Post by Richie3Jack on Dec 12, 2013 10:17:10 GMT -5
I never heard of Mike Austin until I got back into the game after an 8-year layoff (2009). I was a bit surprised to see how many of his swing proponents are out there. I used to talk to an instructor at Eastwood that was a Mike Austin proponent because he found out that I knew TGM and was working with darome. I didn’t really care for a lot of the things I had heard, but was later told that he learned from Dan Shauger and there are Austin proponents that disagree with Shauger’s teaching and say it’s not in accordance to Austin’s actual teaching.
When I think of Austin’s teaching, I tend to harken back to my junior and collegiate days. I had absolutely zero direction when it came to my game and potential career. I took 2 lessons before I was 19 years old and one of them was when I first started; from an amateur who owned the course I grew up playing for $10.
There have been scientists researching the game for the past 100 years. All of them have claimed that they were right. More often than not, they got some things right and some things dead wrong. I suspect it will always be that way. But back when I grew up playing…in the 80’s and 90’s…an instructor like Austin would have been considered ‘scientific.’ While I disagree with some of Austin’s notions (particularly that you ‘shift the weight backwards if you move the butt of the club more forward in the downswing’) I think that his instruction was better than most back in the day and it sure would have beaten my ‘instruction’ of reading worthless ‘tips’ in the golf magazines.
As for his swing, we know one thing about Austin….power. I’ve never seen Austin hit it in person. My initial thoughts of his swing is that if he is as long as they say he was, it was very effortless:
Here are some sequences of Austin’s swing:
The two things I notice in Austin’s swing was that he had a lot of secondary axis tilt and he moved his head off the ball quite a bit. From hearing Austin talk, I question if he ever came across Homer Kelley’s work because some of the stuff he discussed eschewed some of the things that Kelley wrote and talked about. Since Kelley wasn’t a professional, his thoughts were often disregarded with disdain. Austin seemed to dislike the idea of ‘sustaining the lag’ and with his head moving clearly off the ball, that also went against Kelley’s theory on the ‘tripod pivot.’
I’ll try to not get too much into the head argument because I’m more concerned about the severe secondary axis tilt.
But, the ‘steady head’ I believe is a good principle to employ if you understand the geometry and the neurology behind it. However, its definition of what is a ‘steady head’ is a bit more difficult. I think it’s more about keeping the head in roughly the same position. If I draw a circle around a golfer’s head from the caddy view at p1, the head should just about stay in that circle at p4. It may raise or dip slightly and it can certainly swivel, but a ‘steady head’ will not move outside that circle. In Austin’s case, he clearly does not have a steady head. One can still play good golf from there. Bubba Watson does. And I think that extra range of motion allowed Austin and now Bubba to generate more power. I question how accurate and precise Austin was as Bubba isn’t exactly accurate and precise either. The main problem is that for every Bubba or Austin that can move their head a lot, there are probably 100 golfers that can’t hit it worth a lick moving their head well off the ball.
Now, to the secondary axis tilt. What I see is it starts to arrive from p4 to about p5.5 (from the caddy view sequence). The big thing is to look at Austin’s hip level. His left hip gets higher than his right hip. Generally the good ballstrikers tend to level out their hips here. Here’s a look at Nicklaus at p5
While it’s not at the same point as Austin’s swing, the hips are level and perhaps the left hip a touch lower than the right hip. Here’s Mac showing something similar as well:
And if you look at the ‘lever assembly’ for Austin at p5.5 (left arm, right arm and the club) it just looks like Austin simply ‘cranked downward’ from p4 to p5.5 which would cause that excessive secondary axis tilt.
I think this is also caused by his right shoulder stalling from p6 to p7.8. Austin had a very closed shoulders from p4 to p7 and thus they turned vertically.
I tend to question how much club head speed that Austin could really generate with this swing. With that much secondary axis tilt, I would imagine it would be difficult to apply a lot of ground pressure and shift the center of pressure towards the left foot. I would imagine that he probably had very strong hands, forearms, fingers and good hamstrings if he was generating a lot of speed. That is why I tend to believe that Austin likely gained a lot of distance from hitting the driver with a very upward attack angle which was hard to do with the old persimmon drivers.
