Golf

SOMETIMES you wake up with a bright idea and just go with it.

Usually however, a half-baked notion doesn’t require you to quit your job, empty your bank account and play golf for 30 hours a week, for the next six years.

Meet Dan McLaughlin. The 30-year-old is currently 12 months into a programme he calls The Dan Plan. You’re gonna like this guy.

On April 5, 2010, he packed away his camera, quit his job as commercial photographer and walked out of the dark room into the light.

So began what they might call in his trendy, left-leaning hometown of Portland: ‘a journey’.

McLaughlin (he says he’s a mix of Irish and Scottish but possibly some Welsh too) bought a set of clubs, headed for the nearest public course and clocked hour one in a what he hopes will be a 10,000 hour trek to the pros. The complete novice has set himself the goal of winning a PGA Tour card by the end of the 30-hour per week process.

The 10k hour mark is not one he plucked from his golf bag. The writer Malcolm Gladwell — we’ve spoken about him here before — has made the theory somewhat famous. The New Yorker magazine journalist quotes the young Beatles honing their craft in Hamburg, Beethoven writing middling symphonies as a kid, young Europeans landing in downtown Manhattan with years of practical business experience tucked in their back pocket and ultimately retiring to a penthouse in midtown years later.

But Gladwell is merely the prism with which many of us first viewed the theory that applies to sport so powerfully. The man who first shone a light on it was the impressively-titled Dr K Anders Ericsson. He’s the professor of Psychology at Florida State University.

“Elite performers engage in ‘deliberate practice’ — an effort-ful activity designed to improve target performance,” he wrote with an academic’s love of jargon. But strip it away and he could have been thinking about Joe Canning volleying a sliotar off a gable-end wall, David Beckham curling football after football over a cardboard silhouette wall or Tiger Woods pitching buckets of Titleists as the sun dipped on another day.

When Dan explained the laughably ambitious goal he’d set himself — to become a PGA pro, having never held a putter — Ericsson said with a smile: “I think you’re the right astronaut for this mission.”

He sure sounds it when he picks up the phone to me this week, having just come in from his morning session.

“It’s an experiment to test how far you can go purely with hard work,” he says in explanation. “It’s a way to tell whether the idea of talent exists. For me I really wanted to see how much potential was in one average person. And I do see myself as an average person.”

For the record, he says he has no previous experience as a competitive athlete, nor is he in “particularly good physical condition”.

McLaughlin comes in under average height and weight, had never played a full 18 holes of golf before this idea occurred to him, and had only been to a driving range a handful of times. Lefty or righty? He didn’t know that either.

“What I wanted to do was put all my energies into the 10,000 hours into one field and see how far we can go,” he continues. “And I wanted to do it in my 30s because most of the research is in people who train from 10 to 20 or whatever. So it’s during the teenage years and the brain, we know, is developing and it’s somewhat easier to learn and absorb.”

But why pick golf? Isn’t there easier ways to make a point?

“For a number of reasons. One was pretty basic: being outdoors is very appealing to me. I spent plenty of time working inside and wanted something outside. I also wanted to do something that was basically nearly impossible. There’s a chance of success but it’s minute. There’s only a couple of hundred PGA tour cards in the world.

“If I had chosen to be a doctor or an architect it would still be a real challenge and a feat but there’s thousands of them. Its not quite as compelling as something where there’s a really really slim chance of it working out.”

Logging in 30-plus hours a week, he will hit the 10,000 hour milestone by November 2015 he reckons. At that stage the Dan Plan stipulates he will win amateur events and obtain his PGA Tour card.

“Judging by the progress of the time I put in over the past year, its gonna take six years but at the same time I only putted in the first five months. So I think the time will be a greater from here on.”

Time flies when you’re having fun: McLaughlin says he’s falling ‘more and more in love with the game every week”. We agree to meet up at the Ryder Cup in a half a dozen years or so; though he’s working harder than I to get into the press room. I put down the phone and promise myself I’ll swing a club myself this weekend.

* Keep track on his progress at

- Contact: adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, April 22, 2011

I would have guessed that green fees at Druid Glen were expensive. But €35 billion? Those fairways must be like snooker-table felt.

But… Brian Cowen says he didn’t actually talk about Anglo Irish Bank, the economy or anything else other than whether to pitch or putt when he and Sean FitzPatrick struck off into the picturesque Wicklow countryside on a dewy July morning in 2008.

