I had the same thought regarding that article, and I think it's worth emphasizing that even the bowler in the GQ article risked being an "expert beginner" but m

I had the same thought regarding that article, and I think it's worth emphasizing that even the bowler in the GQ article risked being an "expert beginner" but managed to escape the trap: "As such, Advanced Beginners can break one of two ways: they can move to Competent and start to grasp the big picture and their place in it, or they can ‘graduate’ to Expert Beginner by assuming that they’ve graduated to Expert." ...and then from the OP: > When Belmonte first joined the PBA, he reveled in his power game: Let’s break some pins, he remembers thinking. But as he watched some of the game’s finest up close, he realized something: “These guys had the ability to make the ball dance. They could make the ball dance to any tune the lane was asking for. And I couldn’t do that.” > He worked to decrease his rev rate, his velocity, the number of moving parts to his game. And he slowed his approach, eliminating a “kangaroo hop” designed to generate power, and delivering the ball from a position of greater stability and balance. “I noticed my ball was still striking with 20 percent less revolutions, and my ball was still sending messengers. But I was more consistently in the pocket. And I realized, I don’t need to break a pin every round.” So despite the "expert beginner" article using the author's own bowling experience as an anecdote of what not to do, it's not trying to say you should always follow the crowd and blindly trust the prevailing wisdom; rather, it's saying that you should seek to understand your faults and grasp the bigger picture, and not automatically assume that minor expertise necessarily implies major expertise.