I was going to make it a pdf download and ask people to contribute what they thought it was worth, but I thought if I put the book up on Amazon’s website it would be better formatted for all types of digital readers.  If this doesn’t work after a couple of months I may put a link to the pdf up as well, but for the time being please think about supporting The Dan Plan by purchasing the book here:

Amazon Unites States:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MTC0NJA

Amazon UK:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00MTC0NJA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00MTC0NJA

Amazon Germany: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00MTC0NJA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Amazon Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B00MTC0NJA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

And most any other country, email me if you want a specific link or search for “The Dan Plan”.

I wish to apologize in advance as a few external links did not translate to this format.  One of the most blaring absences are videos.  On a few occasions I talk about watching a video and it’s just a blank on the page.  Outside of that the content is whole.  I edited out about one third of the posts but there is still quite a bit of content, too much in a lot of ways.  Down the road at some point I will have a professional editor (or a well versed friend, or myself when the amount of time in a day magically doubles) take a gander at the content and polish it up.  For now, this is the story, more or less, word for word from the beginning.  I hope you enjoy and get some value out of the content.

For every book purchased from Amazon almost $5 goes to The Dan Plan.  Thank you for reading and please help spread the word to anyone potentially interested in seeing what it takes to make such a drastic change in one’s life.

Cheers!

Here is the post from December 9, 2010 titled I like it, I really do:

Yes!!  What a day!  It was a pretty crazy day, actually, but as far as golf goes, it was an amazing day!

The fine gentlemen working out at Heron Lakes let me head out onto the course to play some holes from about 30 yards out.  Seeing as it was absolutely pouring out, I basically had the course to myself so headed out to play the back nine of the Great Blue course.  For as much time as I spend out at Heron, I’m kind of surprised that this was the first time I’d actually walk part of the course, but perhaps good things come to those who wait.

I set it up to play 27 “holes” of golf.  I played three balls from roughly 35 yards each on every hole of the back nine.  Since I was pitching from a bit of distance I made all of them a par 3 (quite a short par 3, but I’m a newbie) and am happy to say that I scored an 81 on the day, making it an even par which is a great benchmark for my first time out on a course!  Not sure what a PGA Pro would shoot, but can assume it would be around a 55-60, so I have a LOT of work, as always, but it’s nice to have a score to beat now and I hope to make it out there more often, especially on the rainy slow days when nobody else is braving the course.

In the picture below, it’s hard to see, but I pitched from about 30 yards away and from about 30 feet above the hole, but in spite of the bunker and the stream of water cutting through the green landed it within five feet!  One of a handful of birdies I shot today.

One of the 27 “holes” I played today, it’s hard to see but the ball’s pretty close!

Not sure if you can tell, but I’m standing in about 3 inches of water, the entire course was completely flooded, as was basically all of Portland, more on that further down..

Although I had the right gear on, there was absolutely no chance of staying dry today.

I loved the view from this little hill, looking out over the 14th green with a train passing in the distance, nice!

Between the two soaked bunker, the lake and the train, this is a tough shot.

What a day!  A great day!!

Has your sense of smell ever brought you back to a time long forgotten?

That’s the Atlanta air in the Spring for me.  Everywhere I went my heart was heavy with memories of my childhood.  It didn’t hurt that one of the courses I played while there happened to be about a half mile away from where I lived from birth until 8 years old.  I couldn’t hide from being overwhelmed by visions and thoughts that had not been in mind for years.

It wasn’t a bad thing, by any means, just contemplative.

On Thursday morning I met a group of guys playing in a small annual charity tournament at Peachtree Golf Club.  It is a hidden gem of a course built in 1947 under the orders of Bobby Jones and happens to be the most aesthetically pleasing course I have ever had the privilege of playing.  It was about as magical a track of land as I could imagine and I was surprised that it was just that half mile from my childhood home.

After the round I decided to drive by the old neighborhood to see how things had changed.  When I got out of the car and smelled the air I remembered playing tee ball in the front yard, riding big wheels down the street and wandering through the small creeks that seemed so huge as a wee lad.

