
Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice? - plinkplonk
http://www.tampabay.com/features/can-a-complete-novice-become-a-golf-pro-with-10000-hours-of-practice/1159357
======
rsbrown
There's a lot of armchair speculating going on about this.

What I love about this guy's mission (and why I'm rooting for him) is because
he is simply and intensely applying a theory. Succeed or fail, he won't prove
(or disprove) the theory, but it will be a fascinating data point for us all.

------
dfan
To me there's a sort of a Bayesian logic working against any hypothetical
"adult novice puts in 10,000 hours of work and becomes a pro" story, which is
that anyone who has the willpower and passion to put in that much work
probably has already. If you are so excited about a
sport/instrument/game/hobby that you're willing to put 10,000 hours into it
starting from scratch, why weren't you working on it before?

I recently mentioned reading an amazing music theory book and someone asked me
if it had lots of prerequisites or if he could understand it. My response was
"It doesn't really _require_ previous theory knowledge, but if you weren't
excited enough about music theory to have acquired that other knowledge
already, I doubt this book is going to be that interesting to you."

~~~
austintaylor
What was the name of the music theory book? Seriously interested.

~~~
dfan
"A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common
Practice" by Dmitri Tymoczko.

------
jasonwilk
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 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.

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't even
talked about the putting green yet. Yikes

3\. I'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't so much as do that.

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've reached
your peak potential.

Golf is not for everyone. This guy is wasting his time.

Update ( I forgot something):

Here is another reason why this is a pointless ambition.

5\. 10,000 hours of golf is a lot different than 10,000 of something
like...learning a language (we'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.

~~~
chernevik
I'm not sure it will work. I expect golf rewards basic aptitudes like co-
ordination, strength and stamina, etc., and that pros' endowments on these are
four or five standard deviations from the population norm. They were likely
selected for those endowments prior to most of their practice. Where is Dan on
that curve? But I suppose how much these endowments matter, or whether work
can enhance them, is a rough part of this experiment.

I am sure that I like his approach a damn sight better than yours. The guy is
_working_. He'll have to beat all sorts of inner demons to get to 10,000
hours. He'll end up knowing a lot about learning, and himself, when he's done.
That's my kind of guy.

Meanhwile, you are lobbing poorly thought-out downerisms. "get great at
playing the course"? Gee, do you think maybe he'll budget some of his 10k for
that? or that the ability to hit his shot straight _every_single_time_ might
help? or that all those hours will do something for his mental chops? Coding
"has structured guidelines for success"? None of this is intelligent, never
mind constructive.

You're only 25, you were clearly a good athlete, you made YC, congratulations.
No doubt worked your ass off up to this point. Well, some people have to grind
it out even harder than you've had to. If you can't spare the time to think
through helpful commentary, respect their dedication and keep your mouth shut.

~~~
nl
_I'm not sure it will work. I expect golf rewards basic aptitudes like co-
ordination, strength and stamina, etc., and that pros' endowments on these are
four or five standard deviations from the population norm._

In golf (unlike most pro sports) it isn't immediately obvious that this is the
case. Sure, most golfers are in shape, but few aerobically fitter than a
recreational 10K runner, and the variation in max drive length between
successful pros shows that strength is pretty variable too.

As an extreme example there are players like John Daly, who is overweight,
smokes and is a double major winner.

~~~
chernevik
We might, on close examination, find that pro golfers have extraordinary
endowments on attributes subtler than sheer speed or strength. Stuff like
depth perception, coordination of full-body motions, balance, maybe some
cognitive attributes like executive control of focus, etc.

As others have noted, the effort is in part a test of people's ability to
enhance these endowments. I _think_ most people putting in 10,000 hours got
feedback that their basic endowments give them some advantage.

I suspect that something like that will operate here. If at some point Dan
hits diminishing returns, and can't punch through by varying his approach and
allowing for natural human slumps, that may be a signal that he lacks the
physical tools to go all the way. Even then that isn't a waste of time, he'll
have learned a lot about focus, and about detecting where his natural
advantages do lie. That has to inform the search for his real calling.

One way or the other, it'll be interesting.

------
kenjackson
Here's his blog with some updated info: <http://dannychampion.com/blog.php>

His improvement seems to be fairly rapid. I guess if this is your sole
pursuit, not that surprising. But nevertheless makes I'm rooting for him. I
think it would be testament to the theory.

