Going pro shouldn't be the mark of success on this endeavor. There are a very limited number of seats and very likely pros have committed well more time.
The fact he got to a 2 handicap is evidence you can become a master. Especially since he suffered a physical limitation after about 6k hours.
Talent matters. Age matters. The ability to "get it" faster matters. Access makes you get it faster.
But to go from no game to a 2 handicap is proof extremely hard work pays off. To be in the top 5% of anything makes you elite even if it doesn't make you a pro in an extremely selective occupation. A top-5% engineer can work anywhere and make top money.
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 the better half of his rounds. Not bad. Really, that's an achievement many golfers would dream of. He's broken 70, and what more is there to life?
I met a guy that started in his 60's after retiring. He hit scratch by the time he was 70.
Hearing that there's only 326,000 active golfers actually makes hitting the PGA Tour sound much more realistic than I would have thought. You only have to be one in two thousand. Edit: Thanks, no, it's 1 in 326,000, which makes way much more sense.
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 home course at the time was a PGA Tour venue but theyd always close the course for a week to toughen things for the tour event.
For what it's worth, at a 2 handicap I believe you pass the bar to become a PGA of America professional (teaching pros and club pros), pending qualification exams and iirc 2 rounds of play test.
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?
I don't know specifics to a pro tour, but here are things I know a golf course can do (has done):
1. Move the holes on the green. It's pretty easy to do, you basically have a giant cookie cutter that cuts a hole out, you drop in a cup and then move the bit you cut out into the old hole. On a well maintained course the seam will be gone in a few days. Most courses have a map of where the possible hole positions and a difficulty measure for each configuration.
2. Watering/not watering greens. If you don't water for a few days, the greens get harder and the ball doesn't slow down very much. On a sloped green this can make a decent landing turn into a gigantic overshoot.
3. Mowing height. A tall rough can suck energy out of your swing. A low green makes the ball roll fast. I'm not sure if they change the height for all areas of the course (especially if you're happy with your greens), but it seems trivial to let the rough get a little higher.
In your comment you mention moving the size/position of hazards. Moving bunkers is a bit of an ordeal and I'm not sure if they would do that for a PGA tour (but I could be wrong). Making the water level higher so the ponds get bigger seems easy enough though.
They can narrow the fairways, and with bunkers they'll put extra maintenance effort to get the sand just right. With the majors they might go a lot further. Courses will also modernize on their own just to be more attractive, for example Royal St. George's made some big changes to get the Open back.
Folks who decide to do a 10,000-hour challenge are probably already in some kind of elite group, in terms of wealth and free time (nevermind patience and perseverance). The average person isn't able to spend ~7 hours a day, every day for 4 years, on a non-salaried activity.
>The average person isn't able to spend ~7 hours a day, every day for 4 years, on a non-salaried activity.
I basically did this over 6 years, 3-5 hours per day on a non-earning activity to eventually launch the business I now run. In the last 3 years I've averaged 60-70 hours per week at work, only recently earning close to my last salary (about 65% as of last check) as a Data Scientist.
It's doable enough. Just very hard. Can only really be done if it's your life's calling, which this was and I correctly identified it as such in year 2.
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, 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.
I used to work retail and retail management when I was young and putting myself through high school and college. Lessons about stocking, shipping, marketing, sales, logistics - all transferred into my online retail business.
None transfer perfectly, but all make an impact. True, I knew nothing about "sports science" at the outset. But I had a big leg up from my limited college education and my extensive work history. That cut the "10,000" hours down significantly.
This is how I like to think about my journey, stolen directly from the link I posted in these comments from Lyle McDonald (perhaps without the DEGREE of acerbic attitude...):
"Quick note: I’m turning off comments for this series of posts. The first reason is so I don’t have to delete the invariable trolling. The second is that I’m also not interested in atta boys or whatever. I spent the last 5 years pursuing this goal for myself. Whether folks supported it or thought I was an idiot was never relevant to what I was going to do. So neither positive nor negative feedback is needed nor wanted."
