Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice? • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by xiaoma » Thu, Apr 14, 2011, 4:58 AM UTC

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…

You must have accidentally looked at rankings for subgroups of runners.

In the 2010 Boston Marathon, the runners between 2:40 and 2:41 placed from 208th to 227th. This group included a man in his 50's. 2:40 is a nice PR for a hobbyist, but it was a bit much for that guy to start talking Olympics and make a documentary of himself.

http://www.marathonguide.com/results/browse.cfm?MIDD=1510041...

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

#172

Post by xiaoma » Thu, Apr 14, 2011, 5:27 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #7

[deleted] wrote: post #2

[deleted]

Golf certainly lends itself to this versus other vocations. Why do you say that? I can't think of many that don't lend itself to that. Programming? Math? Chess? Plumbing? Carpentry? Tax accountant? Table tennis? Nurse? I think the vocations where this seems unlikely to work are rare. Basketball -- due to height, and sprinting, due to the pure athleticism required, being probably the biggest ones I can think of.

Mathematics is notoriously famous for being dominated by the young. In more recent times, as more depth is required to break new ground, mathematicians have been making breakthroughs at slightly older ages... but they started just as young. In a sense, it's even more exclusive now. The current experts are still extremely bright people who developed exceptional abilities in their 20's, but then they had to keep on grinding further just to get caught up with the current state of their specialty.

In fact, the situation with chess is very similar. I'd say go with either nurse, or tax accountant since they are in demand and still pay well even if you don't have sufficient talent and/or early training to become the best.

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

#173

Post by ikono » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 6:53 AM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #144

ikono wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all hours are equal, it's pretty close to impossible to be as productive while you're tired as when you're well rested. Not to mention that the person you're quoting is not a professional golfer. Tiger is probably closer to 100,000 hours than he is to 10,000...

He never said he wants to take on Tiger Woods. The experiment seeks to validate and analyze whether or not 10k hours of practice will get one to expertise. I find it dismissive for all expert golfers (whether pro or not) below Woods (who lies at the extreme top end of the expertise pool). Here's some perspective: for Woods to have golfed 100,000 hours, he should have done so: - 8 hours a day every single day since he…

Let me start off by saying I clearly added an extra 0 pre-edit. Tiger hasn't been alive for a million hours.

Second, I said closer to 100,000 than 10,000. So I'm taking the over on 55k hours. Although I do think 100k is possible, even if unlikely(say 4-5 hours a day from 2-21, then 18 a day from 21-present). I do think he's probably averaged more than 8 hours a day since he turned pro if you include all activities that are meant to improve his ability on the golf course. That's clearly pretty close to the upper bound but more likely than 10k.

Finally I agree that it's dismissive towards incredible golfers and I think that's why it's so many people looked at the article and commented here. I have no doubt that if someone puts in 10k hours over 6 years they would likely be a damn good golfer(better than scratch) but touring pro level is very unlikely. The issue in my mind that this article is stupid because either 1) It's obvious that you could get very good but perhaps not incredible at something after 10k hours of practice or 2) because we go by the title and realize that becoming a touring pro after not touching a golf club in the first 30 years of your life is not at all likely.