Mike Austin was a University of Michigan fan, but his allegiance to the Wolverines may have been tenuous, at best.
“I did my undergraduate degree at Michigan State,” his father, Rick, said. “I met my wife at Michigan State. My daughter went to Michigan State – and Mike was a Michigan fan. I don’t know if it was just his form of rebellion or what, but he was a Michigan fan.” If Austin was merely being contrarian, it made it easier to cut ties with the Wolverines in the most dramatic way possible – he became an Ohio State Buckeye.
When one of the top golf programs in the Big Ten Conference offers a full scholarship, it’s best to be practical.
“I had an opportunity to go to Michigan on a full ride, but the team at Ohio State was better at the time,” said Austin, a 1997 Powers Catholic graduate who grew up in Burton. “Now Michigan has made great strides the last few years and is very competitive themselves. “I think I was a Michigan fan because the whole family was Michigan State fans. That was the Fab Five period; it was easy to get wrapped up in that as a 12-, 13-year-old. I was a Michigan sports fan, but when it came time to choose where to play golf, it was a pretty easy choice.”
At Ohio State, Austin was a three-time All-Big Ten selection. As a senior in 2001, he was second by two strokes in the Big Ten tournament to Northwestern’s Luke Donald, a former world No. 1 golfer. The Buckeyes fell one stroke short of qualifying for the NCAA tournament that year.
Austin was the team captain his last two years and a two-time academic All-American.
Austin earned his scholarship at Ohio State after a stellar junior and high school career.
He was the state Class B individual champion at Powers in 1995 and 1996. The Chargers never finished worse than second in the state tournament during Austin’s four-year career, winning titles in 1993 and 1995 and taking second in 1994 and 1996.
“It was a great group of guys,” Austin said. “Looking back on it, I was real fortunate to have the team we had around us. That team we had all four years there was great. Great guys to hang out with, too. Those were some of my fondest memories, being on those high school teams.”
Austin caught the attention of major college programs by winning five American Junior Golf Association events, including the 1997 Buick Junior Open at the Flint Elks Club.
“Most of your golfers you see on tour are from the south,” Rick Austin said. “Not all of them, but the vast majority of them. In order for a boy from Michigan to compete, he has to go south and he has to show the college coaches he can compete with and beat all the southern kids. Just having a good resume from Michigan would not have been enough to have impressed the big-time college coaches.”
Austin began playing golf when he was 7 years old. It was around the age of 12 that he began to show he had a special talent.
“I played a lot of baseball,” Austin said. “We were the kids after school who went to the field and made up any game we could to be active and develop hand-eye coordination. After 13, it was a golf-or-bust kind of thing. I dropped everything else and stuck to the golf clubs.”
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