Book Private Golf Lessons with Coach Austin

I started playing golf when I was five and played 10-15 rounds a year then competed for a few years in high school. In college I played ultimate frisbee for a top-20 team which ended up drastically improving my fitness but resulted in a severe injury in my right hip requiring surgery. My ability to run and cut was impacted so after recovering I started looking for other ways to scratch my itch to play a sport at a high level.

I ended up rediscovering golf in September of 2023 and started hitting about 1,200 balls a week. I maintained that practice pace for six months which included video analysis after every session and a lot of online learning and self-coaching. My swing improved drastically and a few of my friends asked for coaching, then began teaching lessons to other golfers in my area.

Fast forward to today where I've taught over a hundred paid lessons with an average rating of 4.97 stars. I'm still a voracious practicer and plan on seeing how good I can get as a player with an ambitious goal to go to Q School in 2025 and compete on the Korn Ferry Tour.

I know the fundamentals of the golf swing and also understand that there's multiple right ways to swing a club. Everyone's body moves a little bit differently so it's important to coach to a natural feeling golf swing that you can repeat without onerous swing thoughts.

In addition to the swing itself I teach the mental game and show students how to maintain confidence out on the course. It's easy to believe in yourself when you've hit a lot of good shots but that's not always how it goes. Understanding how you are hitting on a given day and developing a strategy around that allows you to believe in your game and perform with confidence at your daily potential. Athletes, especially young athletes, go through evolutions in their game which means what worked yesterday may not work today, or tomorrow. I can help students develop an overarching methodology for how they approach the game that will allow their individual shotmaking to evolve, and a plan for how to implement execution-level improvements into their strategy.

I start out at the driving range for the first session to get a feel for students' full swing, strengths, and weaknesses. Then, we experiment with different swing feels and see how we can achieve more consistency and distance while maintaining a natural feeling swing. Typically the first 1-3 lessons are spent on the driving range, then we move to the chipping and putting area to work on shots around the green and rolling the ball.

After a handful of lessons, I like to go out on the course with my students and caddy for them while helping them pick out shots to hit and develop a course strategy centered around their game. A lot of mental game improvements happen out on the course.

After the lesson, I sent a write up with strengths and practice areas before our next session.

I took lessons in high school from a former LPGA tour card holder who was the teaching pro at a local driving range. She was by far the best coach I've ever had and showed me how to visualize shots and trust my intuition instead of attempting full control of the game. At the time I was at the end of my growth spurt and had grown from 5'10" to 6'5" in two years and had gained significant strength and power in that time but had no idea what to do with it. I still use many of the things she taught me today.

I typically do best with students who have an established swing that they are looking to improve, or want to tackle the mental side of the game. I work with golfers at all skill levels but my strength is teaching intermediate to advanced students that are passionate about the game and have the ability to practice between sessions.

I believe lessons are most beneficial when combined with regular practice. A good target is 3+ practice sessions or rounds between lessons so that students are able to collect their own feedback and evolve individually with occasional course-corrections.