~~~
alecco
Sports training usually shows diminishing returns. In particular, if you
overtrain you plateau or get worse.

~~~
jwb119
do you have a citation or any evidence for this?

~~~
alecco
Are you being funny or are you implying results can be linear?

Have you ever seen personal bests charts? Save specific cases of
breaktrhoughs, it plots very logarithmic for everybody. That is diminishing
returns, more or less.

~~~
dereg
Are you not citing anything?

------
chops
This reminds me of a blog I read a few years ago called "Scratch to Scratch".
The point of the exercise was to go from being an ultrabeginner golfer to a
par golfer in a year of serious practice and training.

Here's the about page from his blog:
<http://breakparblueprint.com/blog/about-2/>

That is apparently, his new blog migrated from the original, found here:
<http://scratchtoscratch.wordpress.com/>

The big thing was the time and effort investment: over 70,000 practice balls,
and 2,000 hours in a year (that's close to a full-time job).

He actually ended up writing a book about it:

[http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Hack-Golfers-Challenge-
Break/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Hack-Golfers-Challenge-
Break/dp/1616080264)

~~~
oldstrangers
You can also count on this "Dan Plan" becoming a book. Ultimately, that's the
entire point of this project anyways. Not to be a golf champion, but to sell a
lot of books.

~~~
diegob
I thought the entire point was to become a PGA golfer ...

------
ebiester
I would believe it were he 20. However, most golfers start fading in their
thirties, having lost the extra power that their bodies could provide when
younger. While I don't doubt that he will be an excellent golfer (thus
"proving" that 10,000 hours of dedicated practice will indeed make you great)
I certainly doubt he will be a PGA golfer.

That said, he might have a chance for a lesser tour. And that, for sure, will
lead him to his true goal: motivational speaking! (Oh... come on, like it
isn't obvious...)

I've certainly thought about doing similar, outrageous things. It seems to be
a current pattern: do something seemingly outrageous and interesting, write
about it, derive income.

~~~
cygwin98
I believe your comment is spot on. The debates here is basically about what
"professional level" careful training and hard work can bring this guy up to.
The "nay-sayers" (including myself) agree on that he might become much more
proficient than amateur golf players, maybe even "have a chance for a lesser
tour" (as you put it), but he won't be able to make it into the top level
games such as PGA tour tournaments. This is the case for almost all
competitive sports.

------
alecco
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 thing.

He is now a motivational speaker. I guess blatant self promotion always works.
He used to be the running joke in UK runner's forums but he is the one
laughing now.

~~~
scott_s
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 absolute sense, not just a relative sense. Best in the world, no. Olympic
level, no. But I'd consider him elite.

~~~
hugh3
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.

~~~
scott_s
_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)._

I would be fine with that result. My objection is when people say "I'm just
not good at _X_ ," when what they really mean is "I'm not as good at _X_ as I
think I should be, that frustrates me, and I lack the motivation to continue
trying." If we can demonstrate that with enough practice, anyone can get good
at anything (with a large delta of good), then I think that's meaningful.

If that statement is self-evident to you, I've talked to people who don't
consider it so. For example, I've talked to other CS majors who think that
most people just don't have the right "mind" for programming, and I've taught
programming to people who said similar things.

~~~
orangecat
_If we can demonstrate that with enough practice, anyone can get good at
anything (with a large delta of good), then I think that's meaningful._

I'd agree with that, which is a very different claim than "there's no such
thing as innate talent".

 _I've talked to other CS majors who think that most people just don't have
the right "mind" for programming_

I'd also agree with that, and I don't think it's contradictory. Have you
really not observed that some people pick up programming far easier than
others? I believe that almost anyone can get to the point where they can write
basic software, but not that everyone is capable of becoming the next Dennis
Ritchie.

~~~
scott_s
I think that initial aptitude at a task is not a good predictor for how well
you can do after doing it for a decade. It is a good predictor for likelihood
at actually pursuing it for a decade, because it often determines whether or
not you _like_ the activity.

Put another way, people become good at things that they like because they keep
doing them. We get positive reinforcement. But I don't think there are a class
of people who have the "mind" for programming.

Also note that by bring up Dennis Ritchie, you've now introduced the "what
does it take to be a genius" discussion, which is different from achieving
expert status.

------
gcheong
Here's one of the original papers that put forth the theory of deliberate
practice and the 10,000 hour rule (though in the paper it is given as a
10-year rule):

[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance also covers a wide
range of research on performance and expertise in various areas
[http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-
Handbo...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handbooks-
Psychology/dp/0521600812)

------
bobabooey
Six hours a day, six days a week, for six years? Golf can take it's toll on
the wrists, forearms, shoulders, lower back, and knees. I predict he'll give
up due to overuse injuries long before he reaches 10,000 hours.

