Two years

It’s been a full two years. I began with my first lesson on April 15, 2010.

Instead of rehashing the previous two years, I think it’s time to talk about handicap and the implications of either keeping one or not. Lately, I have realized that for what I want to do, keeping a handicap is actually a type of hindrance to eventual performance. What I mean is that during practice rounds and even monetarily competitive rounds, I do not want to focus on falling back to what I know “works” right now, but would rather disregard score and try to work on the new aspects of my game and swing. Instead of playing safe layups on shorter holes, I want to see if I can hit the green and instead of pulling out a 3-wood on a tight fairway, I want to learn to bomb the driver down the middle. If I think too much about my handicap, I will be taking less risks and learning less through not failing on those shots (or succeeding).

Besides, what matters isn’t a handicap on a familiar course with familiar people, it’s what I shoot in tournament rounds where there is so much more at stake and often on new courses. This next chapter of The Dan Plan starts April 21 at Pumpkin Ridge for the Oregon Golf Association’s kickoff tournament. These are the rounds that I want to base my handicap on. If I shoot 120 out there, then my tournament handicap (the one that matters) will be a huge number, but something to start with and to work on. Anything can and will happen out there and I’m ecstatic to begin this new adventure. It’s been two years in the making and I am as ready as I can be.

I will not enter with expectations, but rather know that each hole is an individual chance to shine and every shot is just as important as the one before it. I will enter with enthusiasm and hopefully a non-working short term memory I will not get frustrated and make as many golf shots as I can that day.

This is how I see it and what I want for the next year. In the first two years I learned, slowly, how to golf and what it meant to play 18 holes of golf. This year I will learn what it means to play in a tournament and try to learn something new from every outing. I hope to play in 10 tourneys by the end of the year, at least. Who knows what will happen and what my competition handicap will be by 2013, but not knowing is 99 percent of the fun in life. Just do your best and follow your process goals, the outcomes will fall in line.

Speaking of process versus outcome goals, I realized that I didn’t blog about these in the past..

Outcome goals are where you eventually want to be. Whether it’s to lose 20 pounds, strike out 10 people in a baseball game or retire at age 60, those are the outcomes that you hope to achieve.

Process goals are the road to those and in my mind the important ones. A process goal is: I will practice golf deliberately for 10,000 hours, or jog 15 miles a week. These goals are the process in which you will achieve your outcomes. They are the bridges to success. It can be daunting to think about outcome goals, especially if they are long term lofty ones, but if you break it down into a process that you can turn to on a daily basis it is much easier to swallow.

It’s good to have a mix of both types of goals. The process can be just as easy to get lost in as the outcome, but if you have your eventual goal in mind and a way in which to break it down you have a plan and are on your way to success. Mine is pretty straight forward: I will practice my weaknesses for 10,000 hours and then make the PGA Tour. That’s a rudimentary version of what keeps me going. I do, though, set process goals for each week and even every day on my way to the range according to what I think needs the most attention during that time span. For example, right now I am working on getting off the tee with more accuracy, so my process goal is to work the driver, 3-wood and 5-wood on the range and course for at least 3 hours a day over the next couple of weeks. When I start to see some more positive results there I might shift my process goals to focus on up-and-downs, putting, sand shots, etc.

It is almost midnight and I have a round at Redtail golf course early tomorrow morning. Time to call it a year and wake up for the beginning of chapter 3 of The Dan Plan.

17 Responses to "Two years"

Brad says:

April 15, 2012 at 1:53 am

Great to share your inner workings Dan. Fascinating!! Looking forward to seeing you do well at the Oregon Golf Association’s kickoff tournament.
Brian says:

April 15, 2012 at 7:26 am

In your case, the trouble with keeping a handicap, is that there is too much pressure to pay attention to it. It’s much more helpful in the long-term sense. Look at it every 6 months, instead of every 2 weeks and it could be more helpful.
Todd says:

April 15, 2012 at 7:47 am

Time flies doesnt’t it? Some pretty incredible progress you’ve made so far! Good luck in the tournament! I recently joined Columbia to take advantage of the Mason membership…..looking forward to meeting you in person. Let’s hope this spring and summer are drier than last year!
Clarke says:

April 15, 2012 at 8:50 am

Great job Dan! Wish I could take some time off to dedicate to golf! Don’t think my wife would like that too much lol! Good luck in the tournament and all your challenges.
mb says:

April 15, 2012 at 11:02 am

dan, I think that you need to do both, you need to take chances and keep a handicap, its a good measure of where your game is at and I have to agree with some others not keeping a handicap is hiding from the facts not truly trying to become the best
Oliver says:

April 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm

Given that tournaments are your new focus, and presuming there’s an increase in expenses associated with entering tournaments (seeing your the previous thread), perhaps creating an itinerary of tournaments you want to play and their associated costs would be a good angle for a Kickstarter? You could also offer sponsorship opportunities for higher pledges.