Can you imagine that two-ball though? The revelation of the cosy relationship between our Taoiseach and the former chief of the most toxic of banks came to light this week in the newly published book The Fitzpatrick Tapes, by Sunday Times journalists Brian Carey and Tom Lyons.

It fails to tell us, however, whether or not Mr Cowen treated his playing party to the now infamous Philip Walton impression, that which caused such mirth in a raucous Galway hotel bar, mere hours before a doomed Morning Ireland interview.

The Taoiseach would not be a bad golfer if he could impersonate Walton’s short game though, it’s true.

I invited the Taoiseach out for a round of golf at around the same time that he and Seanie were comparing elliptical swings with the salty bay air in their nostrils and the shadow of the Dublin mountains at their feet.

Scratching around for column ideas I asked the government press people if I could carry the Taoiseach’s clubs around a course of his choosing, interviewing him about sport as we went.

Unsurprisingly, the press people came back with a terse, sniffy reply, which explained slowly — as if to a child — that the prime minster of the country could hardly afford the time from his crammed schedule to play pitch and putt with the likes of me. Fair enough. (One impressively-active TD offered to take me sea kayaking however, while Mary McAleese wasn’t interested in me spending All-Ireland final day in her presence, for some reason.)

Like most, this golf-with-the-boss idea wasn’t an original. In the 1990s, the then Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly shot 18 holes with his Taoiseach: Bill Clinton. “Golf is like bicycle shorts,” wrote Reilly, “It reveals a lot about people. And presidents. What would it reveal about Clinton?”

Well, he cheated. Anyone who ever came up against the Little Rock vote-getting machine will shrug their shoulders at that one. No big deal. And Reilly liked him anyway.

“He has a serviceable swing, though maybe he’s a little too upright and a little too much on his toes, which causes him to hit the ball high and right. But his iron game, even with his long irons, is terrific. Like most guys, he is driven by the hope that deep inside him lives a single digit who is just waiting for the shankless wedge to be invented. He is the kind of guy who looks in everybody else’s bag and says, “Mind if I swing this?”

Many of our Taoisigh have tugged on the revealing bicycle shorts of sport, of course, though none have shown their golf scorecards.

Éamon de Valera — the Rob Kearney of his day — played full-back for Rockwell College in a Munster Senior Schools Cup final. And despite sitting, blindly, through dozens of All-Ireland finals as Taoiseach and then President in later life, it was an oval ball that beat in his breast.

Sean Lemass played soccer amongst other games and kept an ear out for the results of Cardiff City FC every Saturday afternoon; a school friend, Tom Farquharson, went on to keep goal for the Bluebirds.

In February 1971, while watching Ireland lose 6-9 to England at Lansdowne Road, Lemass became unwell. He was rushed to hospital and later told by his doctor that one of his lungs was about to collapse. He died the following May.

Jack Lynch was a sporting great of course, winning many an All-Ireland.

Then there’s Charlie. The Boss beat Stephen Roche up Mont Ventoux in 1987. He did, actually, join the Dubliner — who was on his way to an historic triple crown — on the Champs Elysees podium to celebrate a Tour de France win for Ireland.

And, of course, after the hosts had dumped the Boys in Green out of Italia ‘90, CJ materialised inside the dressingroom door, deep in Rome’s Olympic Stadium.

Tony Cascarino walked to the showers thinking he’d met someone who owned a tea shop after mishearing Andy Townsend’s explanation of who exactly the interloper was. Haughey didn’t notice.

Garrett and Bruton were rugby men, if at all. And then there was Bertie. Our last Taoiseach made more money on the horses than Channel 4, left Manchester with more sterling than the Manchester City squad on a Europa League trip and saw more Dublin football games than Hill 16. What a guy. He never swung a golf club though in fairness.

If he did, we may have learned a little about his character — and given him a mulligan on the whole economy thing. As Reilly concluded after his afternoon swinging a club in the presence of the Secret Service: “Mr President played very well. He had a 41 on the front and had every chance to break 80 for the first time when he sank a 25-footer on the par-5 10th for a birdie. But he three-putted the next two holes and never quite pardoned himself. ‘Those two three-putts broke my spirit,’ he said forlornly. In the end he shot 82, hitting eight fairways and nine greens, with 32 putts and two sandies. It was good enough to beat me by two strokes, which I feel very patriotic about. I feel it’s every citizen’s duty to lose to his president by two shots.”

adrianjrussell@gmail.com; Twitter: @adrianrussell

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, January 14, 2011

Monty is cleaning his spikes in anticipation of next month’s action at Celtic Manor while the Americans are checking their passports are valid and changing their money to Euros.

