February 5, 2024 • 46 mins
L.A.B. Golf builds and sells putters that don’t look like most conventional putters. They’re big, some might say they’re ugly, unwieldy. But they’re effective, they’re resurrecting morale, careers and a love of putting. In this Fire Pit podcast series, Matt Ginella conducts over 20 interviews and pieces together the story of Bill Presse, the inventor, Sam Hahn, the CEO, and several other L.A.B. Golf employees who have witnessed the rise from Presse tinkering in a garage and selling his theories out of the trunk of his car in 2012 to Lucas Glover winning back-to-back PGA Tour events in 2023. Ginella talks to Vaughn Taylor, Kelly Slater, Adam Scott, Glover and so many more as he gets to the essence of the technology, design, brand and an American dream.
In Part 1, you’ll meet Hahn, Presse, Bob Duncan and you’ll hear about how and why Hahn pushed all in and bought a “lion’s share” of the company.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
So here we are August twenty twenty three, and Lucas
Glover has just become the poster child for grinders don't
give up. He goes from like push putting, yippie like obscene,
can't look, can't look, can't watch, can't like like to
(00:29):
doubling his career earnings over five years in the last
two weeks. He could fucking win the whole FedEx Cup.
He's definitely gonna make another couple million before the end
of this the end of this ride might end up
on the Ryder Cup team. A dream come true for
him in his life, life and career. Unreal And what what?
(00:50):
What has that meant for the lab business?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
How many putt like? What? How obscene?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is this? From a business perspective?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's obscene, but not catastrophic. Explain if he'd have won
with a conventional directed force, it would have been catastrophic.
I mean, we'd have had way more orders than we
would have been able to fulfill in the next six months.
It's been a massive explosion for sure. I mean a
(01:24):
business is virtually doubled overnight, but it didn't quadruple because
it was a broomstick.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Put another log on the fire. Nobody here is given time.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Welcome to the fire pit with Matt Janella.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
In twenty nineteen, leading into the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando,
it was Mike Burkhardt, a college friend, who reached out
and told me to find and meet Sam Hahn of
Lab Golf. He told me that I needed to check
out and test what he referred to as game changing technology.
Same could be said and has been said by a
(02:16):
lot of people to a lot of people about a
wide variety of things heading into every PGA merchandise show,
which is why, while working for Golf Channel at the
time and spending days and hours popping in and out
of one booth after the next, I was skeptical. And
I should also say I'm not much of an equipment
geek at the time, I had used the same putter
(02:38):
for almost a decade, the Gambler by Never Compromise, gifted
to me by a sales rep at a PGA tour event.
I like the name, the look, feel, and the results.
But Burkhart is a good friend, and he's not the
type to overstate anything, and he's never one to talk
in superlatives. So I went by the booth and asked
for Sam Han. That's him, the guy holding the crazy
(03:00):
contraption talking people through how and why hanging a putter
between two long metal rods can reveal both the good
and bad in putter technology. Han, who you hear in
the opening SoundBite, had the look of a man on
a mission. Before I go any further, I just want
to say thank you to Dormy Workshop for their support
(03:21):
of this podcast. I also met the Bishop Brothers at
the PGA Merchandise Show, and as I reported several times
on Morning Drive, I was blown away by their head
covers and their line of handmade leather goods. The Canadian
based company only makes great stuff and we're lucky to
have them putting our logo on a variety of things,
all available at Firepitcollective dot com. For their complete collection
(03:43):
of originals, headcovers and classics, go to Dormy Workshop dot
com and use promo code fire Pit fifteen for fifteen
percent off your next purchase. Dormy obviously makes putter covers,
but it would take most of the cow to conceal
and protect lab Garoff's original directed force what some might
(04:03):
refer to as a spatula or a toaster oven to
look down at the directed force wasn't easy on any
golfer's eyes. But going back to twenty nineteen and because
of Mike Burkhart, I had time for Sam Han that day,
and within twenty minutes I saw how this contraption Han
referred to as a revealer did just that. It revealed
(04:27):
to me that every other putter I used, as it
hung from the top of the contraption, and as I
held the two posts on either side of the putter grip,
that when I made my putting stroke, the putter head
would spin and at the point of impact, the putter
face was anything but square to the target. To try
(04:47):
the same thing with the directed force putter. Sure enough,
this revealer in fact revealed that the putter stayed in
balance throughout the putting stroke and the face was square
at the point of end impact. Cool, I remember thinking,
but I had no real sense of what I just
used or witnessed. And although Han came across as knowledgeable, articulate,
(05:10):
and certainly passionate about his product, I still walked away
a skeptic. Again, I'm not an equipment geek. The terms
moment of inertia, center of gravity, and the idea of
lab Lie angle balance was gibberish to me. I'm more
a look and feel guy. If I like the way
it looks, the way it feels, and if I have
some relative success using it, it stays.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
In the bag.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I was good with my gambler. Cut to twenty twenty three,
when Lucas Glover wins not one, but two PGA Tour
events back to back, and he does it by making
clutch putts from all over the place. I've gotten to
know Lucas Glover over the years. Like me, we've always
shared a love and appreciation for John Ashworths and Link Soul,
(05:54):
the lifestyle brand we've both been wearing and promoting since
it launched in twenty twelve. Glover's struggles on the green
have been well documented. To be direct, he had the
yips going back to twenty nineteen, the year I met Han,
Glover was one hundred and sixty third in strokes gained putting.
In twenty twenty he was one hundred and thirty seventh,
(06:16):
twenty twenty one one hundred and eighty ninth, twenty twenty
two one hundred and sixty ninth, and in twenty twenty
three he was one hundred and sixty eighth, and yet
because he's an incredible ball striker with an insane amount
of grit and grind, he kept his PGA Tour card
and has for twenty years. His career earnings in spite
(06:37):
of his putter woes thirty four million, five hundred and
forty three thousand, nine hundred and fifty one dollars and counting.
Much more on and from Lucas Glover later in this
podcast series, but after he won twenty twenty three Wyndham
Championship and the FedEx Saint Jude, all the chatter was
about his putting, and specifically his lab broom putter lab.
(07:02):
I thought, is that the thing that Sam Han was
selling at the PGA merchandise show. I called Mike Burkhart.
