A year ago, Dan McLaughlin spent hours every day at the St. Petersburg, Fla., golf course Mangrove Bay, putting, putting, putting. He was not quite a year into what he calls the Dan Plan.
McLaughlin had decided at 30 to try to become a professional golfer on the PGA Tour. He had never played the game. He had almost no interest in the sport. What he really wanted to do was test the theory that anybody could become expert at anything with 10,000 hours of measured, deliberate practice.
The resident of Portland, Ore., quit his 9-to-5 commercial-photography job and started living, frugally, on about $100,000 of savings. He came to Florida because of the warmer winter weather.
