contemplating writing a book on beginning programming, and am tempted to do such a "depth first" approach, but the problem is indeed how to do so without losing most who want to start at Hello World and get to writing applications in 16 weeks flat with minimal effort. When the student and teacher are moving at right angles, what to do? This guy, if he follows through will be a guide and inspiration to many. If.

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#52

Post by ctdonath »

ignifero wrote: post #38

I 'll probably be buried for this, but how is this "hacker news"? I thought HN was moderated

The "10,000 hours" concept is a popular meme among hackers & entrepreneurs. Many of us are excited to see someone studying/testing it with such deliberation.

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#53

Post by jordan0day »

num1 wrote: post #44

Something I recently realized is that if this theory is true I have a big problem on my hands. See I love flying, and it is one of my life's goals to fly in professional competitions. However flight time in airplanes routinely cost $100 or even $300 an hour. My goal might end up costing me a few million dollars.

You just have to get good enough within the first few hundred (or first thousand, if you've got quite a bankroll) hours to convince someone else to subsidize you.

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#54

Post by SlipperySlope »

jasonwilk wrote: post #28

I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I've played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport. I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why. 1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both str…

Jason, Your insightful comments fully illustrate the 10,000 hour expertise challenge. I speculate that each of the issues you mention can be addressed by comprehensive coaching and incremental practice.

Dan had no bad golf habits to break and has been coached from the very first stroke. Suppose Dan can be coached not to lose his temper? Suppose Dan can be coached to recover mentally from a poor shot? Furthermore, with an exercise coach hopefully Dan can avoid the injuries that plague golf pros.

Update in response to your update: Coaching is what makes hours of practice productive. Bad days reinforce bad habits. Dan is already playing a variety of geographically dispersed golf courses and is accustomed to bad weather. According to his blog posts, his recent bad days result in better scores than his good days just a few weeks earlier.

Jason, think back over your golf career - wonder how much better you could have been with no bad habits to unlearn, and constant comprehensive coaching.

Nike is wise to back Dan. What a story!

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#55

Post by hugh3 »

scott_s wrote: post #26
alecco wrote: post #14

I'm not fond of all these attention grabbing hotshots. Gladwell's theory is completely bogus. A guy in UK tried to do that for Marathon and aimed to become an olympian. He did a lot of media and called his upcoming documentary "The Road to Beijing". He didn't make it, and wasn't even close (from what I remember it was 2:40 or 2:45). Then he went to Ethiopia and picked a protege. His protege was fast but didn't win a…

The world record is 2:03. The guy you mentioned may not have been close to the world record, but a 2:40 marathon is 26 back-to-back 6 minute, 10 second miles. That's pretty damned good. Looking at the 2010 results from the NY and Boston Marathons, that's a few minutes shy of the 100th best person. Considering that those are elite races with entrants from around the world, I think his time is pretty damned good in an…

Certainly he's very good, but there's still a huge gulf between him and the best marathon runners.

And that's why this ten thousand hours thing is pretty random, yet pretty unfalsifiable. In any specialised activity, the first hundred hours of dedicated practice is good enough to make you better than most people. Keep practicing and you'll be better than 80% of the world. Keep it up for a bunch more time and you'll be better than 90% of the world. By the time the irrelevant ten thousand hours milestone pops by, you'll certainly be impressive at your activity, but whether you're in the top 5% or the top 0.001% depends on which activity you've chosen (plus your natural talent in that field).

So for some definition of "expert", it's fair to say that ten thousand hours will make you an expert.

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#56

Post by qF »

jasonwilk wrote: post #28

I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I've played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport. I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why. 1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both str…

Isn't the 10,000 hour most commonly applied to things like playing the violin? I haven't seen many cases of it being applied to coding, nor language learning, in the academic papers I've read anyway...

I can recommend reading "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance", it paints a clear pictures of what Expertise actually is.

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#57

Post by dean »

jasonwilk wrote: post #28

I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I've played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport. I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why. 1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both str…

"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."

10,000 hours is a long time, what makes you think it is not enough time to acquire a great feel for golf? How long did it take you to acquire your great feel?

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#58

Post by ChuckMcM »

jasonwilk wrote: post #28

I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I've played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport. I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why. 1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both str…

An interesting response. This statement however is demonstrably incorrect:

"This guy is wasting his time."

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'll be playing in the PGA, or he won'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.

Personally I don't know if I could put 10K hours into something that I wasn'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.

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#59

Post by damoncali »

jasonwilk wrote: post #28

I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I've played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport. I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why. 1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both str…

10,000 hours is an awful lot of golf - 20 hours a week for 10 years. Seems to match up with your estimates pretty well.

Re: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

#60

Post by jasonwilk »

dean wrote: post #57
jasonwilk wrote: post #28

I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I've played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport. I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why. 1. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both str…

" 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. " 10,000 hours is a long time, what makes you think it is not enough time to acquire…

I still wouldn't say I have a 'Great Feel'.
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