The house was a lot smaller than I remembered too, but it was still very adequate for a family of 5. Nothing compared to the mini-castles that are being built where some of my friends old houses were town down, but plenty of house and a great yard for a young family.  I knew I had a fortunate childhood and standing there I realized that I need to do more to make sure others enjoy a similar childhood.  I am not sure exactly what that means right now as I write this on the return flight, but I know that I have more to give.

After taking in the scene I remembered there was a small lake next to some tennis courts that we often walked to.  Instinctually I began the short trek and with every step of the way it felt like yesterday when I last hiked the path up to Silver lake through the woods along a small creek.

When I reached the lake I was flooded with more memories.  Fishing, catching tadpoles, jumping off a diving board for the first time, getting a fishhook through my hand, a friend stepping on glass and cutting her foot, thinking the lake was endless and impossible to walk around or swim, and a man who used to hit beat up golf balls into the water with his son.

I lingered on that last memory and recalled a time when he let me hit some balls.  I must have been 5-years-old and was a pretty shy little kid, but it looked like a ton of fun so I tried a few swings with the short right handed driver that his son was using.  I didn’t make very good contact and basically just spun around every time I made a swing, but then he asked me if I was a righty or lefty and I told him I wasn’t sure.  At that point, and still today, I did a lot of things with each hand.  He told met that he would bring a lefty out next time to see if that fit me better.

About a week later (in kid memory so it could have been a day or a year) I saw him again hitting balls into the little lake.  He had followed through in his promise and had a short left-handed driver for me to try.  I got over my shyness and gave it a couple of swings.  Surprisingly, I hit the ball pretty well and sailed a few into the lake.  I remember how it felt coming off that little wooden driver face and liked it.  I ran off to play with my brother, but before we walked home we bumped into the man at the top of the trail towards home.  He had the driver in his hand and told me that he wanted me to keep it.  I was, again, shy and didn’t say anything but took the club.  My brother told me to say thank you and I think I managed the two words before the man told us that he wanted to give me golfing lessons.  He said next time I see him that he would start teaching me how to make a good swing and what the game was.

We left and I cherished that driver.  I didn’t have any golf balls and instead of using it I kept it at the foot of my bed and was looking forward to bringing it back to the lake to learn how to use it.

I brought it with me every time I went back up there and always looked for the man but never saw him again.  After a while I stopped taking it with me and the club ended up living in a large chest that contained other sporting odds and ends.  The most use the club ever saw was hitting pine cones around the yard a few summer nights.  As a young child’s attention can meander, mine switched to other pursuits and I forgot about that small driver.

I found out a few years later that the man had died in his sleep just days after gifting me the driver.  In retrospect I know he must have been young, maybe 45 at the oldest.  He had a heart attack that ended his time far too early and despite never having given me a lesson I think he was a large part of why I am doing what I am doing now.  It only took a couple of minutes and the gift of a used child’s driver, but here I am almost 30 years later dedicating myself to becoming the best I can be in this game.

I’m not necessarily saying that those experiences led to my decision, rather I was pondering how much a quick interaction can influence a life.  I stood there looking out at that lake wondering where I would be today if not for that memory.  I didn’t have an answer, but felt happy in the moment and knew that meant I was doing what I needed to be doing.

The funny thing is that just hours earlier I was debating my path as I played the incredible Peachtree Golf Club without being able to hit a single decent shot.  I was caught in the moment lingering on my shot by shot performance rather than being able to step back and appreciate how far I had come to date.  And, I was letting it get me down while playing golf on one of the more special courses in the world.  Don’t get me wrong, I fully appreciated the experience and was in awe of all three courses I got to play while in Atlanta, but was getting in my own way by being frustrated by shots instead of playing each one as a unique experience.

Frustration doesn’t accomplish anything, it just interferes with both happiness and progress.  The next day I took that thought into the round and even though I started 6 over after 6 holes I staved off that emotion and ended up shooting a 76 on a par 70 course. That was about 15 strokes better than either of the first two days and wholly because I kept my mindset in check.

