Mike Austin Was Really Onto Something... Not On Something

[Used to Be a 3]

I'm long-winded, but here we go... 

I know Mike Austin's a hot button, third rail-type topic on golf forums, but I think maybe the guy was on to something.  I used to be a pretty good golfer (peaked at 3.46, good, but not great) back in the days of persimmon drivers and short metal shafts by having a great iron game and a decent short game.  Distance was always my weak spot, Sunday best would be maybe 245, 250, averaged probably 225 - 230.  When you can't reach the par 5s in two ever, kind of limits you.  So I'd get on big 7,000 yd courses and struggle to break 85, which of course were the sort of courses you'd play in the high school state championships, state ams and such. Very frustrating! 

So I gave the game up in my early 30s two decades years ago, in part in frustration over not being able to get triple digits in clubhead speed, but my 15 year old son recently got the golf bug and I dragged the clubs out of the attic and we started playing once a week a couple months ago.  Picked up a new fancy titanium/graphite driver.  But the same old/same old.  Of course my game is quite erratic after the long layoff, but the thing that frustrates is not that, the infuriating thing is the lack of distance.  Hitting it farther due to the new tech, but still maybe 235 at best.  So I am checking on tips and come across a guy whose name was a distant memory to me from back in the day: Mike Austin.  I look at several videos of Austin and Dunaway and some pro guy out of the Netherlands who's evidently an advocate of this technique and start thinking about his admonition to treat your right hand at impact like you're skipping a stone, that snap at the bottom.  I could always skip the daylights out of a stone going way back, so I am out there on my homemade driving range (a plowed field that the son and I now use on our hobby farm that runs about 215 yards until you get to a tree line of pines about 60 to 80 feet high). In the past coupld=e months since I took the game back up I've been carrying just about to the base of those trees on the fly (the equivalent of maybe 230-240). 

So I'm thinking about this Austin thing and I decide to try it out for yucks, really skip that stone at the bottom.  At first the ball's going way right, then I'm hitting snap hooks left, etc. but it's GOING, I can hear the whoosh and the crack on the face.  Something I've never felt or heard before.  Then I slow the swing down a bit and suddenly, just like that, I'm hitting multiple drives, pretty much straight, that are carrying those pines 75' high that are 215 yards out.  The balls look flat out crazy going out there, like a couple regional long ball qualifiers I played with back in the day when I was good.  I swear I am not making this up, those were bona fide 300 yard drives from a 50-something who once upon a time 20, 30 years ago was a good but not great golfer whose game was hampered and college scholarships out of reach due in part to being a short knocker.

Perhaps just a full on fluke, perhaps I'll never replicate it, but I am much lamenting the few days of rain in the forecast where I live, because I can't wait to get to the course and see if this is for real or did I just dream it.  I have nothing to sell, I am not a cult member, I do not have a shrine to Mike Austin set up in my house.  But I tell you straight up: I had to have gained 20 mph in my clubhead speed LIKE THAT.

OK, let the hoots and catcalls begin.

[iacas]

I don't think that you need hoots or catcalls.

And, who knows whether what you felt you were doing is what you were actually doing. See this:

And, while what you felt or tried may have been something Mike Austin said, I don't know that it was unique to his "swing" either. Heck, Ben Hogan in the embedded topic link just above (in this post) could be said to be in a "skipping a stone" type position.

Film your swing and post it in the Member Swings forum. That's what I'd do next.

Good luck. Welcome back to the game, and welcome to TST.

[Used to Be a 3]

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

And, who knows whether what you felt you were doing is what you were actually doing. See this:

 

That's very possible, I may have been doing something completely different from what I thought.  I taught people informally sometimes many years ago and would tell them "Do this or that" and then they'd go and make their exact same swing right down to the millimeter and have the delusion they're employing your advice.  So I know what you're talking about.  

My son had his smart phone or whatever those things are out recording, but it ran out of juice right before I decided to do the "Austin thing" (I know, I know, likely story, but I swear I'd have popped that video up here if it had recorded).  I'll get something up next week when the weather becomes golf friendly and the son and I can get out to the course.  Whatever I was doing, it was leading to crazy (for me) results.  Since I took up the game again, I've played with a couple guys who used to play D1 and played some of what we used to call satellite tour events (don't know what you call them these days, I'm still re-learning the game) and I swear the ones I hit near the sweet spot were going farther than they hit.  Not saying I'm the second coming of Mike Dunaway, I'll never enter a long driving contest, they'd laugh at me, but for someone like who was always so short for a low single digit guy, it's a minor miracle to see that ball literally go 50 - 60 yards farther just like that when the only difference is trying to skip a stone at impact.   

[Used to Be a 3]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

And, while what you felt or tried may have been something Mike Austin said, I don't know that it was unique to his "swing" either. Heck, Ben Hogan in the embedded topic link just above (in this post) could be said to be in a "skipping a stone" type position.

Even though everyone's swing is unique, I doubt Austin did anything completely unique in his swing.  There's no one Big Secret, Hogan used to get mighty annoyed, so I've heard, when reporters would try to squeeze it out of him.  Near as I can tell he thought The Secret was outworking everyone.  

In the videos I've seen looks like Austin was a big, flexible, athletic guy (like the two guys I played with many years ago who were regional long drive qualifiers, both about 6'-2", one weighed about 250, the other was a former college football player).  More importantly, Austin lagged the living bejeebers out of the club (in spite of what he claimed to be doing), and really threw his hands at the ball, particularly the right, with perfect timing at impact (which is of course what he had to do to hit it at all with that wicked amount of lag).

