The Magic Behind The Orange Whip - With Founder Jim Hackenberg

·33 min·2 clips

Phil Mickelson walked head up toward his ball in the trees to figure out how to make birdie.

1. The IMAGEN Golf Podcast episode "The Magic Behind The Orange Whip" covers how Jim Hackenberg turned a 2008 workbench prototype into a swing trainer with over 800,000 units sold. 2. Host Daniel Guest, who runs a golf instruction business with 5,400 students, interviews Hackenberg, the Orange Whip's inventor and founder. 3. Hackenberg says his caddying on the PGA Tour from 2003 to 2005 led him to see the swing as a rhythm "in balance" rather than a set of positions, like a weighted ball on the end of a chain. 4. He grew up in North Dakota, walked on at Arizona State in fall 1988 alongside Phil Mickelson, transferred to Oregon State for two and a half years, and then tried to play professionally for five or six years. 5. He built the first prototype in a shed at Edgartown golf course on Martha's Vineyard from what he calls "Home Depot parts", and the first five people who tried it in lessons asked to buy it. 6. The main patent covers a heavy steel ball on the grip end that matches the weight of the orange ball, and he says the cheaper online versions "do not have a counterbalance" because he can stop them. 7. He tells of Jim Furyk picking one up on the PGA Tour range and swinging it perfectly on plane, and of Mickelson swinging his in a parking lot after winning the PGA Championship. 8. Sales went from 4,000 in year one to 8,000 and then 16,000 before COVID drove a surge, and he says that if Tiger Woods had endorsed it in summer 2008 "there's no way we could have kept up." 9. He describes Chappy Golf, a center-shafted, bird-shaped club that hits a baseball-sized foam ball about 100 yards, and a short-game version of the Orange Whip developed after talking with Stan Utley. 10. Golfers and instructors interested in swing trainers and the history of a golf product would get the most from this.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The IMAGEN Golf Podcast