Sure enough, there was truth in the technology, and in fact,
certainly for Lucas Glover, it was a game changer, a
career saver, and the story seemed worth a few more
(07:22):
phone calls. This podcast series is about more than just
the gritten grind of Lucas Glover, and it goes much
deeper than Sam Han. This is an American dream, rags
to riches. You're going to hear from the inventor Bill Pressey.
Sometimes the best story is your own story. And I
got to feel like, I'm not sure you're ever going
(07:45):
to stumble upon a better story than your own story.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
It's been a long ride, you know. I overcame a
lot hard to talk about.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Han will lay out four critical moments in the company's history,
one of which is a serendipitous encounter with Von Taylor,
a three time winner on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
I got kind of an interesting story. I had never
seen it before. I was out in Burracuda struggling to
keep my card. I'm around one twenty or so, one
twenty five, and I need a good week. And we
get there, and Reno used to be like perfect vent
grass the first couple of years I played there, and
(08:31):
then I came back a few years later and it
was the hardest to put poana I've ever seen. And
I showed up on Monday. I couldn't make a three
footer to save my life.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
And then there's Kelly Slater, the eleven time world Champion
of surfing who happens to be a scratch golfer.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
To be honest, I was like so antsy to get it.
I was sending emails kind of egging him on, like
how long do the.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Sit goll be done? But I really want to get it.
Speaker 6 (08:57):
They sent it to Hawaii, out to Hawais for me
and the first week I had and I went over
to McKenna and I was playing with Tommy Armor and
in the first round Tommy goes, don't ever take that
thing out of the back.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You're rolling it's so good, which leads us to fourteen
time PGA Tour winner and twenty thirteen Masters Champion Adam Scott,
who partnered with Slater at the twenty eighteen AT and
T Pebble Beach Pro am.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
As you'd know and have probably experienced, like a wet
February pebble beach green can get a little bumpy and
everyone struggles time to time putting on that surface with
the ball bouncing around. And played three days with Kelly
and between myself, the other pro and any of the amateurs,
(09:46):
Kelly rolled the ball bat on all of us.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
When Lucas Glover decided it was time to try a
lab putter, he called and asked to have exactly what
Adam Scott was using.
Speaker 8 (09:56):
After three or four weeks, three or four sessions with him,
the snoop idea came. You know, Mac pushed it a
little bit in facts and let's just let's just try it.
And I had two weeks off around the PGA and
mentioned it to Jason June and he said, hey, man,
let's let's go.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Let's try it.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
We got some time and and it just clicked that
that that method, that motion, everything was so different that
it was just a way to rewire everything. And there's
no scar tissue if you if you'd never done them
that certain skill before.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Much more on Glover later in this series, but for now,
meet Samhan, CEO of Lab Golf from his office at
Emerald Valley Golf Club in Creswell, Oregon, home of the
Oregon Ducks.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Rapid Fire. Summary. So, I barely graduated high school in
nineteen ninety nine, super into music, left home in pursuit
of a career in music, toured around the country a bit.
I put together a really cool band. I had a
eight to twelve piece band with a bunch of horns
and singers and stuff, and we went around the country
a few different times, and I actually ended up meeting
(11:12):
a girl here in eugen while I was out on
tour and then ended up just kind of coming back
here to be with her, and then still kept playing music,
but also kind of expanded in booking a big ass
band around the country. You know. I got good at
booking and promoting and all that stuff. So I started
(11:34):
a talent agency here, very very small, booked for a
few venues here in town, and have basically been in
the bar and music business for since two thousand and one.
So being in the bar of music business leaves you
a lot of time during the day. I was always
working at night, and so during the day I was
I've always been a golf psychopath. I loved playing when
(11:58):
I was young. Never did anything to really get good,
but I just loved going around and around and around.
And so when I moved out here, I met a
dude like minded fella, you know, kind of a weird
hippie stone or golfer like me, and we hit it
(12:18):
off pretty well. And that's what I really started to
get into the game, you know, in a serious way,
really started practicing. I was an eighteen handicap when I
was like around twenty years old, and I was a
scratch player about two years later, and in you know,
all that golf stuff. I got super into equipment and
always tinkering, always screwing around with stuff. And then fast
(12:42):
forward to twenty seventeen. Summer of twenty seventeen, I was
out here taking a lesson from my guy here, guy
named Bob Duncan who's now now in ben really good instructor,
great guy, and he had this crazy ass putter. And
at the time I was like, I've always been a
(13:06):
pretty good ball striker and just a lunatic with the putting.
And at that time I had been my whole stick
for the like six months prior was I was grabbing
a new putter before every round of golf, no matter what,
so that I could just ride a honeymoon for every round.
Even if I putted well the day before, it didn't matter.
I was always grabbing a new putter and screwing around
with it. And I was, you know, it was my thing,
(13:27):
and it was made fun of plenty, and you know,
each new putter was the answer. There was fifty plus
in my basement. And so then at the time I
was screwing around mostly with like eighty eight h two
style putters. I think, as I look back on it now.
I was like, if I'm gonna suck at putting, I
might as well at least have a cool looking putter.
And so I had a NAPA that day. I remember
(13:49):
I was putting with this really cool oil can Scottie
Cameron napa and Bob comes up and you know, shows
me the RENO two point one by a company called
Directed Force at the time. Was how it was kind
of branded, and I was like, what the am I
allowed to swear? Yeah? Of course you are, Yeah yeah.
I was like, what the fuck is that? Like? Barf
(14:09):
likes full on barf. I mean, it was just the
most ridiculous looking thing I'd ever seen. I was like,
there's no chance I'm putting with that.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Meet Bob Duncan, who at the time had recently been
hired by Bill Pressey to be a salesman for the company,
which again at the time was Directed Force.
Speaker 9 (14:25):
I went up to Oregon from LA and I was
I was working on a few people, but the first
person I really showed it to showed the potter t
was Sam and we were at the back of the
range where the Oregon Ducks practice and we were hitting
putts and he had about six or seven putts and
(14:47):
then he turns to me and he says, why don't
I Why should I? No, he said, why wouldn't I
want one of these? And I said, well, it's it's
a little pricey. And I think he was thinking it
was fifteen hundred dollars. It was about four to seventy
five or something at the time, and I said that
(15:10):
and he said, well, let's try it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I'm gonna pause here real quick. Throughout this podcast series,
there will be a little bit of equipment geek golf jargon.