That size, flexibility, freakish lag and fast hands were what made him such a beast.  There's his "secret".  I don't possess those traits, pretty much average build, but maybe in trying to think "skip a stone" I freed up my hands, started lagging them, whipping them through, and found what I'd been missing all those years ago, at east to a point.  Whether I can take it to the course is another matter entirely, and even if I can carry that kind of clubhead speed, it will be a long road to controlling it I suspect.  Even the very modest achievements I made 30 years ago came through hundreds of thousands of practice swings.

[Used to Be a 3]

UPDATE:

So the rain hadn't set in this morning yet and I went out to our makeshift range all ready to start my new life as a 50-something who can bomb it 280+ with regularity out there with the young bucks on the local university golf team.  Teed up about a dozen before heading off for work with eager anticipation, employed my new key "skip the stone" wrists.

Results? Half of the shots were towering slices that would've landed at least a fairway over and really didn't go that far because they took off straight up, most of the others were buzzkill hooks that came off the clubface like missiles, but then drove straight down into the ground 180 out like the were trying to drill for oil.  I hit one semi-straight shot out of the bunch, and it was one of those tinny "clunks" that misses the sweet spot by a mile, I probably almost missed the ball entirely.  Due to the poor contact, it landed just about where my normal drives land, at the base of those pine trees 215 yards out, would've rolled out to maybe 235--the usual.  So with this new "miracle swing" that gives me all that extra clubhead speed (which I could still feel a lot of this morning), I hit about 90% of my shots unplayable and one about where I usually hit a drive with my old pokey, plodding short knock swing.

Back to the drawing board.  Crap on Austin.  

[iacas]

https://thesandtrap.com/forums/forum/13-member-swings/

http://evolvr.com/

[Used to Be a 3]

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

https://thesandtrap.com/forums/forum/13-member-swings/

http://evolvr.com/

You got it, I'll get it up there--my actual swing, the plodding 90mph one, not the funky gadget swing that worked for a five glorious minutes yesterday evening.  Any help appreciated.  I'll also have the son post his, he started in October, so there's lots of work to be done--but he's got some talent like his momma, who played college golf.  Thanks, Iacas!

[Patch]

5 minutes ago, Used to Be a 3 said:

UPDATE:

So the rain hadn't set in this morning yet and I went out to our makeshift range all ready to start my new life as a 50-something who can bomb it 280+ with regularity out there with the young bucks on the local university golf team.  Teed up about a dozen before heading off for work with eager anticipation, employed my new key "skip the stone" wrists.

Results? Half of the shots were towering slices that would've landed at least a fairway over and really didn't go that far because they took off straight up, most of the others were buzzkill hooks that came off the clubface like missiles, but then drove straight down into the ground 180 out like the were trying to drill for oil.  I hit one semi-straight shot out of the bunch, and it was one of those tinny "clunks" that misses the sweet spot by a mile, I probably almost missed the ball entirely.  Due to the poor contact, it landed just about where my normal drives land, at the base of those pine trees 215 yards out, would've rolled out to maybe 235--the usual.  So with this new "miracle swing" that gives me all that extra clubhead speed (which I could still feel a lot of this morning), I hit about 90% of my shots unplayable and one about where I usually hit a drive with my old pokey, plodding short knock swing.

Back to the drawing board.  Crap on Austin.  

No, I don't think you are ready to go back to the drawing board as yet. Give it some more time. A quick dozen balls, without much warm up,  before work, doesn't mean much. 

Perhaps next time focus on impacting the ball with the club's sweet spot. The "clunk" you missed by a mile. You mentioned you had the faster swing speed, so now try to build on that aspect, with a little more club head control.  

[Lihu]

54 minutes ago, Used to Be a 3 said:

I'll get it up there--my actual swing, the plodding 90mph one, not the funky gadget swing that worked for a five glorious minutes yesterday evening. 

What did you do different between a 90mph swing and what was likely a 115mph swing that can allow you to bomb 280+ yard drives?

25mph is a pretty huge difference.

[Used to Be a 3]

1 hour ago, Lihu said:

What did you do different between a 90mph swing and what was likely a 115mph swing that can allow you to bomb 280+ yard drives?

25mph is a pretty huge difference.

I was trying to do the "skip the stone" movement that Mike Austin discussed in his videos, snap my right hand through at the moment of impact. 

Used to be an OK golfer back 20+ years ago when I played regularly, but distance was what always seemed to hold me back from knocking those last few strokes off the game and getting to scratch, could never reach 5s in two and 450 yeard par 4s I was swinging from the fairway with a 5 wood (which was disconcerting when the other guys in the group in the state championships were hitting 6 irons).  So yesterday evening I tried to do that and after some wild shots at first, I hit multiple ones right on the screws that just towered over my usual, 230-ish shots.  When I woke up this morning I couldn't come close to duplicating it, and assumed it was just a fluke where the timing was perfect.  We've all had times where everything came together perfectly and suddenly you hit the ball much farther.  Even back in the old days where I played regularly in the 80s and 90s and averaged 225,230, I could every once in a great while, without really trying, bomb the ball 270, 280 without hardpan or big winds, or would use my typical 7 iron for 145 and have the ball seem like it's still rising as it sails over.  So every once in a while things come together perfectly..  Maybe that's what happened last night, a fluke. 

Just now, Used to Be a 3 said:

Even back in the old days where I played regularly in the 80s and 90s 

I meant 1980s and 1990s.