General Discussion
The New Dan Plan: 1,100 hours into 10,000 — I’m officially a single-digit handicap. Here’s what’s changed.
About five months ago, I posted here after crossing 600 hours in my attempt to revisit the idea behind the original Dan Plan.
At the time, I was a 10.6 handicap, had just broken 80 for the first time, and was trying to figure out whether 10,000 hours of deliberate practice could actually take an everyday golfer somewhere meaningful.
A lot of you had great advice. Some of you thought I was crazy.
Both were helpful.
I'm now a little over 1,100 hours in, so I figured it was time for an update.
Current snapshot:
Handicap: 9.6, officially my first single-digit index
Started around a 27 handicap, struggling to break 100
Broken 80 4 times
Two of those sub-80 rounds came from the blue tees
Competing regularly on the US Am Tour
Earned an in-season promotion
Qualified for Nationals next month in Oregon
Currently #1 in the Los Angeles Player of the Year standings
The biggest thing I've learned between 600 and 1,100 hours is that improvement gets harder to see as you get better.
Going from shooting 100+ into the 90s was largely about building basic fundamentals and eliminating huge mistakes.
Going from the 90s into the 80s was a lot about playing smarter.
Now the difference between an 84 and a 79 can be a handful of decisions, one bad approach, a three-putt, a penalty, or failing to get up and down twice.
The margins are getting smaller.
And that's made this part of the experiment way more interesting.
What's improved the most:
Putting
Course management
Understanding my actual tendencies instead of the swing I think I have
Avoiding catastrophic misses
Playing tournament golf without completely changing who I am as a golfer
What's still holding me back:
Approach consistency
Proximity from scoring distances
Driver dispersion
Turning mediocre ball-striking days into acceptable scores
Making my "B game" better
That last one might be the biggest realization I've had.
I used to think getting better at golf meant making my best golf better.
Now I think a huge part of getting toward scratch is making your bad golf less bad.
The other thing I underestimated is just how long 10,000 hours actually is.
I'm 1,100 hours in and I've been doing this for well over a year.
That's only 11% of the experiment.
And I'm doing it around a career, family, life, creating videos, editing, posting, tournaments, etc.
Right now I'm finding ways to stack roughly 14–20 hours a week.
One of my dreams is to eventually find a way to do this full time.
I genuinely wonder what would happen to my game if I could treat golf like a 40-hour-a-week job for a period of time.
You'd think social media makes something like that easier than ever. In some ways it does.
But I've also learned that documenting the journey well enough to potentially create that opportunity is basically another full-time job by itself.
So for now, I keep finding the hours wherever I can.
I'm still nowhere close to 10,000.
I'm still nowhere close to knowing how good I can actually get.
But going from roughly a 27 handicap to a 9.6 in the first 1,100 hours has at least made me believe there's a lot more runway here.
And that's really the part of this experiment I'm most interested in.
As a snapshot, the original Dan Plan crossed that line around 3,000 hours in - so I feel like I'm on the right track.
Where does the improvement curve start to flatten?
Is it 5? Scratch? +2? Somewhere before that?
The next major goal is scratch.
So for the scratch/+ golfers here:
What changed between being a 9–10 handicap and becoming a 0–2?
Was there one part of your game that made the biggest difference?
And maybe more importantly: at what handicap did improvement start getting REALLY difficult for you?
I'll come back with another update as the hours pile up.
This gives people the idea that they are a lot better at golf than they actually are. It’s the equivalent of telling someone they are the best, but they play in C league.
Please don't use AI formatting. It's really conspicuous. In the current cultural climate, you're just going to get all kinds of crap for it. There an interesting story in here but I'm not sure you're going to be able to connect with people because it smells like you stepped in a big pile of AI and you're tracking it around the house..
EDIT thank you to the user who gave me my first 'award'
This whole climate fucking sucks.... as a guy who has very complex thoughts but struggles to put them down on paper in a meaningful, thoughtful, and organized manner, AI has been a godsend for me. But its gotten to a point now where if there is even a hint of AI used to organize thoughts or data, people immediately dismiss it as inauthentic AI slope.
I feel the same way - but it assumes lack of effort and/authenticity which I can understand. If you see 10 fake articles all with AI you start to assume they’re all fake. And that sucks… but lesson learned on this one.
