You are here:Home » Martin Kaymer » US Open Champion Martin Kaymer Teaches Us the Importance of the Takeaway

US Open Champion Martin Kaymer Teaches Us the Importance of the Takeaway

If you went to sleep last night with sweet dreams of finding yourself in Martin Kaymer’s Adidas golf shoes, you’re not the only one. Any man or woman who’s ever picked up a golf club and hit even a decent shot, knows the fantasy of having a gallery cheer you to victory at a major championship. And eight strokes ahead of your nearest competitor? That would make it even sweeter.
a photo of Martin Kaymer playing golf
Photo from GolfDigest of Martin Kaymer.

In reality, most of us will never know the hallowed victory of slipping on the Master’s Jacket or pressing our lips to a U.S. Open Trophy, but that doesn’t mean that a better, more consistent golf swing is out of reach. You can take the perfected techniques of a standout player like Martin Kaymer and apply them to your own golf swing – making you a more competitive player among your friends and club members.

One particular facet of Kaymer’s swing that is so important to his performance is “the heave.” The heave, more commonly know as “the takeaway,” is possibly the most influential movement in the entire golf swing, and it takes place in the first microseconds of the back swing. This is the moment in which you set the timing for the pace of your swing, and the only time that you want to engage muscle tension in your upper body.


In the previous blog about balance, we talked about how the arms comprise over 10% percent of your body weight; the heave is the moment when you set that weight into motion around your body. A proper heave (what you see in players like Kaymer and Rickie Fowler) starts with a strong burst of energy. This dynamic movement is a combined effort of the muscles in the upper body and torso, and when done properly, moves the arms and club quickly into rotation. Once in rotation, the arms and club are carried by the weight of their momentum, and no longer rely on active upper body muscle movement to stay in motion. This frees the lower body to take over, moving through the counter-fall and the rotation of the downswing. Without continued interference from the upper body, the arms and club head become a sling-shot, maximizing club-head speed, and ultimately giving you a more commanding golf swing.

Not every professional golfer uses a powerful heave to set their swing in motion, and there are instructors who will tell you that the takeaway should be a slow movement.  This approach guarantees that you will have tension in your upper body through the entire golf swing, and therefore sets you up for countless opportunities to unintentionally move your swing out of the proper path.  While some of these pros have fine-tuned techniques to counter-act that tension and keep the club in plane, this is a labor-intensive methodology that keeps the swing from its full potential.

Imagine playing a game on an old-school pinball machine; so much of the game relies on how well you finesse the ball-launch. If that ball comes flying off the spring with power and momentum, it will stay in motion for a long time, and it will respond with ease to the smallest movement of the flippers. However, if you have a weak ball-launch that barely pushed the ball into the playing field, you can wear yourself out constantly trying to flip the ball back into play. The lesson here: it’s easier to begin correctly than compensate later.

Now that you know about the importance of the heave or the takeaway, it’s time to put that knowledge into practice. The strength of the heave needed will depend on the club you’re using, but that is something that your body will learn to feel. The best way to magnify the feeling of the heave, and understand its effect on your swing, is to put yourself into drills that threaten your balance. In Gravity Golf those drills are the One-Footed Drill and the Cross-Footed Drill. In either of these drills an improper heave will pull you off balance in the direction of your dominant arm. You will begin to quickly feel how brief the heave needs to be, and how long  the tension stays in your arms before the controlling power is taken over by the lower body.

Below is a video of the Cross-Footed Drill, and you can find more drills on our YouTube Channel.  The heave is explained in further detail in the Gravity Golf book and videos, and you can always email us at answers@gravitygolf.com. Happy practicing!





By: Autumn & Daniel Lee

0 comments:

Post a Comment