This was a month ago. Hopefully the time to heal helps.
Post Mortem on the Dan PlanSo when I first heard about the The Dan Plan, I was immediately attracted to the idea. One of the main tenants of The Talent Code is the ten thousand hour theory. Dan was going to test it. Perfect.
But after a few months and watching him on his journey I began to question what he was doing. Learning the game myself I saw him making some of the mistakes that I had made when I was first learning the game. This is was extremely concerning because as anyone in golf will tell you, once you start making mistakes and ingraining them into your muscle memory it is going to take you double the time to unlearn it and put the right stuff in there.
As an engineer I felt his process for improving was a mess. I began to worry that at the conclusion of the Dan Plan were not going to be able to determine anything about the ten-thousand-hour theory. No conclusion, nothing.
During this time I moved to the Portland area and got the chance to interview Dan. I learned a few things during that interview. One, Dan is a really nice guy. Two, Dan is an artist by trade, and views the world differently than me. He really viewed the Dan Plan as a "meta" experience. Three, he was not going to a professional golfer if he didn't seek a knowledgeable person, and would probably not even wind up a better golfer than me.
Now we have learned that the Dan Plan is over. Dan has moved on to selling soda....
The last I heard of this was an article done by the in-flight Southwest Airlines magazine, and he was still going strong. Should correspond to somewhere between 18 and 24 months ago. This is a huge turnaround, and unwanted. The "10,000 hour" idea, to me, is a comforting notion that any human can accomplish notable feats given sufficient time. I'd like to see it investigated in more instances, because this is one data point telling us that genetic predisposition plays a finite role. Actually, it makes sense that a forceful and repetitious movement repeated 8-ish times per hour (~80,000 times total over 10,000 hours) could wreak havoc on a person's physical well-being. The asymmetric distribution of the bodily strain induced by preferential "handedness" is worth consideration. Many professional golf players have put their bodies through a similar trial, and though I have mocked their status as "athletes", it may be wise for me to reconsider. I wanted to hate the guy, especially the first time I learnt (lol, that's actually a word) of it a few years ago, but now how can I do that?
Funny, I read this the other day because someone mentioned the whole 10,000 hour thing. I hadn't looked into Dan and his plan in years. Do you follow it actively? It is a very interesting project, I feel for the guy and hope he recovers fully.