Photo: Sands Beach LanzaroteDespite the fact that I am not very good at golf, my secret fantasy is to someday play on the Champions Tour, the professional golf tour for fifty-somethings. As I approach my 44th birthday, I realize that it is time to get serious in this endeavor.
The right way to spend my time if I really wanted to make the Tour, I suppose, would be to practice more. My friend Anders Ericsson popularized the magic number of 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. Depending on exactly what you count as practice, by my rough calculations I have logged about 5,000 hours of golf practice over the course of my life. Given how mediocre I am after the first 5,000 hours, however, I’m not so optimistic that the next 5,000 hours will lead me anywhere good.
So instead, I spent some time today figuring out how just how much I will need to improve. The best PGA tour pros tend not to have regular handicaps, but are said to be the equivalent of Plus 8 on the handicap scale, i.e. eight strokes better than a scratch golfer. I claim to be a six handicap. That means that, to a first approximation, if I played 18 holes today against the best players in the world, I should lose by 14 strokes.
The probability that I will improve by 14 strokes in the next six years is easy to estimate: zero.
Fortunately, my goal isn’t to be the best golfer in the world, just to be the worst golfer on the Champions Tour. Surely, that can’t be so hard, can it?
So I set out to measure just how much worse that guy is than the world’s very best golfers. A direct comparison is hard to make because the bottom feeders on the Champions Tour rarely play against the Tiger Woodses of the world. The stars of the Champions Tour do, however, play an occasional PGA Tour event. I was able to find 19 players who competed on both tours in 2010. On average, these players had a stroke average of 70.54 when playing on the Champions Tour, compared to an average of 71.77 when they played PGA Tour events. This suggests that the typical Champions Tour course plays a little more than one stroke easier than the typical PGA Tour course.
The top players on the PGA Tour post average scores of a little below 70 strokes per round, meaning that the upper echelon of senior golfers are about two strokes worse per round than the best players in the world. The low performers on the Champions Tour score around 73 on Champions Tour courses, or about two-and-a-half strokes worse than the top senior golfers. If the world’s best golfers are Plus 8 handicappers, then that means the “bad” golfers on the senior tour are roughly Plus 3 or Plus 4.
That’s “only” nine or ten strokes a round better than me. Surely I can close that gap! If I can squeeze merely one stroke of improvement out of each incremental 500 hours of practice, then by the time I hit 10,000 hours, I will be a Plus 4.
With that goal in mind, I recently started taking golf lessons for the first time since I was 13 years old. One reason I chose my new golf coach, Pat Goss, is that he was an undergraduate economics major at Northwestern. I thought maybe he would understand the way I think.
On our first meeting, Pat first told me I swing like a character out of Caddyshack, and then asked me what my goals were in golf.
I responded to his question with 100 percent honesty: “I want to play on the Champions Tour. But if you decide I’ll never be that good, then I have a very different objective. I don’t care the slightest bit about what my handicap ends up being in that case. All that matters to me then is being able to hit the ball as far as possible, even if I can’t break 100.”
I guess he’s not used to getting an honest answer to this question, because he was so overcome with laughter he practically fell to the ground.
The good news is that six lessons later we are still devoting time to perfecting my short game, suggesting he thinks I can achieve my dream of making the tour.
Or maybe he’s just maximizing revenue. After all, he is an economist by training.
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Steven, your assertion that you are “not very good at golf” despite being having a Handicap of 6 is quite insulting to the weekend warriors like me! Oh, what I would give to shoot 6 over par just once in my life…
Steven,
As a fellow 6 Handicapper with the same ridiculously audacious goal I have just one piece of advice – enjoy the process of becoming the best golfer you can be.
On your analysis, I find it interesting. However, I wonder if a more telling analysis of the statistical probability of becoming the “worst golfer on the Champion’s Tour” would be an analysis of the competition that exists for the limited number of spots that will be available. After all, David Toms is 44 years old as well, so the both of you will be eligible for the Champions Tour the same year. As for me, I get to compete with Jim Furyk for a spot! I’m not sure I like the odds – but the journey sure is fun!
I guess we can always take solace in the fact that you are a better economist than Toms and I am a better management consultant than Furyk.
Best,
Steve Beck
Managing Partner, cg42 | http://www.cg42.com | Effectively Create Demand
Your chances are probably directly proportional to the number of hours you spend training in a meaningful way.
As a golf freak, I hope you periodically update us on your progress. It would be an amazing accomplishment. Good luck!
I don’t personally play golf but I found this article very interesting. I have gone to driving ranges and putting greens but I have really honed the sophisticated skill of golfing well. I still consider myself an amateur but hopefully a couple rounds at mini golf might help.
Steven: Dan McLaughlin has the same idea. http://www.thedanplan.com/
10,000 hours to professionalism…
Years ago, the legendary teacher Harvey Penick was approached by an Austin businessman who told him he was in his mid-forties, had several $million in the bank and wanted to dedicate himself to playing on the Champions Tour. Penick invited him out to the range and said: “You see that man at the end of the range; he’s in his mid-forties, has several $million in the bank and also has dedicated himself to playing on the Champions Tour – He’s Tom Kite.
Steven: Interested to hear how you’re progressing with your goal. For anyone who doesn’t know, Pat Goss is not just a college golf coach, he’s also the pro for Luke Donald, current World #1.
I would estimate the odds of a 6 handicap who has already been playing golf for 5,000 hours to be lower than one who has been playing for considerably less time. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a few minor breakthroughs with your skills.
Have you attended any Champion’s Tour events to evaluate your competition? These (older) guys are good!