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

I've just been using Google to find a crisp definition of "expert" that I can cite to one of Ericsson's papers. Some of those are in nonsearchable .PDF documents. The short answer is that the formal scientific literature on acquisition of expertise does not bless anyone who desires the title "expert" with that title, but rather uses objective performance measures to identify persons with statistically reliably superior performance. I'll post this now, and look for more definitions and references, and try to edit this post during the edit time limit if I find something more on-point for you to look up. Ericsson's seminal paper on the issue

http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/course/6/6.055/readings/eric...

has already been linked to by at least two participants in this thread.

From

http://web.me.com/pw70/ACE_lab/Publications_files/2007%20Eri...

we can find this extensive discussion of the definition of expertise:

"Since [Bedard's and Chi's (1992)] review, researchers have become increasingly dissatisfied with studies that define experts by social criteria (e.g., peer nominations), by extended domain experience, or by (high) education. When scientists measured the level of real-world performance of so-called experts they found that many were not reliably better than their less-experienced colleagues. For example, reviews (Ericsson, 2006) have described studies showing that a psychotherapist’s level of education and clinical experience is unrelated to their treatment outcomes. Recent reviews of performance in health-related fields show that extended experience of doctors and nurses (beyond the first couple of years of practice) is not associated with continued improvements, as most people had thought. In fact, performance has frequently been found to decrease without continued training (Choudhry, Fletcher, & Soumerai, 2005; Ericsson 2004).

"There are numerous domains of expertise in which some performers are reproducibly superior to most others engaging in the domain.For example, chess masters, bridge experts, and experts in other games consistently beat less-skilled individuals. More generally, in the arts and the sciences some individuals reliably generate superior products that are selected for presentation in journals, conferences, and competitions. Some individuals are able to perform at a reproducibly higher level in professional domains too. Our framework focuses on understanding the mechanisms that mediate consistently superior performance, and to distinguish this approach from the traditional study of expertise we will refer to it as the expert-performance approach (see Feltovich, Prietula, & Ericsson, 2006, for a description of the historical development of several approaches to the study of expertise using psychological methods)."

Though one could argue that "learning an important lesson" isn't enough payoff for six whole years of your life. "Well," he can say, "I spent six years of my life, and fuck-knows-how-many hundred thousand dollars in lost earning potential, and I still didn't get good enough to be anything other than a children's golf instructor at a suburban course in Ohio, but... hey, I learned that I'm actually not all that good at golf."

Lets say he does make it into the PGA, and plays for four years and doesn't win a single tournament but finishes in the money in all of them. (note that generally the top 70 or so players all get some money [1]) Depending on his walk through that distribution he has a good shot at making a million dollars over four years ($250K/yr). Which would be the equivalent of having made 100K/yr for 10yrs.

The payment schedule is another area where the PGA differs greatly from other sports which appear to have a much shallower 'money' pool. (I'm familiar with Golf, less so with say Nascar racing or Tennis for example).

The other assumption in your response is this one "but... hey, I learned that I'm actually not all that good at golf." which is at the heart of the whole Expertise/Outliers debate.

The hypothesis is that there is a 'base level' of expertise which anyone can achieve with 10,000 hrs of focused practice. And once you have invested that time the difference between your performance and that of someone who was 'gifted from birth' will normalize out, or more precisely winning or losing becomes more statistical rather than expertise related.

No doubt he's getting some sponsorship money from Nike and others who are betting that he will generate enough publicity like this to put their brand in front of others who are attracted by his story, so earning potential isn't exactly 'wasted' so much as 'different.' It wasn't clear from the original article to me what sort of pay scale he might expect 'working for the man' as it were. So its hard to evaluate the opportunity cost of that path.

So if the hypothesis is correct, and he's rigorous in his training/practice, then he will make back much more than his 'earning potential' over those 6 years. Much like an investor listening to a start-up pitch which will take 6 years to disrupt the market. Give the guy credit for going 'all in'.

[1] http://frankosport.us/golf/Purse/index.html