Jim Sorenson, Golf's Swing Trainer
Jim Sorenson with Fred Funk
“You have to stay the course,” Jim Sorenson told me. “You have to like the fight.” Jim has never given up, from his early years with a championship golf game to the development of his golf training aid company, Momentus Golf.
Born in 1963 and raised in Bloomington, MN, Jim started playing golf when the baseball coach wouldn’t play him. With an undistinguished high school record, he enrolled at Texas Lutheran University, an NAIA school. His golf game flourished and he was named an All American in 1984. After three years he was ready for a Division I school, TCU.
The year was 1985. An NCAA rule required him to sit out a year. He used the year to work on his game and it paid a huge dividend. He won the 1985 USGA Public Links Championship. In the 36 hole final he beat Jay Cooper 12 and 11, a USGA record which still stands.
“I remember at the Publinx at Wailua Golf Club in Kauai, Hawaii, my mother had recently passed away.” He paused. “She never saw me play. I played every day for her. I put a red plumeria flower that I picked on the first tee in my hat. I won all my matches relatively easily. I played really well.”
He lost to Billy Mayfair at Tanglewood in North Carolina, in the finals in 1986. “We were even after 21 holes, then he pitched in from a difficult position. He made ten birdies and I lost three and two.”
During a successful 1986 senior year at TCU he won four college tournaments including the SW Conference Championship. He was named a second team All American and finished runner up in the 1986 Public Links Championship. He was then named to the 1987 Walker Cup Team.
Winning the SW Conference Championship includes a special perk, an invitation to the Colonial Invitation PGA Tour tournament and its champions dinner. “I was seated next to Byron Nelson with Davis Love on the other side of him. Ben Hogan was at the head table,” Jim said. “I watched Davis as he picked up the program in front of him and started toward the head table. I knew what he was doing and I followed him. I now have a program with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson’s autographs.”
In May of 1987 he represented the USA on a winning Walker Cup team at Sunningdale in London. “I was playing a practice round with Billy Andrade when he said, ‘Look there’s James Bond.’ Sean Connery was a member at Sunningdale out for a round of golf.”
“Colin Montgomery was the best player on the Great Britain and Ireland team. He was going to stay an amateur and go to go work for IMG.” IMG managed golfers. “He played with a couple of representatives one day and shot 63. At the end of the round they convinced him that he should not go to work for IMG, but he should turn professional and IMG should represent him.” As they say, the rest is history.
Early in 1988 an invitation to The Masters arrived. Jim was at the Champions Golf Club in Houston practicing. Jackie Burke, former Masters champion and owner of Champions, told Jim that he would have plenty of opportunities to play the Masters. He should turn down the invitation and turn professional instead.
“Everybody now says to me, ‘You won the Publinx and were on the Walker Cup Team, how did you do in the Masters?’” (At the time there was an automatic invitation to the Masters for Walker Cup team members.) “I tell them I turned down the invitation. I have to be the only person in history that did it.”
He became a professional with high hopes of greatness. Fate got in the way and after several months of lessons to improve, his game deteriorated and he never regained the previous level.
In 1992 he was teaching golf in Tulsa. “I couldn’t teach people how to get better. I was frustrated because I was wasting my time their money.”
“I didn’t know what I was looking for but I went to a Home Depot. I was walking up and down the aisles when I came across a bin with heavy rebar in it. I pulled one out and started to swing it.”
He took the bar home, painted it, put a grip on it and added a ball to the end of it. It was the first ‘Swing Trainer.’ The tool was a huge hit at his lessons. “Everybody wanted to buy one.”
It was the start of what would be the largest training aid company in golf. Momentus golf equipment is found at nearly every golf course in the country and many golfers’ car trunks and garages.
By 1996 he and his wife were living in Atlanta with Jim assembling the Swing Trainer in his apartment, using a back bedroom as his office, and struggling to keep his fledgling company going. He got word that David Duval was using it and loved it. Duval was rocketing up the money list and would shortly be one of the top players in the world.
Jim drove to Jacksonville, signing Duval as his spokesperson and made a two minute video. He then put all his money into an infomercial which ran on the golf channel. The infomercial mentioned Edwin Watts, a golf catalogue retailer, and Jim’s phone number. “My phone number flashed by so fast it could not be copied.”
However, he was quickly swamped with orders. “Edwin Watts called saying the Swing Trainer was not even in the catalogue, yet they were getting orders and wanted 300 of them.” Jim’s message machine that held 100 messages was full. As fast as he took an order over the phone, it would ring again. He had to get help.