They say horse racing is the sport that sees kings and paupers mix; but the Ryder Cup allows cub reporter and the world’s most influential to walk together.

At the last Europe vs America extravaganza held on these islands, in 2006, I was pretty new in the job. Sent to the K Club in Straffan, Co Kildare, I envisioned rubbing blazered-shoulders with sport’s great and good by the roaring comfortable fire, after a hard day over a hot Remington typewriter.

Perhaps I’d quaff flutes of chilled champagne while Sam Torrance tells one of his expertly-timed and rehearsed stories about late night hi-jinks with Payne Stewart (“And then he said, no that’s not what I meant by practicing my swing!”).

Maybe I’d witness sporting history unroll at my feet – I’d obviously have a wonderful viewing position for the entirety of the weekend, right? – before filing a few hundred words which would win a shelf-creaking number of awards and form the basis of a best-selling and pension-securing book.

Not quite – but it was still pretty good.

After checking in at the media centre at the same time as Gary Lineker, I resisted the urge to tell him his jokes on Match of the Day usually ruin my weekend as he seemed to be enjoying the goodie bag too much. I later approached Boris Becker while he ate a banana (just like when, as a lad, I watched him at Wimbledon!) and asked if I could grab a few minutes for a quick chat. He refused my humble request with extreme prejudice. Though, in fairness to the German – a hero of mine really – he did approach me later on and said ask away. He is taller than expected and wears nice shoes, FYI.

As we have no paper on a Sunday, I didn’t have a whole lot to do on the Saturday afternoon apart from be there and witness the action.

After ignoring a steward’s request to not walk across a pathway, I accidentally stood on Zach Johnson and Stewart Cink’s stray ball during the foursomes (“That dude just stood on the ball, dude” I heard one dude say, before I slipped back into the crowd) I was stopped by another steward and dutifully halted.

As we waited in the rain in a field in Kildare, a buggy rolled past with the greatest basketball player that ever lived hanging jauntily off the back. Michael Jordan, chomping on a wet cigar, reciprocated when I gushingly lurched forward for a high five, and was happy to give me a quote. I’d left my professionalism at the first tee box.

However, the following the day it was to get better. As Ian Woosnam’s Europe humbled the stars of the US on the way to a record equalling Ryder Cup win, I walked inside the velvet rope for the first time. Each media organisation was given its share of bibs – the colourful vests with ‘media’ emblazoned across the front and back, as well as an unique number in case someone stands on a ball – and on the final day I was entrusted to leave the cosy media centre and spoil a good walk.

Following Darren Clarke’s progress on his most emotional of rounds – having just returned after the death of his wife Heather – I was very much part of the elite (Ray Houghton asked me what was happening ahead!).

Later as I stood behind the tee box at the 15th, I think, watching Clarke tee off, it started to rain heavily. I shuffled back a few paces under some trees for shelter. After Clarke drove his ball on, sensing I was a little too close for someone’s comfort, I glanced quickly at the gentleman behind me.

After a comedy double-take I realised it was former US president, Bill Clinton. As I stared, he reached out his hand to me for a quick grip-and-grin before his security guys drove forward and his whole party strode on.

As they marched towards the 16th, with the tournament’s emotional denouement about to unfold, I realised that as well as a couple of White House secret service men, Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly was bounding up the course with his former president.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. The pair played a round of golf together in 1995 which Reilly wrote a famous SI piece about. “He’s the sort of guy who keeps a tee in his mouth as he walks and yes, putts with his glove on and leans on your shoulder as you pencil in the scores, writhing or celebrating depending on how the match is going.

‘That’s my pards!” he’d say when I hit a good shot and ‘I gotcha, Partner,’ when I didn’t,” Reilly wrote, “He was charming and warm and amazingly normal.”

It was just a handshake and a smile as we all sheltered a moment from the rain. But I’d say the same.

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, September 24, 2010