For example, the term face balance is in reference to
the idea that if a putter is suspended on its side,
the face of the putter will be square to the sky.
A toe hang putter, if suspended on its side, the
toe of the putter would point down to the ground
(15:34):
and the face of that putter would be perpendicular to
the ground. And then you'll hear references to something they
called the revealer again. The revealer is that contraption invented
by Bill Pressey in his garage that does just that.
It reveals what a putter does when a golfer makes
a putting stroke. It's what I saw Han using at
the Merchandise Show in twenty nineteen two metal rods with
(15:57):
a suspension bar connecting them at the top, in which
you can hook and hang any putter from You hold
the metal rods on the side as you make a putt,
and every putter other than the directed force. Eventually the
Lab putters will spin wildly throughout the putting stroke. The
directed force doesn't move, essentially staying square so that when
(16:17):
you hit the putt, the ball rolls online. It's the
tool that pressy and anyone who has sold the directed force,
and eventually Lab Putters uses to help demonstrate the technology
and ultimately sell the putters back to Sam Hunt. As
he and Bob Duncan are at Emerald Valley in Oregon.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
He showed me the revealer and it's like, you know,
the revealer is profound. I mean, it's incredible to see
a putter flopping around and not doing what you know,
the Gulf putter gurus of the world have told you
a toe hang putter is supposed to do, or a
face balance putter supposed to do, and then you see
this one staying square all by itself, and it's intriguing.
So he's like, just give me nine holes, grab a cart,
(17:01):
went out on the golf course and I one putted
the first seven greens for a total of about one
hundred and fifty feet worth of putts. And I was
like what the fuck and could not I mean, my
mind was blown. I ran into a group and I
feel like wait, and I drove back into the bar
shop and I was like sold, done, bought it on
the spot, and I got real excited. I started telling
(17:28):
friends I was excited. I was, and you know, and
everybody's like, okay, so you had another putter. That's the answer.
For Sam, it just worked.
Speaker 9 (17:37):
It was amazing. And even Sam said, I can't believe
that you have sold as many petters as you have.
I sold about twenty petters before. Well Sam said that,
and I said, well, you're making bets, right, and he says, yeah,
I love the thing.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
It was expensive, you know, it was four hundred bucks,
which is, you know, a lot for a putter, Particularly
like the way that it looked at It looked like
a kind of a cheap infomercial product. The anadizing looked funny,
and the logo looked funny, and and uh so they're
all kind of making fun of me. And and it
was a really good thing that they were making fun
(18:16):
of me because and there was a good thing that
I had, you know, stuck my neck out saying that
this is the greatest thing since slice bread. Because had
I not done that, the two weeks that followed very
likely would have would have resulted in me throwing the
putter in the river. It was. I went through what
I now called the torque hangover period, which is which
(18:38):
is a thing. It's a a very real process and
sort of getting used to to our technology. And I
couldn't roll it into a swimming pool from two feet
like I was losing my mind. But because I was
so stubborn about, you know, not letting my friends be
right about you know, how absurd it was that I
bought this putter, I grounded out. And that was the
(18:59):
beginning of me developing you know, you know, the technology
was there, but we had to figure out how to
use it. And I had my own process in figuring
out how to use it, which was the start of
me kind of developing the curriculum, if you will, as
to how to use these things. And I quickly arrived
at the reality that like, look, I've seen it with
(19:22):
my own eyes, I have in my hand a self
squaring putter. The putter is actually seeking square to staying
square by itself. So if I'm missing lines, we know
it ain't the putter. And that sort of you know,
baseline understanding of what I had in my hand changed
everything for me.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Sam mentioned torque as you make the putting stroke. The
twist and additional weight you feel as the putter head
is opening or closing through the stroke is the definition
of torque.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
There's no more tinkering, there's no more tweaking, like this
is the this is the putter. It stays square by itself.
So all I got to do is let it. And
so I went through my own process in figuring out
how to utilize the technology and ultimately ended up with
a very different technique than I had ever used with
a putter. And then and then the results became off
the chart. So starting then after I kind of found
(20:15):
my groove with it. I was a one handicap at
the time, I was a plus three and a half
six weeks later.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
You go from like new putter, new putter, new putter.
You know, like you know, you're you're like a putter whore,
like it just doesn't matter to all that you.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Didn't have to pay me, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
But its like and then there's something comes along that
you try that you pay a lot of money for,
you make every put with, and then it like it
goes away.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Vanished, completely, vanished, completely. And what's interesting is is that
in that the day that I bought the putter, I
didn't have a putt inside fifteen feet, so they were
all long putts that went in. And then when I
start after I got the putter, the instant struggle with
(21:10):
short puts. It was not lag putting. The lag putting was.
That was the thing that was incredible to me because
and that actually had slightly less to do with the
technology I was using, and more to do with the
size the MOI the forgiveness of the putter, where you know,
there was no fight on the takeaway and the through stroke,
and so I was squaring up the face pretty well.
(21:30):
But from outside thirty feet, nobody hits the center of
the face every time, and with the DF it didn't matter.
So all of a sudden these thirty footers started going in.
Then in close range I was worthless the culprit for me,
as with the vast, vast majority of our customers who
reach out talking about issues with short putting is alignment
with a conventional putter, with a conventional torque putter. I
(21:52):
don't want to say alignment is irrelevant, but it's way
less important than you would think, because no matter what,
with the torquing putter, you are making a manipulation through
impact anyway. So you know, and and and there's data
to support this. Dave David, David Orr and David Adell
did some very in depth studies in the early in
the early the early odds and found out that even
(22:14):
the best players in the world, none of them aimed
their putters. Well, the vast majority of them were outside aimers.
And at the time, nobody more egregious than Tiger and
Mike Weir were both you know, that was when Mike
was playing his best golf and was one of the
best putters in the world, and Tiger, obviously exceptional at putting,
didn't name their putters, So I wasn't a particularly good
(22:35):
aimer at the time. Uh. And that was what got
exposed with the with the the reno, because that putter's
going where you point, and if you're not pointed good,
You're going to struggle period.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I asked sam Hon to explain how and why this
technology mattered to him and made sense versus any and
all of the other success he might have had with
other putters.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
My conflict around and putting was that I had an
instinct that I had an instinct, and I had observations
that did not line up with what the industry told
me this putter or that putter was supposed to do.
