Ben Austin credits his grandmother with getting him interested in golf when he was 12 years old.
“She was my best friend growing up, and she would go golfing with her friends and sometimes solo,” he recalls. “One day, she was going out to play, and I asked if I could tag along. She said, ‘Ok, but you have to keep up…and you can’t talk.’ I said yes and away we went. We got to the 8th tee box, a par 4, and I asked if I could try to hit one. She said yes, and I teed it up.”
At this point, Austin had played baseball for years and played other sports, so he was expecting to hit the ball with little problem. He took his first swing, looked down and the golf ball was still on the tee. That was strike one! He took another swing and missed again. Strike two! As Austin stared at the ball “in utter disbelief,” he took his third swing, topped the ball and watched it trickle into a pond.
“I couldn’t believe how hard it was,” he says, “so I decided to learn how to do it and have been playing ever since.”
Ben Austin, a 2025 Golf Range Association of America (GRAA) Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, would go on to play golf in high school, but didn’t think he was good enough to play at the collegiate level. So after high school, he went to SUNY Delhi in New York for landscape architecture and spent a few years in that field after college.
“I knew I liked what I was doing, but I didn’t love it,” he says. “I enjoyed teaching people new things, and I missed playing golf, so why not combine them?”
Austin moved to Orlando, Florida to attend the Golf Academy of America and started his journey in golf. His first job was an assistant teaching professional role at the Reynolds Golf Academy at Reynolds Lake Oconee in Georgia. His boss and mentor, Charlie King, who has been a Golf Digest Top 50 and Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher, was a significant influence on his teaching philosophy.
Fast forward a few years and Austin was teaching at the Dana Rader Golf School in Charlotte, North Carolina. Rader was also a Golf Digest Top 50 and Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher, as well as having a Golf Digest Top 50 Golf School in America.
“Dana was a big role model for me, and I feel very happy and fortunate that I was able to spend time with her,” Austin says. “All of those experiences have helped mold my teaching, which is why I still feel very fortunate that I get to teach and help people improve.”
Today, Austin is a Player Development Professional at Eagle’s Nest Country Club in Phoenix, Maryland. There, he uses Trackman in his lessons and has a Garmin R50 in their simulator room.
“We have a strong junior program, which includes classes for ages four and up,” he explains. “We also have multiple PGA Jr. League teams to help initiate juniors into the competitive side of the game. We also have a very good Ladies-Only Beginner Program, which has had a lot of success. One of our members first went through the class a few years ago, and in 2025 was the Women’s Net Champion.”
When considering what’s next, Austin sees the inevitable increase in AI being used in golf instruction. He sees many apps now being able to create skeletons of the swing and making detailed estimates about a number of performance indicators. He says sensorless capture technology is still in the new phase, but knows of several good ones in operation.