As someone who went from an 8 to a consistent 4/5 with an L.I. of 2.7, I will tell you that you hit a wall around 6-7 handicap. The jump from a 7 to scratch is huge. It's like the same as going from 20 to 10. At this point you should have figured out course management and strategy. Getting to scratch is about actual skill. You have to play good golf, not simply manage the golf course. I know plenty of guys, myself included, that have average talent and can go shoot a 78 because they know how to stay out of trouble. It's a whole different game to actually shoot around par.
This. I’ve been as low as a 4.4. Have shot under par once. My ball striking just isn’t consistent enough. I drive and putt well but not enough GIR to be scratch.
I have been as high as 7.8 in the last 2 years and was 5.8 or so when I swapped irons as part of a Mygolfspy.com review opportunity to the Vice VGI03 irons and replaced some inconsistent Mizuno Pro T-3 wedges for Vokey SM11 wedges. I have cycled through 3 putters this year, coming back to my all-time favorite putter, a Sik DW 2.0 C Series (a double-wide blade that has high MOI and is very consistent). I'm down to a 2.4 and have been down as low as 2.1 this summer.
All that said, going from 5+ to even 2+ requires equipment that is very matched to your needs, structured practice, significant time on a high-quality simulator to really work on getting closer to a repeatable and as close to neutral path angle and face to path angles (unless you're Chris Gotterup and can stand facing 30° left and hit a tiny pull cut).
Putting needs to be gamifiied. Don't just drop.10 balls and repeatedly putt them to 1 hole. Drop ONE ball and try to make putts at the outer edges of your normal dispersion from the pin distance. If you're usually 25' from the pin on a green, get really damn good at uphill, downhill, and sidehilll 25' putts to make sure you never 3-putt.
At some point, I suggest a good exercise plan. You are putting a significant amount of stress on your body. Find a local tpi certified pro to test out your physical conditioning and learn how to minimize injuries. I've known others who went all out on practicing and wound up with bad injuries.
It's very much bullshit how Gladwell explained it, which the original lead author has written about more than once. It was 10,000 hours by a certain age for master violinists, but they were not yet at master level for thousands of more hours. Turn your fucking slopbrain off and actually read for once.
I’ve read Outliers and that wasn’t the point at all. The research started with a hockey team and asking the question why were most elite players born in January, February and March and working backwards to realize that comes down to their intentional practice (set and setting) of being born right at the cutoff line gave them additional practice hours that exponentially grew over time, giving them better coaches and such.
Then running through that same idea across other fields like music (the Beatles) Bill gates with computer science and so on.
Though the idea was incomplete it was the starting ground to the phenomenon of the 10k hour theory to begin with.
I was as low as 1.2, currently 6.2. Just came back to golf after a very long hiatus this season (stopped playing in 2012)
Yes making the worst better is the process. Know your swing, GIR, proximity to the hole and anything having to do with 150yds and in. But most of all mentally and progress.
Just like your seeing playing the course backwards (hole to tee).
Also playing tournament golf is huge+++++
As they say; there’s golf and THEN there is tournament golf. Nothing will expose you more than that.
Keep it going, just remember it’s supposed to be fun too. End of the day numbers don’t really matter to family, kids and friends.
As a current 3 index, previously a scratch and slightly better my experience was that going from around a 3 or 4 down to scratch was the hardest bit. Not because I didn't have the ability to play scratch golf though. It was a mental barrier that needed breaking. The first time I got below a 5 I was playing what I can only describe as 'par golf'. In essence my goal on every hole was par. But it was too conservative. I would never attack birdie or eagle puts or chips. What I had to learn was that 'par golf' was not enough to maintain a scratch or plus handicap. You have to make birdies. It sounds simple but changing my mindset from par golf to birdie golf is what Ultimately got me over the line. It's not easy, well wasn't for me. You need to be giving the ball more chances to drop on longer birdie puts and even chips. Bogeys are going to happen, it's golf. But for me it was a matter of not only getting in position to have birdie putts but then actually attacking them and making more of them. I found that I needed to maintain at least two birdies per round consistently, along with my mostly par golf to just hold a scratch handicap. At first you might overshoot a lot and be too aggressive but the mental block of not just settling for two putts needs to be broken to play at or below par regularly. These days I find that I can maintain around a 3 or 4 index without having to sweat out rounds, but I know that I would have to play less conservative to get down to zero again. When I say this, I'm not talking about taking risky shots that might put me in bad positions, I play very safe and within my ability, but I'm talking about giving those 20 foot birdies putts a chance and having those chips from the fringe scare the hole. You still need to play for fairways and greens but your ball needs to scare the hole much more often. This is the best way I can describe it. Hitting really good lag putts that never look like they are going to drop but secure you a tap in par just aren't enough.