Most obviously, and I guess kind of, you know, put
most simply, I had a much easier time reducing face
(23:26):
rotation with a toe hang putter, and then quite the
opposite with a face balance putter. So my experience with
those two different torque profiles was the exact opposite of
what the industry said it should be. So, but I
never really like allowed myself to fully accept that. I
was still thinking, you know, when I was feeling archy
(23:48):
and gaety, that I should be using the toe hang
and vice versa, and so there was always just this conflict.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
And so.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
The Revealer demonstration, when I first started really looking at it,
all find and good watching the reno do what it
did and stay square by itself. The more profound thing
for me was seeing what a toe hang putter did
in a revealer.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
What is the difference between a toe hang and a
face balance.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
As far as how it applies to a golfer, nothing
other than that they're different, they have a different torque profile.
There is this narrative that if you have I mean,
this is the shit that pisses me off. Is like,
you know, in addition to trying to sell a product,
one of the things that we have to do in
order to sell the product is legitimately educate the consumer.
(24:36):
And there's there's so much language out there that goes
against reality. So the narrative to date when you go
to wherever you're gonna go get fit is that if
your stroke has less arc and less face rotation in
relation to that arc, you should be using a face
(24:56):
balance putter or in other words, a putter that when
you lay the shaft on your finger parallel to the ground,
the face points to the sky. If you're somebody that
you know the path that the shaft travels on has
more depth to the arc, and that the face rotates
in excess of that arc, that you should have a
toe hangputter at it. And for the kind of medium
(25:18):
golf nerd. We've all heard the word toeflow. So when
you know people are advertising answer style putters or you
know Scottie Cameron Newporter like kind of that Odyssey number
nine shape like Phil uses a lot. You know they
talk about toe flow. The toe doesn't flow. There's nothing
flowy about the toe, and there's like it does the
(25:39):
exact opposite from a torquing perspective, The second you pull
back a toe hang putter, it's trying to shut. It's
not opening up allowing your gate to happen or anything
like that. And then the exact opposite on the way through,
if you're able to keep it square in the backstroke
and you go forward, that putter is trying to open.
It is not trying to close. And then a face
(26:00):
balance putter, like I I don't, I don't even understand,
Like who made this shit up? Because like a face
balance putter just opens in both directions. As to why
that suits somebody with less gator, I have no idea.
It's it's it's a total load of crap. What I
will accept absolutely is that different people have different reactions
(26:21):
to these torque profiles. So if I put, if I
put a new port in your hand, and then I
put a two ball in your hand, a face balance
two ball in your hand, You're very likely going to
have different results with each of those putters. So people
do react differently to torque. The brilliance of lyingle balancing
is we just eliminated that variable. We're not chasing some
kind of thing. Because here's what I found and what
(26:43):
I noticed, you know, after I got into lyingle balancing
and after I started to understand how putters actually work,
was that everybody reacts to the instrument that's in their hand.
So if you have access rotator ex exportation one way
or another whatever with the putter that you show up
(27:03):
to your fitting with, and then they put a fitter
in your hand, or different putter in your hand, and
you have a different reaction to it that, at least
on paper is better. That's all fine and good until
you get used to it. And then you get used
to it, and now you've got a whole new set
of problems, and likely you go back and they want
to throw a tow hanging putter back in your hands.
And this is why we all have fifteen fucking putters
in our basement. And so you know, we're always we're
(27:26):
always chasing. Now at a high level, of course, these
guys know how to manage torque, you know, out on
tour and the high level amateurs, and they have a
better understanding of what does what they can calibrate, they
can mitigate, they can do all kinds of things to
accommodate torque. The rest of us we don't have a
quintic at home. We don't have a coach watching us,
we don't have any of that, and so we're chasing.
(27:48):
The most incredible thing to watch over the last six
years with our customers is they just stop chasing finally,
you know, they and I have it in my head
like a lot of a lot of golfers, I think
already think that their putters stay square by themselves, you know,
Like I remember I had rounds I'd miss a couple
four footers. I'm so pissed, and I go to the
putting green after the round, I'm like, okay, if I
(28:10):
just keep my hands really neutral and I just rocked
my shoulders, then this putter should return back to square
all on its own. And like it didn't, and you know,
and here we are, so now I.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Kind of dug a little deep and got some clarification
and some understanding. But at some point you find this putter.
You go through this two week sort of tumultuous stretch
where now it's like you're dug in. You You've picked
this putter because of the success you had from distance putts.
You were able to fight through and maybe the money
(28:44):
you paid for it. I don't know if that.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was way more the money I paid for it
and the shit I was going to take for my
friends if I dropped it.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So there you got that, and now you're dug in
and you're stubborn, and you're like, let me understand why
I had that flash of success, because I if I
can get back to that, then then then I have
then I can stop chasing right totally totally. And how
(29:09):
did you do that? So now take me back to
that and you got through that and then and then
that brings us to that this six year path to
where we are now.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Right just about I'll tell you my first film, lab
Golf exists as a series of extraordinary breaks, and the
first one is coming up. So I challenged everything, so
again I was the starting place was the putter's staying
square by itself. So if I'm not returning it to square,
that impact I am doing something. I am manipulating the putter.
(29:41):
And ultimately the you know I didn't have I didn't
I didn't say it like this at the time. But
this is my stick now, is that when you know
people are kind of learning to accommodate the tech, every
other putter that you've ever used in your entire life,
you have to keep it square, and with a lab
(30:02):
putter you have to let it stay square. So just
that mentality shift alone changed everything. So if the task
is now to let the putter face stay square versus
keep it square, the first changes started to happen in
my hands and in the way that I held the club.
So you know, a good portion of us, you know,
use the kind of stand uply reverse overlap grip, and
(30:25):
we do that for stability. And he I think he
even calls out that word in his book, The art
of putting is that this this this, you know, the
lead hand index finger, you know, going over the knuckles
there stabilizes the face. Well, with a lying the balance putter,
you're not looking for stability. The stability is already bilt
into the head. So what's that to like get out
(30:47):
of the way kind of exactly. So, so I had
to get into a mode where, you know, kind of
the words I used that I was making my hands
feel stupid, and so I used to have like a
pretty strong tilted down here. I had a pretty strong
left hand grip like that, or the left hand was
(31:08):
over this way, similar to kind of how I grip
a seven iron, pretty neutral right hand kind of on
top of it. And then I couldn't tell you or
remember specifically how I arrived there, but I eventually started
working my hands underneath the putter and so really weak
left hand underneath it, strong right hand, and this sort
(31:29):
of neutralized my hands to where the putter was just
kind of doing its thing. I felt so uncomfortable gripping
it that way that I had no choice but to
just trust that the putter was going to come back square.
