Starting At The Top
3 backswing power moves, according to the new World Long Drive Champ
Martin Borgmeier is no longer a promising up-and-comer in the professional long-drive scene. He’s fully arrived, holding off an injury-plagued run from eventual ninth-place finisher Kyle Berkshire and an underdog charge from Bryson DeChambeau in the finals to capture his first PLDA World Long Drive Championship last week.
"Haven’t realized it one bit,” he said on Instagram after his win. “Blood, Sweat & Tears for this moment.”
Borgmeier is a fun follow on Instagram because he’s constantly sharing insights from his training sessions, and golf swing work, leading him to become the world long-drive champ. In one of his most recent posts before his eventual victory, he shared some interesting tidbits about what he calls his “backswing power elements.”
There are three of them, as you can see in his full post below.
As this recent Golf Digest article explains, golfers load their trail leg different amounts based on their biomechanics, but almost all golfers load their trail leg some amount on the backswing, which is why Borgmeier says it’s his first power element.
“Loading up”
As the club moves further back, Borgmeier talks about loading his body up toward the sky on the backswing. According to UK-based coach Steve Furlonger, who works with Borgmeier, this is a process called “unweighting.”
“Martin is one of the fastest players on the planet,” he says. “These guys unweight the most. They get to a point where they're less than 50 percent of their body weight as a force, so they've effectively reduced their body weight by 50 percent.”
“High hands”
Along those lines, at the very top of the backswing, Borgmeier talks about stretching his hands high toward the sky. This doesn’t just help him unweight, it helps him turn his torso and create a stretch in his upper body that will later contract forcefully.
Now that he’s light on his feet, it puts Martin in a position to initiate his downswing by getting heavy, Furlonger explains.
“These guys get the arms up the highest. They get super light, because then they're going to free fall super fast to start they’re downswing before pushing back out of the ground at impact,” he says.
In his post, Borgmeier’s explains that the nature of him being a long drive pro means these moves are more “pronounced” in his swing, but they’re present in most high-level swings.
“When you watch closely you actually find a lot of these in professional golf,” he writes.