Many experts believe that an athlete needs at least 10 years and at least 10,000 hours of training to reach the elite level. Depending on the sport, this can take up to 30 years or 30,000 hours. In golf in particular, a lot of training is necessary to reach the personal top level. Most players need at least 20 years or around 20,000 hours of practice to win the first tournament on the PGA Tour or web.com Tour.
Time required to develop expertise
If you want to win one of the four major golf championships, the average is 32 years and 143 days. The last British Open winner Shane Lowry is a perfect example. He started playing when he was very young and it took almost 30 years to win his first major. This important information is essential for the player and also for the parents to understand that golf takes a lot of time to play at the highest level.
Two sports were identified there:
Early specialization
These are sports in which children have to perform at an early age in order to survive at the highest level, such as gymnastics, skating, diving and sprinting.
Late specialization
These include sports in which most professional athletes improve their skills for more than 20 years before reaching the highest level, such as golf, baseball, soccer, tennis, marathon.
Herbert A. Simon won the Nobel Prize in 1976. Simon was interested in the role of knowledge in expertise.
He said it took around 10 years of experience to become an expert, and he and his colleagues estimated that expertise was the result of learning about 50,000 pieces of information.
Specialization
If a child who wants to play golf is trained too early with the sports philosophy of specialization, this can mean the following for the child:
- physical imbalances
- injuries from overuse
- early burnout
- poor development of basic movement skills
We recommend a wide range of activities and other sports that are brought to the child between the ages of 6 and 12 years.
At the ages of 13 to 15 years, specialization should slowly begin and the number of different sports should be reduced. From the age of 16, you should primarily devote yourself intensively to a sport. There are many other sports that help develop the game of golf, such as: surfing, ice hockey, tennis, baseball, etc.
It is important that both the player and the parents understand that golfing takes a long time to reach a high level. There is enough time to develop the basic elements such as movement skills and sports skills to become an excellent player in the future.