So those two things so kind of the way I
held the putter, and it was more than like the
physical holding it was it was a perspective. I mean,
this was a philosophical perspective shift on what I was
(31:50):
trying to do in the movement of a putting stroke.
Between the way I held it and then the way
I kind of moved it, sort of getting smoother and
more gravity oriented rather than acceleratetion oriented. That was when
things really came alive. And and that's another one of
the things so that you know, usually the first thing
when they if they email us if they're struggling, go
check your alignment. The second thing they call us, and
(32:11):
they'll say, I'm having speed troubles. And one hundred percent
of the time I can be like leaving the long
one short and hitting the short ones by, and they're like, yep.
And the reason being on the long ones is that
that disappearing effect. Most people don't take the putter back
any further from forty feet than they do from twenty.
And if you've got a forty footer and you take
(32:35):
the twenty foot backstroke and just try to accelerate it,
the putter completely disappears on you. It feels vague and weird,
you get uncomfortable, you leave it ten feet short, you'll
overcompensate and jam the ten footer five feet by. And
so I got I got really lucky just working through
all of that on my own. And then you know,
(32:55):
like I said that the vast improvement in my scores
was just it was nuts. It was time. I wasn't
even actually hitting the ball particularly well, but it didn't matter.
I was I could just didn't matter at all. I
could hit any as long as I got it somewhere
within you know, thirty yards of the green. I then
knew I could hit it somewhere within ten feet of
the hole, and I knew I was going to make
the ten footer. It just didn't matter. And my bad
(33:19):
rounds I was, you know, my scoring average, and this
is a very very strong golf course that I play.
My scoring average was seventy two. That's the lowest it's
ever been. So just a regular old ho hum day
for me was even par, And within that stretch I
had some of the finest rounds of golf I've ever played.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
So Han is in. He's a believer, a user, a convert.
He's passed the looks, he's made the adjustments to the
style and the feel he's making putts, which results in
better golf, better scores. Again, the year is twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Then one day I'm out playing. And one of the
fun things about these putters is that because you know
when you start spinning him around. There isn't some massive
torque pulling in one direction or another. This was kind
of like my fidget, right, Like, I'm just always walking
around the green spinning the potter, spinning the putter. And
one day I'm spinning it and I hear a little
(34:11):
click that's not good, and I kind of go, you know,
kind of go like this with the head. He goes fuck.
And I didn't want to touch it, you know, I
didn't want to do anything. So now I spend the
next like month and a half like just not even
breathing on the putter. Like I was putting it in
(34:32):
the cart next to me. I wasn't putting it in
my bag. I just like just so desperate to keep
this thing together because I could feel the head was loose.
And then finally I think balls off. And so at
that time talked to Bob. Bob said, you gotta you know,
here's here's Bill's number. Bill Pressy was the inventor of
(34:53):
the putter Litill Pressy the fourth. He's from Reno, and
he gave me Bill's number. I sent back the putter.
Bill reached out, you know, to you just apologize for
the head fallen off and tell me how it was
going to go, and gave me a shipping label and everything.
We sent it back and then we just got to
talking and we just hit it off. I mean, he
(35:15):
just absolute kindred golf spirits and he is to this
day the highest golf iq of any human being I
have ever met, and certainly within within the realms of putting,
for sure, just an absolute genius. And then all the
way through the bag and it's everything. He's a golf historian,
(35:35):
certainly an equipment historian, a wonderful instructor. And he'd been
you know, up and down the every facet of the
golf business. He'd been in sales, he'd been an instruction
he tried, you know, a couple of different times to
get out on tour. I mean, just a just an
everything golf guy.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
When Sam called me, a head fell off, of course,
so he's like, hey, you know, my head fell off,
And I kid you not. As soon as I heard
his voice, and I think he probably experienced this, I
was like, this guy, this guy right here, he's got something.
(36:14):
And and you know, when we started talking and he
expressed interest in looking at purchasing the company and through
a couple hours of talking and phone calls, I quickly
realized that he had the vision and excuse. He had
(36:35):
the vision and the skill set, the people skills that
that I desperately wanted as a partner.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You're back to making putts, You're spinning your putter again.
Your you're fucking winning money and winning your matches or whatever.
Like life is good, and you're staying in contact.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
With Bill yep, yep. And we were, I mean actually
had some fun on online too. So at this point
I got into it. You know, he led me to
a couple of different you know, kind of golf specific
Facebook groups and stuff, and you know, and Bill, uh,
you know, I was doing his best to promote the
product and get it out there and taking a lot
(37:13):
of shift for the way it looked. And so then
he and I kind of became my teammates online, you know,
kind of just trying to extol the virtues of of
lying a balance to the world. And then it kind
of a month or two of doing that. I don't
have the timing quite right, but I think I think
it was probably two or three months. Uh, the company
(37:37):
was in real trouble and they you know, builded an
incredible job with the technology and the patents and all
the stuff. And to kind of get it going, he
partnered with some folks that just I just didn't know
what they're doing. They just they you know, they tried
their hand at marketing and manufacturing and whatever, and it
just it just wasn't working. And uh so, uh they
(38:00):
were about to close the doors, and I'd ask Bill
to put me in touch with the guys that he
was partnered with, worked out a deal with them. Me,
my dad, and my brother all put everything together and
bought out Bill's existing partners. And that's how the whole thing,
that's how LAB started. So then at that point, so
that was late twenty seventeen, I think we were officially,
(38:25):
you know, business married in early twenty eighteen, and we
were off to the races and or so I thought
back to Bob Duncan.
Speaker 9 (38:35):
I knew Sam's background a little bit, and I knew
that if I got him together with Bill, they'd probably
go crazy. And so I talked to Sam a little bit.