The lake and those memories helped me, the trick now is to keep that in mind while continuing the push forward.  At any point it’s easy to pull on either positive or negative memories and the good thing is that I think it’s a choice we can make for ourselves. And, I think that with practice it’s possible to change anything including out emotional responses to a given situation.

Golf notes:  over the first two rounds I hit more driver shots OB than in the fairway.  For the third round I hit the driver once and snap hooked it so went with 3-wood for the rest of the round and hit almost every fairway.  I played East Lake, Peachtree Golf Course and Capital City Brookhaven.  I have never in my life seen greens quite like Peachtree and hear they are similar in style to Augusta, which makes me really want to see that course.  I hit it well once I got out of my own way.  My putting was solid, I need to learn a technique for chipping/pitching from tight bermuda lies.  Driver must be improved.  I can rely on the 3-wood and get it out there 260 yards on firmer fairways.  For fluffy bunkers you can really use the bounce unlike the muddy/firm bunkers through the Portland winter where it needs to be hit down on.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make that trip feasible and having a place to crash for at least 3 weeks definitely makes the drive down worth it.

I also found out I have a cousin who is a PGA golf pro down there that I have not seen in about 25 years.  He has a family now with two boys and is the head PGA Pro of a course (leaving the name out for now as I don’t know if he wants me talking about it/him yet). It will be interesting to catch up and meet his family.  Who would have known that I had a family member in the golf business?!  I love it.

That’s the news for January 2014.  I will be down in Palm Spring and probably head out January 2nd from Portland, driving down there.  There is a long time reader of the blog, Mr. Crane, that I want to visit in Northern California along the way, and if anyone else is on the Portland-Palm Springs route please hit me up and let’s play 18.  I don’t want to dilly-dally for too long, but a couple of rounds on the road is a great way to break up a 20 hour drive.

Also, I just received confirmation that I have a Titleist fitting date on January 15 down in Oceanside.  Carlsbad/Oceanside is about 2 hours from the desert so will be a great day trip to see the guys in the fitting facility and have an updated club fitting.  As regular readers to this site know, I have been loving my Vokey Wedges and AP2 irons, but have struggled with the 3-wood and hybrid.  It will be extremely interesting to get their feedback on why I have been hitting it as I have.

Speaking of that, I have been working hard with my TrackMan lately to figure out why my misses are so askew.  The first thing that stood out when I had a driver session today was how far inside to out I have been swinging the club. A lot of people struggle with coming over the top in the golf swing, but for me, my big miss is when I come too far from the inside. I’m talking like 10-12 degrees from inside out.  When you do that and don’t have immaculate control of the club face you get a major two way miss.

Here is the link to today’s TrackMan session:  TrackMan driver and 7-iron link

One caveat:  My goal was to find club path and figure out how to better square up my path.  Also, I was working with limited-flight range balls hitting into the wind on a 47 degree day with 10mph winds directly into face.  So..  Don’t get hung up on distance or some-such.   The point of the session was to figure out how my club was going through the ball and work on that.

Through this session I learned a lot about what it felt like to get through square.  To me, it felt like I had to cut the stuffing out of the ball just to get the club path number to 0.  I was pretty shocked, but then again that’s golf.

I did have a major breakthrough once again while working through these swings.  I realized that what I needed to feel through my drive was a total different sensation in my entire body starting with my glutes.  I took this feeling out to the course and shot a 79 from the blue tees with a triple on the 12th hole at Riverside.  I still only hit 5 fairways, but that’s way more than I have been hitting lately and the ones I missed were when I lost my feel.

That brings me to the point that I want to investigate.  What is the best way to ingrain a feel into your game.  How do we forget something that we have done for so long and “know” the new aspect of our swing/game.  I want to know more about the science of learning and will be delving into this shortly.  Posts will come soon on what I find.

Cheers!