Just a suggestion.
Williamevanl says:

April 15, 2012 at 6:52 pm

My biggest problem with your ‘tournament’ handicap is that it will take FOREVER to establish a new handicap that way. How long are we talking before you have 20 tournament scores, years!?

I agree with MB above and I think it’s silly that someone tuning into the project right now can’t possibly know what your handicap is so if someone asks you for you handicap you are going to what tell them you stopped keeping track?

If you are going to do that, why even keep your score outside of tournaments at all?
Sima says:

April 15, 2012 at 10:39 pm

Dan,

I’d love to know whether your coach takes a view on the handicap issue.

I’ve always felt that submitting cards from ‘practice rounds,’ in an effort to get your handicap down, is pretty childish. It’s only a small step from there to nudging a ball with your foot to improve the lie when no one’s looking, or hitting a second one because your partner farted on in the middle of your downswing and that would never happen in a ‘real’ competition!

As far as keeping a tournament handicap goes, well, you can’t really avoid doing that.

You say, “Instead of playing safe layups on shorter holes, I want to see if I can hit the green and instead of pulling out a 3-wood on a tight fairway, I want to learn to bomb the driver down the middle. If I think too much about my handicap, I will be taking less risks and learning less through not failing on those shots (or succeeding).”

That’s all well and good, and I presume you mean during regular practice rounds, but there’ll be times when you find yourself just having to finish the job off. It might be desirable to just keep what you’ve been doing, but it’s not always going to work. You need to find the right way to cope mentally. It’s quite possible to ‘shut everything out’ and play ‘numb’, probably quite a way below your best, but maybe well enough. Or you might keep going for it and overcook it. Finding, or holding onto, that flow state at such times…that’s pretty magical.

One of the benefits of playing little challenges, even if it’s stroke play rather than matchplay, is learning about pressure in those tight situations. If you’re playing head to head with lunch (or whatever) on the line and are level on the final tee, and just need bogey for your best round yet, I’d hope you’d still play for the match, rather than just play safe for the nice numbers. And of course, even if the PGA is all about stroke play, it’s still beating other people on the day that counts.

I don’t see a problem for all of us out here. The project is a long-term thing. It’s certainly not about whether you’re better this week, according to some pretty arbitrary number, than you were last week. Your handicap will be there as a marker by which people can quickly see roughly where you’re at. You’re posting scores pretty regularly, so anyone interested can check out how often you’re playing above or below the official number.

A couple of possibilities for the weekend:
1) You find yourself five or six over with four to play. You want nothing more than to post your first sub-80 in your first tournament. What’s going to get you home?
2) You blow up twice in the first five holes. How are you going to find that focus and make a score?

I don’t expect answers to those questions. Not until Sunday or Monday, at least! I don’t think it helps to get too worked up about such events, but a little cool consideration of one or two possible scenarios can maybe help you be better prepared.

Whatever unfolds, we’re looking forward to reading all about it.

Good luck! And remember to enjoy yourself.
John says:

April 16, 2012 at 12:55 pm

Remember what your handicap really is, a measure of your potential.

With that in mind, if you play every hole with the goal of making your lowest possible score, then your handicap is a reflection of your ability. This is not only your shot making ability, but also your course management ability.

There are cases where “going for it” is such a low percentage that you should never try it. A good example is a short par 4 that doglegs around water. Say you can carry the water with your career best drive. That’s a shot that you should never try because the odds are very low and the cost of missing is high.

On the other hand there are cases where if the odds are good of making birdie or better by going for it and the cost of missing is relatively low, i.e. you should make par even if you miss the “big” shot then it would be bad course management to NOT go for it.

Good luck.
Matt says:

April 16, 2012 at 4:26 pm

Just a suggestion, but I wouldn’t abandon the handicap. I understand what you are saying, but part of learning to play golf is learning how to score. No player hits every shot exactly how and where they want it. They have to know their ability and decide when a risk is worth taking and when it is not. You really need to practice this to improve at it.

Instead of abandoning the handicap, why not designate some rounds as practice rounds and others as scoring practice rounds. In you practice rounds, hit whatever shots you want to try. Drop balls in different spots and try those shots. Whatever you want to work on (provided you aren’t holding anyone up of course).