~~~
SlipperySlope
If you read Dan's blog, you'll see that he has a physical therapist coaching
him. His team of advisors have a good plan and it seems to me that avoiding
injury is a big part of that plan. For example, Dan currently is not using any
big clubs - the largest a chipping wedge. If his spends most of his practice
time near the green how is going to injure his shoulders, lower back or knees?

In a recent blog post Dan mentions that his physical therapist will prescribe
a certain weight lifting program to strengthen his muscles enough to achieve
the driver head speed that his golf coach plans that he should achieve.

I suppose that today's golf pros, those actually on the tour, have each put in
those thousands and thousands of hours of practice, regardless of whatever
athletic gifts they received at birth. So are injuries the reason most near-
pros never make the tour? That would be the case if your point is true. I
think that they don't make the tour because it is simply too much effort and
dedication to put in all those hours of practice.

And that's the wonderful thing about Dan's challenge. If valid, it means that
any of us may achieve outstanding results if we put in the hours required to
gain the expertise. Golf, in this regard, is a model for any skill we need to
satisfy our aspirations.

------
jhowell
Probably want to start with a few amateur tournaments like club championships,
city championships and state championships before moving onto national
championships (US Public Links, US Amateur, etc.) If you can't beat the 13
year olds at these tournaments who are breaking par, you probably aren't going
to do very well against the adults who use to win those tournaments as kids.

The next argument I hear from a lot of my golfing buddies is that they'll
practice hard and play the Senior Tour (Champions Tour). Beating Bubba Watson,
for example, in 20 years when he's eligible for the Champions tour is like
beating Usain Bolt in a 100 yard dash after giving him a 3 second head start.
Won't make good television.

A few books have been written on the subject where reporters try to qualify
for the tour.

That being said, it's actually doable, highly unlikely, but doable. I like his
chances at becoming a pro golfer (not on the PGA Tour, but maybe the Hooters
or Tar Heel Tour) better than his chances of becoming a starting pitcher,
running back, point guard, goalie or professional driver in other pro sports.
Golf, the game is tremendously "fair".

~~~
fredleblanc
Agreed, just think of the number of "golf pros" out there that can't even make
the tour. Every course has at least one, and these days most driving ranges
have them. Unless he discovers that he happens to have some hidden raw talent,
his chances are slim-to-none.

------
rickmode
There's an unstated assumption that excellence equals pro in this article.

I'd say excellence is a necessary precursor to going pro, but is itself not
sufficent. That extra push is some magic combination of genetics, upbringing
and opportunity (nature and nurture coming together just so) - all along with
the drive and experience to become excellent.

------
jaredmck
The thing about golf is that practicing six hours doesn't mean you got six
hours of practice- you need to play rounds, which take several hours but are
only really ~30 minutes of "golf practice" at most...golf is interesting
because the athletic prerequisites are minimal compared to most other sports,
but this doesn't mean that 10,000 hours is sufficient. I don't doubt that
he'll be near-pro level after the 10,000 hours, but I do doubt that he will be
good enough that it will be really worth the complete dedication of these six
years. He'll be scratch+ for sure, but until you get close to that level, it
isn't easy to predict who will have the ability to step up to the true
professional level, and who will lose a ton of money traveling on minitours
with little chance at ever reaching a PGA/Nationwide tour level (i.e. what
most mean when they say "pro").

My perspective on this is based on my experience in playing tennis for 10,000+
hours (not apples-to-apples, obviously, but still relatively close) and
becoming good enough to know that there would be absolutely no point in trying
to play full-time professionally, because I was too slow to ever reach a level
where I could make money while touring. There's a lot more money in golf, but
it also is a lot more expensive (many golf mini-tours pay prize money out of
the sizable entry fees they charge...$1k/tourney entry fee is common for small
pro golf tourneys) and there's a lot more marginal pro-level players around
for the golf tournaments since there aren't nearly as many physical factors in
golf as there are in tennis.