It's kind of funny, but you don't, you know, some
(38:55):
questions not to ask when you're talking about money, And
so I just mentioned to him that THO was looking
for some new uh investors, and Sam kind of took
the took the reins and he and he started talking
to Bill and they got together kind of without my knowledge,
(39:18):
but sooner, no, sooner was there meeting than they started
to come up with some kind of an agreement. And
Sam's I think Sam's family may have gotten involved. I
don't know.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Sam possessed the traits I don't and and and it's
a ham and eggs thing. I'm I'm a complete uh
inventor wild you know, it's you're not going to rain
me in ever and so uh, which is not a
thing that you want running a company. And so so
Sam possessed all those skills and and once uh uh
(40:00):
you know, he expressed interest in in doing a buyout
and we could buy out the company and I'll come
along and we'll reform another company. We we did that, and
and so Uh I took. I didn't get I mean
I did get bought out, but my my equity and
(40:22):
shares and everything that I have just transferred into LAB.
And then we bought out the original investors and partners.
And and then Sam and UH and myself and his family.
You know that the Hans took lion, you know, the
lion share of the company, and which was which was
(40:43):
nothing new to me that I was never in the
controlling seat. So it worked out great.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
How much did it cost to sort of buy out
partners of I have no idea of a plot or
a Putter company? Is that one hundred grand? Is that
five hundred grand? Is that a million dollars?
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Is that less than a million? More than one hundred?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Okay, somewhere from there, you guys, you guys bought in
and and you this was so fucking cool that you
were willing to put in your money, your dad's money,
your brother's money into this and say, let's fucking do this.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Totally and and it's actually really funny. I I have
no memory of this at all, But one of the
guys that works for us here now, fella named Mike
Fritchman just told me Slash reminded me the other day.
He's like, I saw you at the bank the day
that you were sending that wire to get this all going,
(41:43):
and he's like, you were white as a ghost and
scared Shitlessen. I have no memory of it, but he's like, yeah,
I absolutely remember running into you. And you told me
what you were doing, and you were just wide eyed
and freaked out and this and you know, I mean,
this was such a as I look back on it, like,
I have no idea how I convinced myself that this
(42:08):
was something I could do.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Here's Mike Fritchman, who has known Sam Han for almost
thirty years. After Han bought the company, Frichman became employee
number ten. They're now up to eighty employees. Frichman's official
title is Jack of all Trades. I get his reflections
on that day in the bank.
Speaker 10 (42:28):
I've used Sam as like born the wrong time. He
should have been hanging out with Sinatra and those guys
in the rat pack because he's just, you know, for
lack of a better term, a cool cat. So he's
always he's wearing he can wear, you can wear hats
and stuff, and he's just a whole different vibe kind
of a guy. And you know, you know, he's one
of the cool kids, you know. So then I see
(42:48):
him at the bank and he is completely freaked out,
which is not the Sam Hon that I know, And
I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Man?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
You okay?
Speaker 10 (42:55):
Because he's like, I mean, you can tell when someone's
just you know, everything okay. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna
because I'll get ready to buy. I'm going going in
and buying lab Golf. And I'm like, and I think
at that time I already had one of the putters too,
because he was like trying to sell him and so
I'm not sure if I had my putter in the
din or not or just after he bought it, but uh,
(43:15):
but I saw I saw technology, and it's like, you know,
I've been playing golf since I was like three, I'm
sixty two now or something, so and I just saw
someith He's just completely somewhere else. You know, you'll be
able to, you know, sign your first mortgage, how freaked
out you are. And that's that's kind of look he had.
And he goes, yeah, I'm buying the company, and I'm like,
(43:37):
that'll be awesome, you know, and it's just like and
then a couple of months later, he's they moved the
company here, and I see has a little Facebook ad
about I'm going to I guess I can work you know,
two jobs and go work for lab Golf for a
little while, so you know, it starts taking off. So
that was kind of the short version of how it
all happen.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
And I thought that positively every single human being in
the world was going to have the exact same experience
I did, and that I was going to be turning
around and selling the company for hundreds of millions of
dollars in two years. And it did not turn out
that way. Yet. Yes, yet, yet the two years thing
did not happen. And so yeah, and then and then,
(44:20):
I mean, damn dude, I mean we it just school
hard knocks, I mean, just every I had to learn
everything about what we were doing. I would say now,
in retrospect, one of the absolute best things we had
going for us was the fact that I didn't have
any idea how the golf industry worked.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Before we get to the four critical moments that Han
will identify as the keys to lab Golf's success, which
includes Von Taylor, Kelly Slater, Adam Scott, and Lucas Glover,
it's only fair to go back a bit and get
to know more about Bill Pressey, the inventor. We'll do
exactly that in Part two of this podcast series on
how and why lab Golf is changing the way we
(45:04):
look at putters and how we put.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
I started with zero dollars, just an idea. I mean
I put everything I had into it, you know, time
and the kid. And I was widowed with my daughter
with seven so trying to launch a Putter company and
you know, just plow through everything, and then all of
a sudden, this was thrown in my face.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Put another log on the fire. Nobody he is gift
the time
So here we are August twenty twenty three, and Lucas
Glover has just become the poster child for grinders don't
give up. He goes from like push putting, yippie like obscene,
can't look, can't look, can't watch, can't like like to
(00:29):
doubling his career earnings over five years in the last
two weeks. He could fucking win the whole FedEx Cup.
He's definitely gonna make another couple million before the end
of this the end of this ride might end up
on the Ryder Cup team. A dream come true for
him in his life, life and career. Unreal And what what?
(00:50):
What has that meant for the lab business?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
How many putt like? What? How obscene?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is this? From a business perspective?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's obscene, but not catastrophic. Explain if he'd have won
with a conventional directed force, it would have been catastrophic.
I mean, we'd have had way more orders than we
would have been able to fulfill in the next six months.
It's been a massive explosion for sure. I mean a
(01:24):
business is virtually doubled overnight, but it didn't quadruple because
it was a broomstick.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Put another log on the fire. Nobody here is given time.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Welcome to the fire pit with Matt Janella.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
In twenty nineteen, leading into the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando,
it was Mike Burkhardt, a college friend, who reached out
and told me to find and meet Sam Hahn of
Lab Golf. He told me that I needed to check
out and test what he referred to as game changing technology.
Same could be said and has been said by a
(02:16):
lot of people to a lot of people about a
wide variety of things heading into every PGA merchandise show,
which is why, while working for Golf Channel at the
time and spending days and hours popping in and out
of one booth after the next, I was skeptical. And
I should also say I'm not much of an equipment
geek at the time, I had used the same putter
(02:38):
for almost a decade, the Gambler by Never Compromise, gifted
to me by a sales rep at a PGA tour event.
