In 1996, former hockey player Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) was able to take three steps and pound his grandfather’s “really old” driver 400-plus yards. For self-serious golfers, it required suspension of disbelief at the highest levels. General audiences sure didn’t seem to mind.
Since that time, the only technology that has accelerated as quickly as golf clubs can be seen in the changes to our video distribution systems. In Netflix’s Happy Gilmore 2, the contents of Happy’s bag get a major upgrade — whether or not streaming is an upgrade to theatrical in the delivery of video content is an entirely different conversation.
Martin Borgmeier, who can actually can drive the golf ball 400 yards — and that’s just with a warmup swing — has embraced to great success how physics inform the long ball. So who better to break down the biomechanics of Happy Gilmore’s long game than the man who beat out all-world golfer (and a big hitter in his own right) Bryson DeChambeau at the 2022 World Long Drive Championship. We got a few tips to try out along the way.
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You were five years old when Happy Gilmore came out — what is your relationship to that movie?
It was the first golf movie I watched as a kid. I started golf at the age of nine. It was definitely the first (golf) movie I’ve watched, and all of the rest came after that — so, like, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Tin Cup…because it was my big dream as a like 10-14 year old to become a professional golfer and basically become the next Tiger Woods. It didn’t work out. (Laughs.) But like all these movies, obviously, were a big part of my life. And Happy Gilmore— actually, I’ve watched it back, like, maybe 10 years ago or so, and I realized at that point [that] all the jokes and all that stuff, most of it didn’t even [register]. But the one thing I I knew as a kid — and I remember it was — he hit it extremely far. He had his super-crazy pre-shot routine and everything — the run-up and all that stuff — and I just found it funny and enjoyed the long drives and terrible putts as a kid.
We’ve all tried the Happy Gilmore swing — have you had success with it?
Yeah, it’s so funny you say that because I just posted a Reel on my Instagram for a Bad Birdie giveaway. (Bad Birdie is a golf apparel company and a Borgmeier sponsor.) It was an ice hockey jersey (Gilmore’s first sport). [I did] the crazy approach — the Happy Gilmore swing — a little bit exaggerated, even with, like, probably 10-15 steps and a little bit of yelling involved as well. So yeah, I’ve tried it, and actually it worked pretty well.
[But] the way I did it in the video — obviously on purpose — I’m kind of just like poking the golf ball a little bit, and it falls off tee (for comedic effect). That turned out to be much harder than actually striking it well, because the biomechanics behind it— [The Happy Gilmore swing] is actually a great drill for long-drive. What you have to accomplish is, you have to get your pressure forward into your lead leg just before you make contact with the golf ball, and at the same time, stay back with your upper body, because otherwise you cannot swing up on it. So basically, forcing that by running up to it is a great way to practice that element.
Your posted longest drives are 484 yards in competition and 520 yards in exhibition — how far did a good Happy Gilmore-swing go for you?
I mean, when I really pounded it, it’s probably not even that different to when I’m really going after it (with a normal long-drive swing.) It’s not too much about the speed. I think the speed is pretty much the same — it’s fast (Borgmeier’s record ball speed is 239.3 mph) — but the crazy thing is really making the contact while keeping the face square.
Adam Sandler as Happy Gilmore in Happy Gilmore 2.
Courtesy of Netflix
You’re 6’4” and 240 lbs. There’s undoubtedly a big strength factor in long drives. But you mostly talk about biomechanics as a means to long drives — what do you see as the breakdown of brains vs. brawn?
Eighty-twenty. 80 percent mechanics and the remaining 20 percent is — let’s call it strength. But all of the work we do in the gym is mostly to stay healthy and actually make our bodies be capable of handling all the stress we put onto them on a daily basis, right? Because, I mean, obviously it’s a one-sided motion. We rarely hit golf balls left-handed…so it’s really about staying strong and healthy and being able to withstand all the stress we put onto it.
But to really hit it far, let’s say 80 percent is biomechanics, and then that remaining 20 percent I called strength, is basically your body allowing yourself to swing faster because it knows it can withstand all of that and allows you to do that, if that makes sense. Because otherwise, when you look at strongmen, right, the strongest people in the world — if strength was such a big part of it, they would [have the fastest ball speeds] in the world. They’re not. So that’s really how it works, and that’s also what I’ve been doing over the past, like, five, six, seven years, [trying] to figure out, like, how much of what is really important. And if I had to do one thing for the rest of my career, it would be biomechanics only.
Can you analyze Happy Gilmore’s swing for me? In movie-land, his drives go 400-plus yards (with old clubs). How far can a guy of his Adam’s stature and that swing with those clubs really drive a golf ball?
I would guess a 250[-yard drive] would be an amazing drive with that equipment. Because what’s going to happen with modern golf balls and his clubs, is it’s just gonna spin too much. So a lot of the energy— even if he swung really fast with that Happy Gilmore swing, he would lose a lot of energy of that ball just ballooning up in the air [instead of going] forward. Even if it was a really low-degree driver, with current golf balls and titanium drivers, obviously, that energy transfer is going to be much better than with wooden clubs.
When we talk “smash factor” — that’s one of the efficiency data points we use with launch monitors — modern titanium drivers would be around one-and-a-half of the club head speed would be ball speed. So let’s say you swing at 100 mph, it would turn into 150 mph ball speed. I would see that factor at like, roughly 1.3 or something with the wooden club. So it would be much, much, much slower than a titanium driver.
My distance sucks. Give me one or two things I could do, sight unseen, that would instantly add yardage?
It’s a combination of two things. So first of all, being aware that a driver swing is different to an iron swing. So with a driver swing, the golf ball is on a tee, so we don’t have to take the divot after the ball, we can actually swing up on it…and that’s going to improve the launch with the spin, and eventually make the golf ball go up further.
And so the other bit is — it’s actually fairly close to the Happy Gilmore swing, because, [while] he’s doing it in an extreme way, being more athletic in general and being less of a robot, and actually using a little bit of the athleticism we know from other sports…Look at any other sport — even baseball, they move, they freaking move before they swing! The pitcher, before he throws, he’s gonna move, utilizing a little bit of that [athletic movement]. That could just be a slight little trigger move before you take away the club, so making that body shift to the right before you take away the club — or it could be as extreme as the Happy Gilmore swing, but eventually moving our bodies a little bit could definitely help to get a little bit more power into that swing.
I’m gonna try some crazy shit in my garage tonight.
[Laughs] Don’t break your leg!
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.