I’m very proud of her for working so hard and growing her food cart into a full-on bakery on Mississippi street.  It has, by no means, been an easy journey and she still has a lot to do, but the shop is up and running and they have had a good first week so far.  And, watching her work 15 hours a day every day has encouraged me to push myself harder both on the course and in the gym, which is a good thing as I have been eating my share of pie

Go check it out if you are in the area, it is located near the corner of Mississippi Street and Skidmore, across from Prost.  The menu:  http://thehoneypotbakery.com/menu/

It’s awesome where hard work can get you.  In golf, though, it’s not always just the hours that make a difference.  It is easy to head down the wrong direction as our proprioception throughout the swing is limited because of the duration of the event.  So, it is imperative to have a good coach show you the way.  For me, at the end of every Bruce Furman lesson I am hitting the ball like a champ.  Consistently shaping it how I want, hitting it far and better understanding all aspect of my golf swing.  It is merely my inability to consistently reproduce this new swing over the next few days on the range and course that is holding me back from a huge boost in my game.  That is learning; it is taking a great teacher’s lessons and implementing them in real life.  It doesn’t come quickly, but with an appropriate number of reinforcement swings it will surely become the new ingrained motion pattern.

This is why change is hard, because it can take someone telling you what to do over and over before it seeps into the new you.  You have to stick with it and trust the process and the only way to do that is to have faith in your teacher.  I believe in the direction that Bruce is taking my swing and am dedicating myself to making sure that I ingrain it completely.

It hasn’t been the easiest transition, either.  Over the past two months I have struggled with hitting the ball and my misses have been wider than I can remember at any point over the past two years.  A lot of this is because of the nature of the golf swing: It happens in the blink of an eye and to execute successfully a lot of movements need to align in perfect order during that split second.  And, a round takes place over a four hour stretch of time where it is very easy to have the mind wander or to lose focus for one swing.  When that swing is grooved it’s easier to produce a decent result during that focus lapse, but when you are working on change it is imperative to be fully engaged at every moment or reverting to an old habit comes quickly.

For me, the old habit has been a flip of the wrists.  My old swing was flat and came from the inside where I would get the club trapped behind my body and have to flip my wrists to time the club face correctly.  The new swing is more neutral and allows me to have a straighter wrist through impact.  On the course, when I don’t consciously think about not flipping my wrists that habit naturally happens and I snap hook the ball.  The longer I work with Bruce and the more time I invest in this new move the less frequently this happens.

Yesterday I had an “a-ha!” moment out on the range.  I finally, after about 9 weeks, understood what my new swing should feel like.  It was an absolutely wonderful moment and taking it to the course I actually hit 6 of the first 11 greens, including 2 of the 3 par 3s I played.  A HUGE improvement over what my game has been like over the past 6 months.

Up until that moment and those 14 holes yesterday my confidence over tee shots was approaching a career low.  My misses were so wide and I didn’t understand what I was doing right or wrong, it had been a hit and hope type scenario.  But, I do believe the tides are turning and the breakthrough that I have been working so hard for is about to happen.  I’ve transformed my swing quite a bit and although it may not be fully grooved for some more time I am at the stage where I now understand what it feels like to do it right and why my misses go the direction that they do.

I owe this knowledge to Bruce and everything he has done to teach me about the golf swing.  There is a ton more ground to cover, but having someone like him there to show me which direction to head is the only way to make this possible.  You have to have a good coach.  They will tell you what to do and then the ball is in your court as to whether you will implement their lessons or continue down the same path you were already on.  Again, faith in that coach is the only way to move forward.  If you are questioning their decisions and have doubts in their abilities then it is time to step away and find someone else.

To close, here are some images from the new club, starting with the hole that gave me the first birdie at Riverside, number 5:

A rather nice par 3:

Finally, a very tough second shot:

Regardless of what he did with the first 30 years of his life, the goal was to make the PGA Tour through testing out Dr. K Anders Ericsson’s theory that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an over-achiever in any specific field.  Golf seemed like the perfect vehicle for this test.  It was something he had never done before, it was a mix of physical and mental, it was objective and easy to track one’s progress as there is a world-wide handicapping system already established, and it was outside.  Everything about it felt right, so after 9 months of planning and 5 years of saving up money he started off on the journey.  (On a side note, he originally saved money to put himself through graduate school, but after enrolling and going to one class he realized it was not the right path.)