I like the name, the look, feel, and the results.
But Burkhart is a good friend, and he's not the
type to overstate anything, and he's never one to talk
in superlatives. So I went by the booth and asked
for Sam Han. That's him, the guy holding the crazy
(03:00):
contraption talking people through how and why hanging a putter
between two long metal rods can reveal both the good
and bad in putter technology. Han, who you hear in
the opening SoundBite, had the look of a man on
a mission. Before I go any further, I just want
to say thank you to Dormy Workshop for their support
(03:21):
of this podcast. I also met the Bishop Brothers at
the PGA Merchandise Show, and as I reported several times
on Morning Drive, I was blown away by their head
covers and their line of handmade leather goods. The Canadian
based company only makes great stuff and we're lucky to
have them putting our logo on a variety of things,
all available at Firepitcollective dot com. For their complete collection
(03:43):
of originals, headcovers and classics, go to Dormy Workshop dot
com and use promo code fire Pit fifteen for fifteen
percent off your next purchase. Dormy obviously makes putter covers,
but it would take most of the cow to conceal
and protect lab Garoff's original directed force what some might
(04:03):
refer to as a spatula or a toaster oven to
look down at the directed force wasn't easy on any
golfer's eyes. But going back to twenty nineteen and because
of Mike Burkhart, I had time for Sam Han that day,
and within twenty minutes I saw how this contraption Han
referred to as a revealer did just that. It revealed
(04:27):
to me that every other putter I used, as it
hung from the top of the contraption, and as I
held the two posts on either side of the putter grip,
that when I made my putting stroke, the putter head
would spin and at the point of impact, the putter
face was anything but square to the target. To try
(04:47):
the same thing with the directed force putter. Sure enough,
this revealer in fact revealed that the putter stayed in
balance throughout the putting stroke and the face was square
at the point of end impact. Cool, I remember thinking,
but I had no real sense of what I just
used or witnessed. And although Han came across as knowledgeable, articulate,
(05:10):
and certainly passionate about his product, I still walked away
a skeptic. Again, I'm not an equipment geek. The terms
moment of inertia, center of gravity, and the idea of
lab Lie angle balance was gibberish to me. I'm more
a look and feel guy. If I like the way
it looks, the way it feels, and if I have
some relative success using it, it stays.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
In the bag.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I was good with my gambler. Cut to twenty twenty three,
when Lucas Glover wins not one, but two PGA Tour
events back to back, and he does it by making
clutch putts from all over the place. I've gotten to
know Lucas Glover over the years. Like me, we've always
shared a love and appreciation for John Ashworths and Link Soul,
(05:54):
the lifestyle brand we've both been wearing and promoting since
it launched in twenty twelve. Glover's struggles on the green
have been well documented. To be direct, he had the
yips going back to twenty nineteen, the year I met Han,
Glover was one hundred and sixty third in strokes gained putting.
In twenty twenty he was one hundred and thirty seventh,
(06:16):
twenty twenty one one hundred and eighty ninth, twenty twenty
two one hundred and sixty ninth, and in twenty twenty
three he was one hundred and sixty eighth, and yet
because he's an incredible ball striker with an insane amount
of grit and grind, he kept his PGA Tour card
and has for twenty years. His career earnings in spite
(06:37):
of his putter woes thirty four million, five hundred and
forty three thousand, nine hundred and fifty one dollars and counting.
Much more on and from Lucas Glover later in this
podcast series, but after he won twenty twenty three Wyndham
Championship and the FedEx Saint Jude, all the chatter was
about his putting, and specifically his lab broom putter lab.
(07:02):
I thought, is that the thing that Sam Han was
selling at the PGA merchandise show. I called Mike Burkhart.
Sure enough, there was truth in the technology, and in fact,
certainly for Lucas Glover, it was a game changer, a
career saver, and the story seemed worth a few more
(07:22):
phone calls. This podcast series is about more than just
the gritten grind of Lucas Glover, and it goes much
deeper than Sam Han. This is an American dream, rags
to riches. You're going to hear from the inventor Bill Pressey.
Sometimes the best story is your own story. And I
got to feel like, I'm not sure you're ever going
(07:45):
to stumble upon a better story than your own story.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
It's been a long ride, you know. I overcame a
lot hard to talk about.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Han will lay out four critical moments in the company's history,
one of which is a serendipitous encounter with Von Taylor,
a three time winner on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
I got kind of an interesting story. I had never
seen it before. I was out in Burracuda struggling to
keep my card. I'm around one twenty or so, one
twenty five, and I need a good week. And we
get there, and Reno used to be like perfect vent
grass the first couple of years I played there, and
(08:31):
then I came back a few years later and it
was the hardest to put poana I've ever seen. And
I showed up on Monday. I couldn't make a three
footer to save my life.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
And then there's Kelly Slater, the eleven time world Champion
of surfing who happens to be a scratch golfer.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
To be honest, I was like so antsy to get it.
I was sending emails kind of egging him on, like
how long do the.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Sit goll be done? But I really want to get it.
Speaker 6 (08:57):
They sent it to Hawaii, out to Hawais for me
and the first week I had and I went over
to McKenna and I was playing with Tommy Armor and
in the first round Tommy goes, don't ever take that
thing out of the back.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You're rolling it's so good, which leads us to fourteen
time PGA Tour winner and twenty thirteen Masters Champion Adam Scott,
who partnered with Slater at the twenty eighteen AT and
T Pebble Beach Pro am.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
As you'd know and have probably experienced, like a wet
February pebble beach green can get a little bumpy and
everyone struggles time to time putting on that surface with
the ball bouncing around. And played three days with Kelly
and between myself, the other pro and any of the amateurs,
(09:46):
Kelly rolled the ball bat on all of us.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
When Lucas Glover decided it was time to try a
lab putter, he called and asked to have exactly what
Adam Scott was using.
Speaker 8 (09:56):
After three or four weeks, three or four sessions with him,
the snoop idea came. You know, Mac pushed it a
little bit in facts and let's just let's just try it.
