Turning pro after starting at 30..

  • Thread starter Thread starter vkurup
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he is into his 4th year and down to an 11 handicap! Still can't hit a driver very well either and a pb of 79.

he currently has 4k hrs clocked up... aint gonna happen :(
 
the thing is at the start he always said that he was doing it to have a shot at q school but now there's no q school so its gonna be even harder for him to make it on tour, unless he wants to try European tour which i doubt.
 
Nae chance whatsoever.

Nowadays unless you are +2 by your 16th birthday you are always going to struggle unless you are exceptionally talented.

Mind you Gary Christian is a good example of someone not prepared to give up.
Scratch at 18 then 20 years playing the satellite tours in the USA before he got his card. In nine years he is eligible for the Seniors tour.
 
Nae chance whatsoever.

Nowadays unless you are +2 by your 16th birthday you are always going to struggle unless you are exceptionally talented.

I've seen this at Junior Matches over the past few seasons, the difference between a player off +2 and one off 4 is almost like the difference between the 4 hcp player and a 14 hcp player.

Seen one of our own juniors who wanted to start his PGA training, he had to be max of 4 hcp. Lot of practice and a lot of golf to get below that as a teenager as well as trying to meet the academic qualifications necessary to enable him to do the degree course that all PGA trainees are expected to do.

Not an easy option at all.
 
He's got no chance. The best he can hope for is turning pro at 4 handicap and then selling Mars Bars in a pro shop somehwere.
 
Not a hope in hell of making it if he's only off 11 after 4 years. My old man had never picked a club up until he was 35 and was off single figures within 3 years, that was only playing weekends and holding down a full time job. My old man was and still is a good player but he was only playing for fun and club level comps and he had still achieved more in 3 years than the bloke mentioned!
 
The theory is well explained in a great book by Matthew Syed called Bounce.

Well worth a read

I think it was first reported by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. But it is if course a massive simplification and generalisation. There is some evidence that some people who have mastered a certain skill have spent some considerable time, around 10,000 hours on it. But there has been retrospective, looking back at successful people to see how they got there. There has been no prospective study looking at people starting out, then checking where they are 10,000 hours of practice later.

It also suggests that natural ability is much less important than it obviously is. It does appeal to the American idea that if you want something and are prepared to work at it then you can get it. Some people will never get there even if they spend 50000 hours.

As for the OP, I would say good luck but the odds against you are astronomical and approximate to infinity.
 
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No chance. Forget the name of the guy who wrote Game On but he had a year to break par. No ambitions to go on tour and he devoted a year to the challenge. If the other guy isn't down to single figures by now I doubt he'll even make Cat 1
 
he is into his 4th year and down to an 11 handicap! Still can't hit a driver very well either and a pb of 79.

he currently has 4k hrs clocked up... aint gonna happen :(

Ha, about the same rate I am progressing and I have still got 1 year to go to catch up!
 
Bounce is a fantastic book, the 10,000 hour theory has been put forward in a lot of books as being generally the recognised amount of hours required to reach elite level. Sadly most elite sportsmen have clocked this kind of hour count before they are 16, thennspendnthe rest of their career perfecting it. The only advantage he has is golfers can still reach elite levels at a much older age than other sports. He's going to have his work cut out
 
Moe Norman said he hit 5 Million practice balls and he was probably the best ball striker ever. It's Ok as long as you can live with the bleeding hands :eek:
 
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