In the end, Austin’s swing and ability after looking at these swing sequences leaves me with more questions than answers.
3JACK
When I think of Austin’s teaching, I tend to harken back to my junior and collegiate days. I had absolutely zero direction when it came to my game and potential career. I took 2 lessons before I was 19 years old and one of them was when I first started; from an amateur who owned the course I grew up playing for $10.
There have been scientists researching the game for the past 100 years. All of them have claimed that they were right. More often than not, they got some things right and some things dead wrong. I suspect it will always be that way. But back when I grew up playing…in the 80’s and 90’s…an instructor like Austin would have been considered ‘scientific.’ While I disagree with some of Austin’s notions (particularly that you ‘shift the weight backwards if you move the butt of the club more forward in the downswing’) I think that his instruction was better than most back in the day and it sure would have beaten my ‘instruction’ of reading worthless ‘tips’ in the golf magazines.
As for his swing, we know one thing about Austin….power. I’ve never seen Austin hit it in person. My initial thoughts of his swing is that if he is as long as they say he was, it was very effortless:
Here are some sequences of Austin’s swing:
The two things I notice in Austin’s swing was that he had a lot of secondary axis tilt and he moved his head off the ball quite a bit. From hearing Austin talk, I question if he ever came across Homer Kelley’s work because some of the stuff he discussed eschewed some of the things that Kelley wrote and talked about. Since Kelley wasn’t a professional, his thoughts were often disregarded with disdain. Austin seemed to dislike the idea of ‘sustaining the lag’ and with his head moving clearly off the ball, that also went against Kelley’s theory on the ‘tripod pivot.’
I’ll try to not get too much into the head argument because I’m more concerned about the severe secondary axis tilt.
But, the ‘steady head’ I believe is a good principle to employ if you understand the geometry and the neurology behind it. However, its definition of what is a ‘steady head’ is a bit more difficult. I think it’s more about keeping the head in roughly the same position. If I draw a circle around a golfer’s head from the caddy view at p1, the head should just about stay in that circle at p4. It may raise or dip slightly and it can certainly swivel, but a ‘steady head’ will not move outside that circle. In Austin’s case, he clearly does not have a steady head. One can still play good golf from there. Bubba Watson does. And I think that extra range of motion allowed Austin and now Bubba to generate more power. I question how accurate and precise Austin was as Bubba isn’t exactly accurate and precise either. The main problem is that for every Bubba or Austin that can move their head a lot, there are probably 100 golfers that can’t hit it worth a lick moving their head well off the ball.
Now, to the secondary axis tilt. What I see is it starts to arrive from p4 to about p5.5 (from the caddy view sequence). The big thing is to look at Austin’s hip level. His left hip gets higher than his right hip. Generally the good ballstrikers tend to level out their hips here. Here’s a look at Nicklaus at p5
While it’s not at the same point as Austin’s swing, the hips are level and perhaps the left hip a touch lower than the right hip. Here’s Mac showing something similar as well:
And if you look at the ‘lever assembly’ for Austin at p5.5 (left arm, right arm and the club) it just looks like Austin simply ‘cranked downward’ from p4 to p5.5 which would cause that excessive secondary axis tilt.
I think this is also caused by his right shoulder stalling from p6 to p7.8. Austin had a very closed shoulders from p4 to p7 and thus they turned vertically.
I tend to question how much club head speed that Austin could really generate with this swing. With that much secondary axis tilt, I would imagine it would be difficult to apply a lot of ground pressure and shift the center of pressure towards the left foot. I would imagine that he probably had very strong hands, forearms, fingers and good hamstrings if he was generating a lot of speed. That is why I tend to believe that Austin likely gained a lot of distance from hitting the driver with a very upward attack angle which was hard to do with the old persimmon drivers.
In the end, Austin’s swing and ability after looking at these swing sequences leaves me with more questions than answers.
3JACK
