When a few older co-workers told Martin Borgmeier they were impressed with his length off the tee, the future World Long Drive champion didn’t really think much of it. Of course he was hitting it 60 and 70 yards past them — they were in their 60s, while Borgmeier was still a young lad who had a solid junior career back at home in Germany.

“I didn’t feel like it was all that special,” said Borgmeier, who was working a corporate desk job when a few folks noticed his ridiculous length with the driver and decided to take action.

“Some of the guys from that particular golf club saw that and saw me doing it over and over again, and they actually signed me up for a long-drive tournament in Germany,” he added. “I did pretty well there, and then I actually learned what long drive was, and I got into all the nitty gritty stuff of long drive. I got completely hooked.”

Borgmeier wound up finishing second in that event, and the only reason he didn’t finish first was because he hit one drive out of bounds in the final match. Fast forward to 2023, and he’s now the defending champion of the World Long Drive Championship, which is set to take place this week in Atlanta, Georgia, at Bobby Jones Golf Course. Once stuck behind a desk at the cubicle farm, he’s now a long-drive legend who doubles as a social-media influencer with a following of nearly 200,000 on Instagram and a subscriber count over 66,000 on YouTube. In other words, he’s living the dream, all because a few folks signed him up for a random long-drive event in his home country.

“It was such a wild ride when you think about it,” Borgmeier said. “Just because I outdrove a 65-year-old guy, they signed me up for this event.”

If outdriving a 65-year-old was the bar for long drive, we’d all be signing up. Clearly, Borgmeier had plenty of game before, but it’s still hilariously absurd that a few bombs in front of some old guys led to him taking down Bryson DeChambeau and Kyle Berkshire at the 2022 World Long Drive Championship in Nevada. A wild ride, indeed.

Main image: Stuart Franklin