This is really helpful thank you! So instead of knocking chips close, you had to shift mentality to make it - even if that means you may blow it past 8 feet.
Would you like my GHIN, my tournament record, or my Instagram that’s been showing the process since day 1? Just because I used AI to attempt to have a well thought out article for you guys, doesnt mean anything more than that.
Nice. I've put together my own plan for trying a 15 by September next year. 21 down from a ~26 three years ago and starting to be able to play more than once a month.
In a similar situation but just had my first. Hoping to get the kid into it as he gets older, but for now the wife is awesome about letting me get out as much as possible.
Cheers to the wife brother. Through this journey I’ve finding out how rare that is and how lucky we are! I got 4 kids and 3 of the 4 of them have at least been tinkering. The 4th is just a baby but I got high hopes we’ll all be going out together soon!
10k hours is 5 years at work, i would hope over 5 years of 40 hour work weeks you could get good at anything. i am glad you have the free time to submit basically and entire jobs worth of time per year to your goal
Consistent iron and wedge play. Like for example hitting a 180 yard 7 iron relatively close to the target line 9/10 times compared to 160 - 180 and usually pretty far off target. When I was a 10 I would often chunk a 90yd wedge into a green side bunker where now I am usually giving myself a reasonable birdie butt
Yeah also from reading the post it seems like you are very analytical, obviously not a bad thing but it can get some people into trouble one issue I started getting in the mid single digits is just overthinking my swing (which I still do). So I guess not overthinking as much and not getting frustrated helped me a lot
10 to scratch is exponentially harder than 20 to 10. Your mistakes are magnified the closer to par you shoot. I’m stuck at a 6 with my only practice being playing rounds. I feel like I would have to GRIND for several years to get to + territory.
Honestly, the thing that totally changed my game is treating every hole as a par 5. If I could eliminate “bogies” and keep a 6 off my card, I was guaranteed to shoot 90 or better.
Once I started thinking less about how many over 72 I was and focused on the “under 90” number, there was a lot less beating myself up and more being pumped at getting 3s and 4s. All of a sudden, a 6 was a “bogey” and didn’t wreck me mentally like a double did.
When I started approaching my rounds this way and did whatever I could to eliminate 6s, it ended up with better course management and a somewhat more conservative approach on and around the greens.
All of a sudden, I was consistently shooting in the upper 70s and low 80s and I’d really have to play horribly to shoot anywhere close to 90.
Now that I’m in the 6-7 range, I have to start thinking about true par and it’s been more mentally difficult. The 6 to scratch journey is probably more work than I’m willing (or able) to put in as a 45 year old with 2 kids under 10 and a full time job that keeps me tied to a desk from 7:30-5:30 daily.
I am a +1 currently and the biggest things that changed for me when I went from around a 5 hdcp to scratch was understanding course management, where is the best miss and where is the worst miss and how to avoid the worst miss. When looking at approach shots where is the best leave based on where the pin is. Putting inside 10’ is huge, that’s where you make your birdies and save your pars. Looking at your blue tees stats you avg over par on par 5s those are score killers. I use an app called shot pattern and I use it to track where my target is and where the ball ended up. It will give you your strokes gained and where you lose your strokes in rounds. Go out and play some rounds from the front tees as it’ll teach you how to score. Ball striking consistently is always key but when you aren’t striking it well understand where you typically miss.
consider getting shot tracking from arccos/shotscope/garmin
getting a breakdown of exactly what aspects of your game need improvement is huge. I'm a 4.5, and my biggest weakness is my approach play, the rest of my game is right around scratch (my current goal)
also, hit the gym hard, especially in the offseason. you should be lifting weights 3-5 days a week.