~~~
tokenadult
The claim of the mainstream scholarly development of expertise literature

[http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...](http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html)

and especially the most classic paper in the literature

[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

is not that 10,000 hours is enough, but rather that deliberate practice is
strictly necessary for expertise, and that 10,000 hours (in round figures) is
also necessary to achieve what can properly be called expertise in any adult
domain of performance. K. Anders Ericsson, the leading researcher in this
field, distinguishes "playful engagement" from "deliberate practice" and
distinguishes being at the journeyman level of performance from the rarer case
of being at the expert level of performance.

What needs more testing is whether 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is not
only necessary but also sufficient. Many critiques of Ericsson's findings
evoke an ill-defined latent quality labeled "talent" to make the claim that
many members of the general public would fail to achieve expertise even if
they engaged in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. But such a showing would
not be a direct refutation of Ericsson's claim. Rather, it would be necessary
to show that someone who is properly called an expert lacked opportunity to
engage in lengthy deliberate practice. Mozart didn't write any music
composition that musicologists call a "masterpiece" until he had had ten years
(and at least 10,000 hours) of intensive study of music guided by his father,
who was an author of innovative books on music instruction and a continual
guide to young Wolfgang's musical development.

------
num1
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.

~~~
dpifke
At the the skydiving drop zone I used to help run, almost all of our jump
pilots were hired with 500-1000 hours. They were all building time to "move
up" to bigger aircraft, better paying jobs, etc. Most easily were able to
accumulate 500+ hours in a summer. (We flew under Part 91, which does not have
a duty time limitation, so they could fly literally from sunup to sundown on a
busy day.)

So really all you have to afford out of your own pocket is enough time to get
your commercial certificate and be employable for flight instruction,
skydiving, crop dusting, banner towing, or any of the other "entry level"
pilot jobs out there.

~~~
num1
You are absolutely correct there, once somebody has their commercial license
it becomes easier and cheaper to build hours. I guess it comes down to how
effective the practice is, as acrobatic maneuvers are frowned upon in most
commercial settings. :P

Certainly getting your license doesn't mean you have mastered controlling the
airplane, but I'd imagine that after a thousand hours of doing basic maneuvers
and tightening your tolerances there's not much more you can do without
buckling down and getting time in an acrobatic.

------
hartror
I think the key here could be this:

> "He had almost no experience and _even less interest in the sport_."

How can someone truly excel in a vocation they don't love. Without that love
is his practice going to be effective compared to that of someone who loves
golf and wants to submerge themselves in it every waking hour?

~~~
scott_s
Read his current blog. He loves it now.

------
paulus
Something missing from this story: money. How does this guy pay for six years
of training (doing what he wants) with no income? I guess the lecture circuit
and some Nike sponsorship, but will that be enough to pay rent, food, travel
and maybe support a family?

------
petegrif
I have a different theory. When it comes to seriously major ambitions e.g. PGA
tour, chess GM forget 10,000 hours because it is way simpler - if at first you
don't succeed...give up. You probably don't have the freakish level of god
given talent required.

------
kenjackson
I never thought I'd be tempted to donate to someone so they could focus on
playing golf!

------
utoku
The first study I know of is the 1996 book "The Road to Excellence"
[http://www.amazon.com/Road-Excellence-Acquisition-
Performanc...](http://www.amazon.com/Road-Excellence-Acquisition-Performance-
Sciences/dp/0805822321) . I got it after I read Peter Norvig's essay on "Teach
Yourself Programming in 10 Years." <http://norvig.com/21-days.html> .

So here are the numbers, in short, for mastery:

It takes about 10k hours of practice.

It takes about 10 years.

That means about 3 hours of practice everyday. Everyday.

------
Keyframe
It depends on the sport. For example Javier Sotomayor (high jumper) -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Sotomayor> \- made it from 0 to no.5 in 4
years, and there are other examples in this particular sport where people made
it in 2 years or so. That's one of the reason I don't appreciate any sport, it
depends on lots of factors apart from your mental discipline (golf is more or
less only mental discipline OTOH).

------
pbhjpbhj
From the article

>' _Dan spent last month in St. Petersburg because winters are winters in the
Pacific Northwest. "If I could become a professional golfer," he said one
afternoon, "the world is literally open to any options for anybody."_ '

// The world is 'open to any options for anybody' who can write a novel book,
do a lecture and has $100,000 USD to fall back on whilst they train for their
new venture ...

If he's done the experiment first, then written the book and done the lectures
it would have a greater validity IMO.

------
ikono
It's far more reasonable to change this to a challenge to become a scratch
golfer or something similar. I don't think Gladwell meant that anyone could
become one of the best in the world at anything with 10,000 hours of work.
Such a statement is somewhat insulting to those that have devoted their life
to their craft. Instead, that with 10,000 hours you could become very good at
anything. Enough so that you could be considered very skilled/knowledgable in
that craft/field.