Working out of a small storage unit, he assembled clubs with the help of five Bosnian refugees that could not speak English. “They were great.” He quickly progressed from a bedroom to a small storage unit to a small warehouse.
The tour players loved the Swing Trainer. “Duval called several times saying there were 15 or 20 more players that wanted them. Duval wanted them shipped overnight. The clubs were heavy. I didn’t have money.” But somehow he got the job done and the product became a huge home run.
“We did $300,000 the first year, $700,000 the second, then $32,000,000 in 28 months. We spent $300,000 a month on the Golf Channel.” At $100 apiece Jim sold a lot of Swing Trainers.
Duval’s contract paid him 6% of sales. “I paid David Duval a lot of money,” Jim commented.
There was a big problem with production. “I couldn’t get the clubs made, boxed and shipped fast enough.” By now he was living in Winfield, Iowa. “I was in the drive through line at McDonald’s when I asked the high school girl at the window if she had any friends that wanted to work. The next day 40 kids from her school showed up at the warehouse where the clubs were assembled. I hired every one of them,” he said laughing.
“They made boxes for shipping clubs, 1200 boxes the first night.”
Along the way one of the young employees approached him asking if he had any problem with an employee with piercings. “Not it they are willing to work,” he responded.
The next day a young man with 45 piercings in his face appeared, ready to go to work. He was hired on the spot and put to work making boxes. When an employer needs work done, there is no discrimination!
Jim had a bit of luck along the way. David Duval, as the spokesperson for Swing Trainer, became the number one ranked player in the world in 1998. As Duval’s game started to fade after the turn of the century, Todd Hamilton stepped forward giving the Swing Trainer some of the credit for his winning the British Open in 2004.
Jim was told Tiger Woods used the Swing Trainer every night in his house. Would Tiger be a spokesperson? “His manager told me he didn’t want anybody to know that he used it.”
With Todd Hamilton’s star brightly shining for only a brief time, Fred Funk, who used the Swing Trainer, won the Player’s Championship. As each spokesperson faded, along with the sales, another came forward, boosting sales yet again.
Jim enthusiastically shares his interactions with PGA Tour players and the stories could go on and on, each one ending with a good laugh. He is a 200 lb. big bull of a man who keeps in great shape with a daily half hour swim and meets the world with a big smile.
Jim made a bunch of money “but I got no satisfaction from the money,” he said. What he loved was the challenge of making the next product successful, such as the Power Hitter (the Swing Trainer in the form of a driver) or the L shaped yellow putting track called Inside Down the Line.
The putting track is a common sight at PGA Tour events on the practice putting green. It took off in 2007 when Angel Cabrera’s caddie thought it would help his player. Jim immediately got him the training aid.
Always struggling with his putting, Angel Cabrera soon won the US Open at Oakmont in 2007. Angel gave the tool credit for helping him win the tournament. Sales followed.
“I have over 50 different products,” he said. “Some products I couldn’t figure out how to make, others I never took to market.” Jim is an entrepreneur who is part engineer and part marketing guru. His secret is always thinking about how he can make his golf game better. All of the products start with the idea they will help his game. The competitive juices still flow hot in his veins.
Following his development of the Speed Stick, a lightweight stick that increases swing speed, Jim has moved into aids for other sports, principally baseball and tennis.
“It has been proven that swing speeds increase more when using a light weight tool than a heavy one in warm up.” Twenty major league baseball teams use the Speed Hitter Max. It’s a big seller to youth baseball teams.
“My players use it,” said John Anderson, Big Ten Baseball Coach of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers.
Many professional tennis players, including Maria Sharapova, use the Ace Trainer to increase the speed of the racquet. “I don’t even play tennis,” Jim said. “If you want to get better there are simple ways. The products teach the feel needed.”
The past few years Jim has spent time with a new product for golf courses, the Bunker Wizard. Shaped like a paint roller and made of wires, it rolls over the sand doing a superior job compared to the traditional rake in bunkers.
“Bunkers are always a problem. Maintenance hasn’t changed ever.”
“I’m energized. I believe in it.” Now in its fifth iteration he believes he’s got it right. “You have to stay the course. You have to love the fight.”
Whether it’s with his golf game, which he continually believes will soon elevate him to the top of senior golf, or advancing the next aid to elevate everyone’s game, Jim Sorenson occupies a singular, special place in A Life In Golf.