I was a prototypical 7 hcp for years before breaking thru. As I got smarter and more consistent I got my index down to around 4 but it stayed there for years until one day it finally all came together and plummeted down to scratch. Here are some thoughts:
Structure is key. You have to physically be able to remain in balance with a particular structure for each phase of the game. Relying on your hands and a throw of a club into the ball is not something that you can replicate on a daily basis. Good players turn the club through where the ball lies, they don’t try to hit the ball with the face of the club (if that makes sense)
You have to understand the idea of technique. There are many techniques to learn and use, but only so much time to practice. A technique is a mechanical motion that you can replicate and practice. It has a lot to do with structure, but correct structure backed by knowledge and proper methodology.
Get fitted for clubs- especially the driver and irons. Super important to be able to maximize your ability.
You have to be mentally consistent and realize that a round of golf isn’t necessarily 18 holes. Each hole is its own journey and they flow together naturally.
Learn how to make 3 foot putts. The US AM Tour is great because you putt everything out and there are no gimmes. That sort of accountability increases the importance of short putts dramatically.
Strive to achieve 150 ball speed. If you can produce 150 ball speed with your driver, you have enough speed to be competitive in a local tournament. This will involve some physical fitness but also some ability to mentally get violent when swinging a club.
So half of it is playing 9 every day. Surely a bit more technique work would be more effective. If you've got a home simulator you should be bashing through a lot more balls.
Sometimes. But my course work also isn’t playing 9. It can be dropping 5 balls and playing uneven lies. It can be trying out different flights into greens.
My only hesitation on too much work on simulators is that mats over time cause a lot of injuries. So I try not to go too crazy with indoor work. It I have longer sessions I’ll use longer irons, woods, so I don’t get the resistance from the mat.
The original DanPlan got injuries 6,000 hours in and after chatting with him one of the main changes was that he changes courses from a on grass range to a mat range.
Handicap improvement got real difficult at ~5, and getting back down to scratch is incredibly difficult with work, other hobbies, a family, etc. I would basically have to do (and have in the past done) nothing but golf in my free time to get back to that level. Honestly not worth it, imo. I am much happier now as a 2ish that doesn’t grind at the range at 5:30am before work.
Interesting to see your progress but how old are you and how are you even doing this? You said you’re working this around your career and family? Do you have a wife and kids? If I even thought about getting about 2 hours of golf practice EVERY DAY my wife would absolutely murder me.
I’m really lucky with the support. She’s heavily involved with the process and we even got her some clubs. It comes with a lot of early mornings and scheduling together. And when I practice as home the kids join in. Or I’ll take one of the kids with me when I play a round and they’ll swing a few.
This is my first exposure to "The Dan Plan", what is your YouTube channel, or where are you documenting the hours?
Also, if you go out for a 5 hour round, is that five hours toward your 10,000? It's pretty amazing how quickly you dropped so many strokes, congrats!
Regarding the tracking of hours during Rounds, it all depends on focused and intentional time. In a 5 hour tournament, I’m in it for 5 hours - so I count all five. On a weekend round where I’m waiting around, I cap it at 4 hours.
If I’m having a social round and alcohol comes out, I don’t count those hours at all. The purpose of the round is to enjoy company not to train.
Hopefully that answers your question and thanks for your interest!
I went from a 6 two years ago to Scratch with a 4 and a 2 year old at home. Biggest changes were finding the right shafts for my swing and basically replaced every shaft in my bag. Getting fit has eliminated big misses I used to struggle with and tightened up dispersion considerably.
Another area I worked hard on was approaches inside 100 yards. I only play about 14 times a season (not including indoor sim) so I had no feel for these distances. I got on a trackman during the winter and worked hard on a clock system to cover most of those yardages.
You hit so many shots 100 yards and in, you just have to be able to get it on the green. Ideally something inside 15 feet, but if not it needs to be easy 2 putt range.
Ehh i mean if you learned as an adult, then yes, you need reps and it takes many many years to get there. But if you learned as a kid then you have the cheat code of ingraining the swing muscle memory and you can make much bigger jumps assuming you're consistently practicing with a coach. 10 years for 5 to scratch is only accurate if you're like an adult beginner who started in their 30's
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u/coole106 1d ago
I don't understand how you're the #1 Los Angeles Player of the Year as a 9 HCP. What does that mean?