Pros: No setup required. The Gabe Golf Swing Trainer is simple, and you can hit golf balls with it. It can make drastic improvements to your swing tempo and transition.

Cons: At $150 for one club, it’s an expensive training aid. Only available in a 7-iron and sand wedge.

Who it’s for: Golfers with transition issues in their downswing, and any golfer looking to load more on their right side in the backswing.

The Review

The Gabe Golf Swing Trainer has truth serum built in at two points:

1. The marble in the shaft.
2. The flight of the golf ball.

For most of golfers, maintenance in bite size portions is always a good thing, and the Gabe Golf Swing Trainer provides the perfect tool for a golfer to properly ingrain important swing fundamentals.

If you keep up with the weekly Tour photos on GolfWRX, then you know how popular the the training aid has become with the best players in the world. The first time I saw the club while trolling on Instagram, I thought it was quite weird looking… and naturally I wanted to give it a try. I’m just that kind of guy, since I don’t play all that much, I’m looking for something I can swing in my living room while I watch Seinfeld re-runs. And with a club that’s in the bag of so many Tour players, I figured there had to be some serious benefits to the product.

As I’ve since found out, the club itself has a metal marble in the shaft that when properly loaded falls from the head to the grip, loading like a bullet in a gun. When the player initiates a proper downswing, the marble takes the ride to a nice click when the club is released.

The beautiful thing about Gabe Golf Swing Trainer is the instant feedback. The legendary Medicus Swing Trainer had this in certain ways, and while I wasn’t a huge fan of it, the feedback was jarring and undeniably positive. If you perform a swing correctly with the Gabe Golf Swing Trainer, the results are cut and dry, too.

Here’s how it works.

It should be of no surprise that a popular swing trainer on the PGA Tour is developed by a two-time PGA Tour champion, Gabriel “Gabe” Hjertstedt, especially when you know a bit about the man himself. Hjertstedt first came onto my radar when he won the BC Open in 1997, and followed that up a couple years later with a win in Tucson. As it turned out, we were working with the same swing instructor, and met face-to-face for the first time after his win in Tucson.

Hjertstedt stresses simplicity in golf instruction, so it’s no wonder he came up with the idea for such a simple product. In his words, here’s how it happened.

“It just started as a shower idea,” Hjertstedt said. “I was getting frustrated teaching some of my clients who couldn’t make a proper backswing. They were always over-swinging. I needed to find a way to slow them down a little, give them enough time to load up and make a proper swing. Now afterward, having used it on myself and students for almost two years, I am now starting to understand the benefits even more. It’s changing the way people are playing golf. People that used to cut the ball are now drawing the ball. The feedback is amazing.”

And obviously, the Tour feedback has been amazing as well.

“Charley Hoffman was the first guy that really that got it, he went on to win a couple of weeks after. Danny Lee the same shortly after.”

After using the product for a few weeks, I believe in its simplicity and that you can’t cheat with it. The feedback is as cut and dry as hitting an old blade; you either wait for the marble or you don’t. You either hit it properly and the ball goes where you are looking, or you don’t.

My swing fault is a handsy, inside takeaway followed by an across-the-line position at the top. If my timing is good I hit it where I’m aiming, but if not, the club gets stuck and the ball could go anywhere. After making 20 swings with the Gabe Golf Swing Trainer, I was able to get the club on-plane, and from a correct position at the top of the swing, I could identify what needed to be done on the way down to hit good shots. Video and Trackman can’t provide this kind of feedback because FEEL is what better players are ultimately searching for.

As far as the product itself, the training aid was crafted with attention to detail. It comes with a KBS Tour shaft, a hand-forged head from a company in Texas and can be built to your specs. Most training aids are not customized to spec, and I believe this is a vital part in the product’s effectiveness. The black forged head certainly has that “cool factor,” and with a playable sole, the turf interaction is actually quite similar to any top iron head on the market. If I were to compare it with an OEM club, it would probably be the Ping S55 as far as address and turf interaction.

So if you’re struggling with transition, tempo, plane or loading in the backswing, and like to hit real golf balls with your swing aids, there’s just no reason to not give this club a shot… unless the $150 is too steep or unjustifiable, which I can understand.

I would 100 percent recommend the Gabe Golf Swing Trainer to better golfers (10-handicap or less) and would encourage the higher-handicappers to use it as a compliment to proper instruction from a local professional.

To learn more about the Gabe Golf Swing Trainer visit www.GabeGolf.com