Dan spoke with Dr. Ericsson a handful of times in the beginning to figure out how to go about the daily routine.  Originally, he figured he could practice for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and get to the 10,000 hour mark in about 3.5 years, but after speaking with Ericsson about concentration levels and learning absorption, it was evident that this was quickly becoming a much longer project.  The important thing was not just to do it, but to do it right.  If he was going to go all-in and dedicate 6-plus years of his life to this he didn’t want to have any regrets.  A typical day, then, would be between 4-6 hours of time literally standing over a ball engaged in practice along with a handful of extra curricular activities such as working out, watching film, reading about swing theory, meditation, etc.  The days would be long, yet the hours counted towards the 10,000 would be few as only the time spent literally working with the ball would go towards the 10,000 hours.

Plan in place, he set out on a cold-as-hell April day in Portland, OR.  It was rainy, below 40 degrees with 20 mph winds and he wore jeans, running shoes and a bright yellow hooded rain jacket like you would see on a New England fishing pier.  He went to a municipal golf course and didn’t know what the policy was on using the putting green, so introduced himself to the man at the pro shop and told him about his goal as a golfer.  The man asked if he was a scratch player and Dan said he didn’t know what that means and that he hadn’t played golf before.  There were a few laughs and some jokes tossed around then the pro-shop man let him know that municipal courses are owned by the city and anyone could practice there.  This was good news as the first chapter of The Dan Plan was all about putting and if he could do that for free then that was a huge plus as it was going to be a stretch, to say the least, where finances were concerned.

Dan went to work putting away.  From one foot away from the hole.  For four hours.  Every ten putts he wrote down a number in a small Rhodia notebook.  The Plan was pretty simple, he would start from one foot away from the hole and stay there until he reached a specific proficiency, then move out to 3 feet and do the same, then 5, 10, 20, 40 and so on until he had reached a PGA Tour average from all of those distances.  He thought it would take a month or so to go through all of the putting distances, but it ended up being harder than he had imagined.  It only took one day to get to the 1-footers to a 100 percent level, but 3-footers were a different story.  On the first day he attempted 3-foot putts, his percentage made for the day was 63.73%.  After a month of doing just this distance, the percentage went up to 84.8% and then after another few weeks he was finally consistently in the 90+% range where he needed to be.  It was the same for 5-footers, although it took more time and the percentage plateaued around 80%, which is right at the level he needed to be.

This pattern continued until he finally got a second club, which was a pitching wedge he started using on August 29, 2010.  He couldn’t get enough!  After solely putting the ball for 4.5 months he finally could actually hit the thing off the ground.  It was a good day.  As it was for putting, so it would be for chipping.  He started on the fringe just a few feet off the putting green and learned how to knock the ball onto the green, got to his percentage goal from this distance and then moved back some, slowly working away from the green.   By February 2011 he was starting to “play” some golf from about 30 yards off of the putting green and the goal was to make everything in 3 strokes: hit it on and then two-putt.  He worked at it daily and continued the push away from the hole.  In March he had his first full swing lesson and then started practicing/playing from about 100 yards out.  The entire time, he was still spending the majority of his days working on all of the distances he had already worked through.  The new skill, or distance, he was trying to learn would be what he worked on for the first hour of the day and the rest of the day was reinforcing previously learned parts of the game.

He added clubs slowly through the year and on November 14, 2011 he hit a driver for the first time in his life.  It was a great feeling to have made it to a driver and to celebrate he went down to Bandon Dunes, Oregon to play 36 holes with Freakonomic’s author Steven Levitt.  Steven is a good player and they had a blast out there on the Oregon coast.  Dan shot a 94 on the first course and a 98 on the second, with the driver in the bag for the first time and actually still only having 8 clubs:  driver, 3-hybrid, 6-iron, 8-iron, pitching wedge, 52-degree wedge, 56-degree wedge and putter.  There were only eight clubs because he worked through these with the idea of filling in the rest of the clubs later on as there is not much of a difference between an 8-iron and a 7-iron as far as learning the swing is concerned.

