Austin also traveled across the country performing trick shots and challenging anyone to try to outdrive him. He said he could hit a variety of shots with an ordinary set of golf clubs. He told a biographer that he "lived like a maharaja" during that time. Austin's biographer, Philip Reed, wrote that when Sam Snead first received a set of steel shafted clubs he promptly gave them to Austin saying, "You're the only one who swings fast enough to hit these."