Brendon of Be Better Golf has released a second clip of our afternoon together talking golf. In this one, we talk about the Mike Austin golf swing, which is where I got my start in golf in 2003. Austin, if you are familiar, is the man who hit a Guinness World Record 515-yard drive in the 1974 US National Senior Open with a 43.5" steel-shafted persimmon wood driver and balata ball. The swing is a big part of what led me to winning the Pinnacle Distance Challenge with a televised 381-yard drive.
Here's the clip with Brendon:
Speaking of Mike Austin, if you haven't ever seen my 2012 video about the Mike Austin swing, it's available on my YouTube channel here. I bootstrapped the video together with virtually a zero budget, but it's holding up quite well to the test of time and people in the comments really seem to love it.
Make sure to like and comment on both videos as well as subscribing to both our channels!
Recently, I've been going through a lot of my old laptop and backup files and reorganizing things. In doing so, I came across some old footage from 2003-2006 that I thought would be fun to share.
My college friend Jasper Jan and I had been documenting a lot of my journey in going from average length hitting 14-handicap golfer to professional golfer and long drive champion ever since I started that golf journey at age 27 in 2003.
Back then, we had tentatively called the film "Chasing the Dream".
Here is a teaser that Jasper had cut. The timestamp on the video file said March 22, 2006, although it may have been created earlier.
The sunset shot was recorded in 2003 when I first started. I believe it was on the driving range at Tierra Rejada Golf Club or another similar club nearby.
The voices you hear are Jasper interviewing the late Dan Shauger (died 2014), who was helping me with my game and who had introduced me to the late Mike Austin (died 2005).
Unfortunately, somehow nearly all of our old film footage got lost or misplaced and we subsequently couldn't finish the project.
In going through my files, I also found some old promotional footage that Jasper had put together. Of course, Chasing the Dream was supposed to be about me…but it was also supposed to be about baseball player RA Dickey too. Keep in mind that when we were filming this, RA had not yet made it back to the majors and little did we know that he would later go on to become a Cy Young Award winner.
The film concept was pretty cool. Obviously, it was about chasing dreams…not only for myself and RA, but Jasper too, as he was fairly new to the film industry and had the dream of being a Hollywood producer. However, Jasper also wanted to contrast the journey of an individual golfer dealing with poor circumstances, being broke and in debt, sleeping in cars and tents, practicing for hours rain or shine, etc…to a team sport like baseball where a lot of money was behind the team and it's players.
The promotional footage was intended for private promotional viewing purposes only. It was originally cut with "Foo Fighter - Best of You". However, in order to post it publicly on YouTube, I had to cut out the audio.