On December 22, 2011 Dan finally got a full set of 14 clubs.  Since then, he has been learning what distances each club goes while focussing on his mechanics and always working hard on the short game as that’s the difference between a decent golfer and a great golfer, or so he’s come to realize.  He’s fallen for the sport completely and it has basically consumed his life.  If Dan’s not on the course, he’s thinking about the last round he had or whatever swing thought he may be trying to build into his swing.

Currently he is approaching the 5,500 hour mark and it has been about 4.5 years since hitting that first 1-foot putt.  Doing that math, that means he has about 4 years remaining.  The project grows as it ages, and not everything goes as planned, but he’s in it for the long haul and will be writing about his experiences while collecting data along the way.

Right now Dan’s handicap is 3.3. Judging by the stats provided by the USGA:

That puts Dan in the top 4.5% of the 26 millions golfers in the US.

]]> http://thedanplan.com/a-summary-of-the-dan-plan/feed/ 45 http://thedanplan.com/a-good-day-to-start/ http://thedanplan.com/a-good-day-to-start/#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:22:29 +0000 http://thedanplan.com/blog/?p=1957 Today feels like the first day of The Dan Plan.

Out of curiosity, as I typed that last sentence I was wondering how many days I have been on The Dan Plan, so I added it up and today is exactly the 1,000th day.  What a funny coincidence that is.  And what an interesting milestone.

That’s great!  One thousand days in the right direction.  3,714 training hours over that time span, which averages to 3 hours 43 minutes per day working solely on golf specific improvement.  That doesn’t take anything else into account, just the time that I have put in specifically and deliberately working with a golf club/ball.  I’m pretty proud of that number.  Considering it’s averaged over 1,000 days I think 3.714 hours a day is pretty darn good.  Dr. K Anders Ericsson says you maximize the amount you can learn/absorb with about 4 hours of deliberate practice a day.  I’m going at a good pace.

And, everything still seems so fresh and new.  Just today I was thinking that right now is a huge transition in the project and that I honestly feel that it all starts (for real) today.  There was a massive learning curve obtaining a minimum level of skills necessary to make it to the next level and I think that phase has completed.  That’s not to say that I am a pro, by any means, but that my knowledge of the skill set that I am acquiring has morphed from non-existent to competent over the past 999 days.  It has taken a lot of time and plenty of trials, efforts and failures, but I am ready to enter the next stage of the learning process.  Now is the time to take the broad ideas that I have learned to date and focus them into fine tuning my swing and game.

Today is a birth; a new beginning; the next chapter in The Dan Plan.

Also, the team that I have been working with is starting to really come together.  Today I went for a full physical assessment screening with PT Shawn Dailey to get a new set of baseline physical data that we are then going to improve upon with a rigorous workout schedule over the next 8 weeks.  What we did was similar to the TPI (Titleist Performance Institute) screening and there will be more on that, including my numbers, as soon as he processes everything and fine tunes the workouts.  The winter is a great time to build strength and I’m excited to be on the brink of an 7-8 week program with Shawn.

On the swing side, I have been working with Michael Pinkey at TrackMan to learn how to best use the awesome machine and to know which stats need the most attention first.  Along with the help of Dr. K Anders Ericsson, we are going to take one data point at a time and systematically build a better swing that we can then demonstrate the on-course affect of making such changes.

To start, I am working on improving my attack angle to club path ratio.  Currently, I am all over the board with these numbers.  The best ball strikers have roughly a 3:1 ratio with the wedge, 2:1 with mid-irons and 1:1 with the driver.  That means that for a wedge, por ejemplo, your attack angle could be -4.5 and club path 1.5.  Once you get this ratio down the physics of the swing will all be in line and it will produce an easily repeatable swing.

I spent 1,000 days building a swing and learning about the game.  The next 1,000 days will be dedicated to fine tuning and learning to win and today is the first day of that next chapter.

Does that seem like a long time?  What else could you do in 1,000 days?

Also, I am curious as to what people want to know more about in these blogs.  More golf talk? More about finances? More off-course stuff including my life with Mary and the kids?  Less of anything?  Let me know and I’d love to write about it.  The best focus group is the audience