Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

Great article about testing the 10,000-hour theory put forth by Malcolm Gladwell's best selling book Outliers. You read the full article here: Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice? - St. Petersburg Times

Here are some of the highlights I took away from it:


"If I could become a professional golfer," he said one afternoon, "the world is literally open to any options for anybody."


"The secret to success isn't a secret. It's work."


"you can be a lot more than you are, that there's a lot more room for excellence than we typically admit to ourselves."


"He couldn't putt from 3 feet until he was good enough at putting from 1 foot. He couldn't putt from 5 feet until he was good enough putting from 3 feet. He's working away from the hole. He didn't get off the green for five months. A putter was the only club in his bag."


"Everybody hits bad shots," he said. "But it's how you recover from those bad shots that matters."


"I'm testing human potential."


"Basically," he told the people at the conference, "what I'm trying to do with this project is demonstrate how far you're able to go if you're willing to put in the time.


"One of the things I'm learning in this process is the ability to overcome frustrations, and that's a huge part of golf. That's a huge part of anything, I guess, right?"


"Success, he has found, is in the sincerity of the pursuit."