In Search of the Greatest Golf Swing: Chasing the Legend of Mike Austin, the Man Who Launched the World's Longest Drive, and Taught Me to Hit Like

I currently am a single digit player from New Orleans and have studied the game for about 35 years. I once had a collection of over 500 golf related books. Phil Reed's book on Mike Austin was one of the top 3 books I've ever read on the game. In fact I've re-read it several times over and not just for the golf parts. Mike's struggle with advancing age and illness and the courage and philosphy of life that he displayed is a lesson to all of us and has given me a different outlook on life in light of my own recent tragedies (home lost in hurricane Katrina). We have truly lost a great man. What made Phil's book on Mike so extraordinary - in all my years of playing, reading about, and studying the game I've never read a book quite like it. Trust me on this - in the past 10-15 years there hasn't been much original writing on golf - pretty sad for a game that (other than baseball) probably has the best literary tradition of all sports. The instruction books have been the worst of the lot.

This book "In Search Of the Greatest Golf Swing" is inspiring to anyone that has played golf. It is interesting, heartfelt, insightful and most of all "enjoyable." This book makes you wish you were around to meet Mike Austin and see what he accomplished on the golf course. Phil Reed has put more than words into this book and I want to express my thanks to him for a truly great endeavor. Joe DiPietro, Hudson, NH

This book is a delight on such a number of levels it is difficult to decide where to place the emphasis. It really should be in the library of every golfer, at least those that read more than simply golf instruction manuals, although this book is a little bit of that too, which I will get to. It is first, a fascinating short bio about Mike Austin, a professional tour player in the 1930's, 40's, 50's, and later, who possessed one of the more incredible swings in golfing annals. What spices the book though, is that Austin was also truly bigger than life. Some of the stories about him are enough to have caused some doubt even in the author, Phil Reed's, mind, that is until he verified many of them. In his time Austin hung out with celebrities (Errol Flynn among others), was a boxer, an actor, a linguist, and had a doctorate in kinesiology and so on. The stories about him are legend and the book is richly supplied with them. Austin could hit the ball 350 yards in his 60's and 70's. He actually hit it 515 yards at age 64, and it was in a sanctioned PGA tournament, not a long drive competition, and not with the modern technology that the pros use today. This distance is about 200 yards father than Tiger Woods averages. One of several interesting characters in the book is a fellow by the name of Danny Shauger. Danny is a teaching professional in the Studio City area of LA, and was (is) more or less Austin's protégé. He worked with Austin for years parsing out his swing and reducing it to a description of its basic parts that an average golfer could understand, if he worked on it. Danny, I was to personally find out, is a bit of a Mike Austin himself, but that is another story. On yet another level, Phil Reed's book is a memoir of sorts about the author's occasional feelings of inferiority around other certain types of guys. You know the type, guys who are natural athletes or otherwise bigger than life. This is an admission that many men could make,most probably, but very few do and I admire Reed for his courage. Anyway, by happy coincidence I picked Reed's book up this summer while browsing a book store for some reading to take on a vacation I badly needed but hadn't yet planned in any detail. I say happy coincidence, because at that point I had never even heard of Austin, described in the book as a generally irascible Scotsman. Austin by the way is 94 now, and although suffering from the debilitation of a stroke still occasionally teaches, albeit from an armchair. He also apparently remains, even in old age, a bit angry and a lot outspoken, but apparently a genius in general, and of the golf swing in particular. A week or so after I first read Reed's book, I called Danny Shauger on an impulse to see if he could work with me, at least on the rudiments of Austin's swing, if I flew out to LA. As I said, I needed a vacation anyway. Danny had the time and so off I went, with no small amount of skepticism about what I would find. What I found w

I met Phil Reed at Mike Austins home about 18 months ago, Mike said that he was writing his biography. And since Mike had been my Dear friend and golf guru for many years, I had heard many stories of his exploits. I wrote most of them off to bluster, Phil being a serious writer set about finding out if the stories were true and I was happy to hear that they were. Phil wanted to find out if there really was a more powerful and scientifically more correct way to hit the ball. He set out in earnest on this quest, he can show you the bruises to prove it. Then one day Mike had a bad fall, breaking his hip, that nearly claimed his life and also kind of short circuited Phils learning of the swing and thus the finish of the book, Since I am a golf instructor I took over Phils tutelage from the stricken master, Phil responded beautifully and was thus able to write first hand about Mike the man and the wonderful swing that he had invented, Mike Austin is the Leonardo Da Vinci of the golf swing. If Chivas Irons ever walked the Earth he was called Mike by his friends. His book is a delightful read, it shows the true Mike Austin as only his closest friends know him. And you get to meet a mean old curmudgeon with a heart of gold. If you only read 1 golf book this year read this one, you will never forget it. Dan Shauger www.aperfectswing.com