Columnist Ron Kantowski: Remembering the longest drive out of Vegas

Thursday, Dec. 1, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Yeah, I know that what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas. But sometimes, just barely.

On Sept. 25, 1974, with a 27 mph wind at his back, a 64-year-old golf pro named Mike Austin strolled to the tee box on the fifth hole (now the 14th) at what was then known as Winterwood Golf Course (now the Desert Rose) during the U.S. National Senior Open. Austin grabbed a Wilson persimmon head driver from his bag, warned the group playing ahead of him to watch their backsides and proceeded to let it rip.

Austin's ball sailed beyond the green on the flat 450-yard par 4 with a slight dogleg right. Way beyond the green. Incredibly, it came to rest 515 yards from the place where Austin had sent it into orbit. Five hundred and fifteen yards. 5-1-5.

It's a record that stands today.

Sadly, Austin does not. He died of natural causes at age 95 in Woodland Hills, Calif., last week, taking his record, recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest golf drive ever recorded, with him.

Despite advances in technology and golf equipment, nobody has been able to duplicate Austin's prodigious tee shot. Not Tiger Woods. Not even a big hitter such as John Daly, or one of those "grip-it-and-rip-it" specialists who drive for show -- and dough -- on the Long Drivers of America Tour.

The PGA began tracking driving distance in 1980. The longest drive since then belongs to J.C. Goosie, who bombed a ball 457 yards during a Senior Tour event in 1988. Chris Smith's 427-yard drive in 1999 is thought to be the longest tee shot on the regular tour.

I've spent the last couple of days trying to track down somebody in Las Vegas who might have been in Austin's gallery that day and witnessed the longest drive of all. The closest I came was Don Welch, an old Las Vegas golf pro, who remembered Austin's drive as if it were yesterday, although he didn't see it.

"He was a long hitter and had a big wind behind his back," Welch recalled. "It (Austin's ball) must have hit a sprinkler head."

Nope. The only thing Austin's ball touched on its way to the record book was a lot of thin desert air on a breezy 88 degree day.

I called Desert Rose, asking if Austin's death had triggered any interest in his big shot of 31 years ago. A man at the pro shop who identified himself as Lou said nobody has asked about it. In fact, Lou said nobody has asked about it during his 3 1/2 years there.

But others are still amazed and mystified that a man could hit a golf ball that far.

In a 2004 interview with author David Hochman that appeared in Travel and Leisure magazine, 90-year-old Chandler Harper, who was playing in Austin's group, described his drive in vivid detail.

"Three of us hit our shots about 140 yards short of the green," Harper said. "But Mike's drive beat all of us by a mile."

Harper went ahead and spotted something on the next tee behind the fifth green.

It was Austin's gravity-defying Titleist 100.

"We couldn't believe it," Harper said. "I played 50 times with Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, but nothing compared to this."

In one of his last interviews regarding the shot, Austin told Hochman he knew he had done something special.

"I knocked the hell out of it," said Austin, a gruff Scotsman and respected instructor who continued to teach golf almost to the day he died. "But the ball went up strangely. Went out about 10 or 15 feet high and kept going at the flattened level. I could put my finger on it the whole way until just before it dropped."

Austin's wife, Tanya, might have provided the best eyewitness account of her husband's drive that nearly touched the clouds.

"It was like God held the ball in the air," she said.

But apparently, the Big Hitter in the Sky didn't follow Austin's group from tee to green. Austin pitched back onto the green and then three-putted for a bogey.

John Daly can certainly relate to that.