The Mike Austin Method

Re: The Mike Austin Method

I investigated this a while back and came to these conclusions:

1. It is a legit swing method and does what it says, increase your distance.

2. The people that teach this method argue like a bunch of little children about who is teaching the "real" Austin swing. Consequently, the use of the swing method's exposure has been stunted.

3. It is a "push" swing method. Your right arm (for right handers) is very active and pushes/slings the clubhead.

4. It relies a lot on upper body strength. And uses the upper body in the swing.

5. Those that teach the method claim it will increase your accuracy, but (imho) it will do the opposite. You may get more distance, but you will miss more fairways.

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat.

Re: The Mike Austin Method

Personally, I can't stand "swing methods". They are like clothing fads; everyone raves about them when they are new and think they are horrible in no time.

You need to develop your own swing that centers around what your body does naturally. No two swing are or ever should be exactly alike. What constitutes a great golf swing is how well someone implements the fundamentals into what his/her body naturally does.

Re: The Mike Austin Method

A couple years ago I learned the Austin method from the original book/DVD (How to Kill the Ball) and liked it a lot....so I FLEW out to meet and get two lessons from Dan Shauger.

Despite my concerns, he had me repeat a swing which seemed completely un natural (right knee in front of my left elbow at impact)....After some practice, I was so sore I could not sleep that night...excruciating pain.

Turned out Dan's advice caused me to tear my rotator cuff and sidelined me the remainder of the season....and cost me thousands of dollars in medical expenses.

If you wanna hit the ball further than anyone on the planet...instead of going to Dan's driving range...drive about 5 miles over to Angeles National and tell Pat Dempsey that Rory sent ya to him to "learn ya to hit far".

Re: The Mike Austin Method

Mike was an amazing character and brilliant teacher.
I had the good fortune of working with him for years. His methods resulted in effortless power and accuracy.
Correctly taught, the concept was proper use of the 12 levers with no stress.
There's been so much incorrect info I am putting out detailed info at www.mentoredbythelegend.com
Here's an example of my swing under his watchful eye:

Digging up this thread, because I wanted to know if you tried this method.

I just took a book out of the library by Philip Reed "In Search of the Greatest Golf Swing". It is very entertaining reading, and brings out quite a few good points about golf swings.

While reading it, I could not help but to think back two years ago when (started learning golf) that is the method my body used naturally. All the coaches tried to fix it, and I ended up with a shoulder injury several months ago. This was because I tried to use the more PGA method and needed to torque my shoulder and elbow to do a full swing.

Now, I am using the PGA taught method and getting about 240 yards drive, and finally can hit my irons again. Not really far, but good enough. My rotation is very limited to avoid repeating injury.

However, out of curiosity, I tried the counter rotating forearm turn that Dan taught to Phil Reed and nailed a drive against the a fence 250 yards at the back of the driving range. I tried this a couple times with roughly the same results, I stopped because I thought I caved in my driver head. It made a really loud ear piercing sound as I hit a range ball. It was doing this earlier with normal swings at another range, but I was only hitting 240 yard drives at the time. So, I stopped. Checked it out again, no problems with the driver.

I plan to try it out this afternoon on the course.

Here is my question, is the counter rotating (non-baseball) forearm turn not taught because of potential injury? It seems like there is less stress on my wrists, and I can take it back a whole lot longer (though I don't need to do so). However, I don't know enough about human anatomy to determine this myself.

Mike Austin has a few followers that don't teach the swing exactly in the same way.

 

Recently Jaacob Bowden has put a long video on youtube about his vision of the Mike Austin swing (caveat: I don't know much about the Mike Austin swing and I have only looked at the first few minutes of the video)