I've had to pivot the company twice, both times destroying much of what I thought it was going to be, once breaking my heart. But I've reached a zen-like mode as I grow older with the ability to simply... well, work. As it gets tougher, I get better at churning and slogging and fighting. I think that is the true way to know if something is your life's work, whether it is "successful" by any measure other than your own.
I'm lucky in that it generates revenue and I employ a lot of people and provide for them, and my family. But I can say without a doubt I'd be doing it anyway even if it didn't, because I did do that for 6-7 years not only without pay, but at negative returns given that I self-funded the entire venture.
As far as I can tell, I got better at it due to growing up in adverse conditions. Nothing terrible, but my family never had it 100% easy, grew up in the inner-city, was working since 14 years of age, full-time at 17 while taking community college classes and opting out of SR year of HS.
I really don't mean to turn it into a classist meme or anything, but working is just in my blood and my family's blood. The more you do anything, the better you get at it. Work under adverse conditions defines my life from 17-25 years old, so I got good at it.
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 especially when you didn't even build one from scratch but just pieced ready made software together.
> I used to work retail and retail management when I was young and putting myself through high school and college. Lessons about stocking, shipping, marketing, sales, logistics - all transferred into my online retail business.
Sure, but you aren't an expert in any of those.
Of course cross domain knowledge helps but I think you are missing the point of the 10000 hour rule. It was a rule to make you an expert, not a jack of all trades.
I think you are missing the point of the parent post.
He is not stating that the 10,000 rule will make you a jack of all trades. He is saying that he was able to cut down the "10,000" hours to less because of his transferable skills. S/he might not be an expert in these transferable skills, but s/he might be an expert in his business which is sports science.
> He is not stating that the 10,000 rule will make you a jack of all trades.
But that's not what he described.
> S/he might not be an expert in these transferable skills, but s/he might be an expert in his business which is sports science.
Sure. We all have transferable skills. I don't think the 10000 hour rule meant that you start off with a blank slate and went from the basics of learning language, mathematics, etc.
The 10000 rule is part learning and part practice/muscle memory/etc.
In other words, it "includes" transferable knowledge.
If you know latin, you'll have an easier time getting competent in italian. But to become an expert in italian, you still need to go through the 10000 hours. That's the idea of 10000 hours. I don't believe in the 10000 hours mantra, but that's my understanding of it.
> 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.
Of course it's doable if your aim is to acquire skills and enter a high-paying profession that already employs millions of people. Your opportunity cost all along the the way is lower than if you were on some quixotic bid to join the PGA.
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.
Some of it undoubtedly is, but I suspect that there are a number of people who actually watch 7+ hours of TV per day. Remember that TV watching is concentrated among older people; the average for 18-24 year olds is 2 hours/day, for 65+ year olds, it's 7 hours/day, and even for just 50+ year olds it's > 6 hours/day. [1] "Media multitasking" is concentrated among the young, those < 35 years old, who watch the least TV anyway.
Just thinking back to my childhood in the 80s, I could totally believe this. I'd come home at 3:30, watch the entire Disney Afternoon until 5:00 when my mom would get home, pretend I hadn't been watching anything, then watch the news with her (6:00-6:30), have dinner, and then usually watch an hour or two more of primetime. That's about 4 hours a day, as a 9-year-old.
These were the habits of three whole generations (Silent, Boomers, and Gen-X) and half of another (Millenials). I don't watch any TV now, but that's because computer games and the Internet replaced it in my teenage years.
The fact he got to a 2 handicap is evidence you can become a master. Especially since he suffered a physical limitation after about 6k hours.
Talent matters. Age matters. The ability to "get it" faster matters. Access makes you get it faster.
But to go from no game to a 2 handicap is proof extremely hard work pays off. To be in the top 5% of anything makes you elite even if it doesn't make you a pro in an extremely selective occupation. A top-5% engineer can work anywhere and make top money.