~~~
jbri
The "challenge" isn't to become a PGA golfer or anything like that. There
isn't any predetermined mark of how "good" he needs to become in order to
succeed. It's an open-ended experiment into how far 10,000 hours can take you.

Setting one milestone as your "goal" hinders your ability to reach the
thousands of other possible milestones.

~~~
ikono
But the title is can he become a golf pro. There wouldn't be over a 100
comments here if it simply said "How good of a golfer can you be with 10,000
hours of practice?"

~~~
dbalatero
I guess, but that title seems to be chosen by the submitter/publication. To
quote directly from the article:

"Basically," he told the people at the conference, "what I'm trying to do with
this project is demonstrate how far you're able to go if you're willing to put
in the time.

------
waterside81
This is right out of the book "Talent is overrated"[0]. Given enough time and
the _proper_ amount of coaching & practice, a person can become a star. The
key isn't to just play golf, but rather to get proper feedback from a trained
professional who knows _how to practice_.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-
Class...](http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-
Performers/dp/1591842247)

------
SeanDav
It Depends....

I have a friend who can do anything with a golfball. He is literally amazing.
As an amateur he was one of the very best, but he freely admits he cannot
succeed as a golfer because he just does not have the right mental makeup.

He will sink 6 foot putts all day in practice but ask him to sink a six footer
with a tournament at stake and he just cannot do it reliably.

Being great at something is often not just about skill or love of the activity
but also you "gotta have the right stuff"

~~~
neilk
Yeah, but you're just drawing the line between "result of effort" and "inner
nature" in a different place.

What if you decided to test the hypothesis that it was inner nature which
allowed you to deal with tournament stakes? What if that was learnable after
all? Maybe the top performers just had a different set of experiences, one
that allows them to be more detached.

~~~
SeanDav
I have no doubt that inner nature can be learned or at the very least
improved. People are complex and the stated reasons are very seldom the real
reasons. My friend may just be saying what sounds logical rather than the real
reason.

In any case I hope this guy makes it!

------
scythe
This is assuming the 10-year / 10000-hour rule can both a: drop that first bit
and b: is not dependent on _critical periods_ of learning early in life.

------
wmboy
Cool story. My question is, if you were going to do the same thing, what skill
would you try and master?

------
rdkls
I contacted Dan and suggested he try to find interested neurosci guys to scan
his brain as he progresses, he's going to do so (local uni) tomorrow, very
cool.

------
perlgeek
I doubt that he'll be able to get to a professional level when he's not
passionate about golf. At least I never excelled at things I wasn't passionate
about.

------
gadders
I just wish he'd tried this on an actual sport.

 _braces for down votes from Golf fans_

------
stray
Depends on the novice, right?

After all, Tiger Woods was once a novice.

~~~
m_myers
Yeah, but he could barely walk at the time. That's pretty raw material right
there.

------
johnconroy
I don't see why not. Rory McIlroy went from pro to amateur overnight.

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

~~~
flatline
Not so much moderated - some links are occasionally killed, usually as spam.
How is setting out on a new venture to both succeed technically and
profesionally - and test a hypothesis that has been bandied about HN quite a
bit - _not_ hacking related?

~~~
ignifero
Just out of curiosity, would you find it equally interesting if it was about,
say, soccer, or about memorizing the Bible?

~~~
flatline
Good question. The problem with soccer is that it is a team sport, so
individual success is more difficult to gauge than with golf. It is also not
very well-recognized in the US. Memorizing the Bible would be fascinating but
it's not really in line with the whole 10K hour to become a pro at something,
though I could see something like this making it to the front page of HN.

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kmgroove
This is such a fluff article. Why is it interesting that someone is attempting
to "try really hard at something for a lengthy period time"? Looks like he is
pitching for a book deal and a spot on Oprah. When you consider how much time
10k hours is I don't think it will blow anyone away that practice of that
magnitude will bring success.

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joezydeco
If I was going to quit my job and golf for 6 years straight, I'd probably plan
a secondary income source as well.