Designate other rounds as scoring practice rounds, where your goal is to score. That will put added pressure on yourself, which will more simulate what you will experience in tournaments.

Learning to score is just another skill, like ball-striking, bunker play, putting, etc. I don’t believe you can improve at it without practicing it. Sure, if you focus solely on striking the ball you will likely improve your scores, but if you want to become a top tier player, that will never be enough.

Good luck!
Bernhard says:

April 17, 2012 at 8:45 am

A while ago, Dan posted on Investment in loss. I think it’s one of the really hard aspects of gaining expertise, and the ability to invest in loss is as much a matter of dealing with the emotional side of it. You just worked really hard to achieve a certain level of competence, and now you’re willfully making yourself less competent, at least in the short term. That’s hard. Anything that makes the loss harder to bear is, all things equal, a negative and a hindrance to further development. Keeping a handicap may well fall here.

One other thing. I think Dan has earned the license to try what he thinks works best. Certainly, the one thing we cannot reasonably accuse Dan of throughout this project is not taking it seriously, or not being able to face hard facts about what stands in the way of his progress. So it’s just a mistake to couch this discussion in terms of “hiding” or some other notion of evasion.
David says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:34 pm

This is why the US handicap system is bogus, it relies solely on the individual where as the UK handicap system only allows tournament rounds to be calculated. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played in USGA qualifiers, specifically U.S. Open Local qualifiers and a guy I’m paired with shoots 88 and his handicap is listed below a 1.4? Granted it’s completely feasible to have a 1.4 index shoot an 88 at local qualifying as the setups are extremely hard but I’ve seen this happen way to many times and know people take advantage of the handicap system in order to be eligible for USGA events.
micke says:

April 18, 2012 at 5:46 am

Hi Dan,

I hope you keep recording your “normal” handicap but why not do it as Matt suggests, whit designated scoring practice rounds. All the points he makes sound valid in my opinion! Then, you can keep a tournament HCP on the side to be able to compare how you do when the pressure is on or off.
Lee says:

April 20, 2012 at 2:53 am

Hi Dan,

As mentioned by a previous poster, handicap is simply a measure of potential. Focus on process is great, but golf is still a game in which a score is kept. If bombing it off the tee results in your best score, bomb away. If it doesn’t, you are – in my opinion – not playing the game. The range (and sometimes the course) is for practice.

Three weeks ago, I played for the first time in over six years (back issues). I shot 97 (70.2/129). Afterwards, I hit balls on four different occasions and played again this past Tuesday. After going out in 44, I was determined to break 40 coming in. As usual, being results oriented screwed me: I doubled 10, bogeyed 11, and figured my goal was history. With my results-oriented mindset gone, I came in at three over and shot 83 on a course I’ve never played (71.6/118). Not spectacular by any means, but after a huge layoff, I’ll take it.

I didn’t start playing until I was 35 (I’m 51 now), but I used to put A LOT of time into my game, getting my GHIN to 1.8 at my peak. I’ve calculated that I have about 3000 hours of total time in my game. I’ve taken about 20 lessons in my life, but I’ve always achieved my best results ‘digging it out of the dirt’ and playing with whatever I brought to the course on any given day. I hit driver four times on Tuesday, as I was hitting a sweeping hook that I couldn’t get under control on the course. Dropped down to four wood (I hit it about 220, but I can keep it in play) and relied on my short game to score (as usual).

Fairways and greens, as ‘they’ say.

Best of luck!
dan says:

April 24, 2012 at 2:36 pm

Hi Sima,

I think you, and everyone, have good points. After that post, and thinking about it for a while, I’ve decided the best thing to do is to play at least one round per week where score is the focus. I will determine before heading off on the first tee whether that round is a “practice” round or a “scoring round” and if it’s a scoring round I will post my score regardless of the results. That way I can focus on course work sometimes and the added pressure of having to post to a handicap on other rounds. Play will be different, but good both ways.

Thank you and everyone for the comments and thoughts,

Dan
dan says:

April 24, 2012 at 2:40 pm

David,

I agree with that. Tournament handicap is the way to go. I’d love to only score rounds where that is the case and that was my goal, but seeing as they are few and far between right now, I will post a round or so a week and keep both my tourney and my non-tourney handicaps.

Dan
dan says:

April 24, 2012 at 2:44 pm

Hi Lee,

yeah, play with what you brought! That’s a great mantra. If that driver isn’t working at all, there’s nothing wrong with 220 in the middle

Thank you for the comment,

Dan

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