And I had two weeks off around the PGA and
mentioned it to Jason June and he said, hey, man,
let's let's go.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Let's try it.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
We got some time and and it just clicked that
that that method, that motion, everything was so different that
it was just a way to rewire everything. And there's
no scar tissue if you if you'd never done them
that certain skill before.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Much more on Glover later in this series, but for now,
meet Samhan, CEO of Lab Golf from his office at
Emerald Valley Golf Club in Creswell, Oregon, home of the
Oregon Ducks.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Rapid Fire. Summary. So, I barely graduated high school in
nineteen ninety nine, super into music, left home in pursuit
of a career in music, toured around the country a bit.
I put together a really cool band. I had a
eight to twelve piece band with a bunch of horns
and singers and stuff, and we went around the country
a few different times, and I actually ended up meeting
(11:12):
a girl here in eugen while I was out on
tour and then ended up just kind of coming back
here to be with her, and then still kept playing music,
but also kind of expanded in booking a big ass
band around the country. You know. I got good at
booking and promoting and all that stuff. So I started
(11:34):
a talent agency here, very very small, booked for a
few venues here in town, and have basically been in
the bar and music business for since two thousand and one.
So being in the bar of music business leaves you
a lot of time during the day. I was always
working at night, and so during the day I was
I've always been a golf psychopath. I loved playing when
(11:58):
I was young. Never did anything to really get good,
but I just loved going around and around and around.
And so when I moved out here, I met a
dude like minded fella, you know, kind of a weird
hippie stone or golfer like me, and we hit it
(12:18):
off pretty well. And that's what I really started to
get into the game, you know, in a serious way,
really started practicing. I was an eighteen handicap when I
was like around twenty years old, and I was a
scratch player about two years later, and in you know,
all that golf stuff. I got super into equipment and
always tinkering, always screwing around with stuff. And then fast
(12:42):
forward to twenty seventeen. Summer of twenty seventeen, I was
out here taking a lesson from my guy here, guy
named Bob Duncan who's now now in ben really good instructor,
great guy, and he had this crazy ass putter. And
at the time I was like, I've always been a
(13:06):
pretty good ball striker and just a lunatic with the putting.
And at that time I had been my whole stick
for the like six months prior was I was grabbing
a new putter before every round of golf, no matter what,
so that I could just ride a honeymoon for every round.
Even if I putted well the day before, it didn't matter.
I was always grabbing a new putter and screwing around
with it. And I was, you know, it was my thing,
(13:27):
and it was made fun of plenty, and you know,
each new putter was the answer. There was fifty plus
in my basement. And so then at the time I
was screwing around mostly with like eighty eight h two
style putters. I think, as I look back on it now.
I was like, if I'm gonna suck at putting, I
might as well at least have a cool looking putter.
And so I had a NAPA that day. I remember
(13:49):
I was putting with this really cool oil can Scottie
Cameron napa and Bob comes up and you know, shows
me the RENO two point one by a company called
Directed Force at the time. Was how it was kind
of branded, and I was like, what the am I
allowed to swear? Yeah? Of course you are, Yeah yeah.
I was like, what the fuck is that? Like? Barf
(14:09):
likes full on barf. I mean, it was just the
most ridiculous looking thing I'd ever seen. I was like,
there's no chance I'm putting with that.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Meet Bob Duncan, who at the time had recently been
hired by Bill Pressey to be a salesman for the company,
which again at the time was Directed Force.
Speaker 9 (14:25):
I went up to Oregon from LA and I was
I was working on a few people, but the first
person I really showed it to showed the potter t
was Sam and we were at the back of the
range where the Oregon Ducks practice and we were hitting
putts and he had about six or seven putts and
(14:47):
then he turns to me and he says, why don't
I Why should I? No, he said, why wouldn't I
want one of these? And I said, well, it's it's
a little pricey. And I think he was thinking it
was fifteen hundred dollars. It was about four to seventy
five or something at the time, and I said that
(15:10):
and he said, well, let's try it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I'm gonna pause here real quick. Throughout this podcast series,
there will be a little bit of equipment geek golf jargon.
For example, the term face balance is in reference to
the idea that if a putter is suspended on its side,
the face of the putter will be square to the sky.
A toe hang putter, if suspended on its side, the
toe of the putter would point down to the ground
(15:34):
and the face of that putter would be perpendicular to
the ground. And then you'll hear references to something they
called the revealer again. The revealer is that contraption invented
by Bill Pressey in his garage that does just that.
It reveals what a putter does when a golfer makes
a putting stroke. It's what I saw Han using at
the Merchandise Show in twenty nineteen two metal rods with
(15:57):
a suspension bar connecting them at the top, in which
you can hook and hang any putter from You hold
the metal rods on the side as you make a putt,
and every putter other than the directed force. Eventually the
Lab putters will spin wildly throughout the putting stroke. The
directed force doesn't move, essentially staying square so that when
(16:17):
you hit the putt, the ball rolls online. It's the
tool that pressy and anyone who has sold the directed force,
and eventually Lab Putters uses to help demonstrate the technology
and ultimately sell the putters back to Sam Hunt. As
he and Bob Duncan are at Emerald Valley in Oregon.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
He showed me the revealer and it's like, you know,
the revealer is profound. I mean, it's incredible to see
a putter flopping around and not doing what you know,
the Gulf putter gurus of the world have told you
a toe hang putter is supposed to do, or a
face balance putter supposed to do, and then you see
this one staying square all by itself, and it's intriguing.
So he's like, just give me nine holes, grab a cart,
(17:01):
went out on the golf course and I one putted
the first seven greens for a total of about one
hundred and fifty feet worth of putts. And I was
like what the fuck and could not I mean, my
mind was blown. I ran into a group and I
feel like wait, and I drove back into the bar
shop and I was like sold, done, bought it on
the spot, and I got real excited. I started telling
(17:28):
friends I was excited. I was, and you know, and
everybody's like, okay, so you had another putter. That's the answer.
For Sam, it just worked.
Speaker 9 (17:37):
It was amazing. And even Sam said, I can't believe
that you have sold as many petters as you have.
I sold about twenty petters before. Well Sam said that,
and I said, well, you're making bets, right, and he says, yeah,
I love the thing.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
It was expensive, you know, it was four hundred bucks,
which is, you know, a lot for a putter, Particularly
like the way that it looked at It looked like
a kind of a cheap infomercial product. The anadizing looked funny,
and the logo looked funny, and and uh so they're
all kind of making fun of me. And and it
was a really good thing that they were making fun
(18:16):
of me because and there was a good thing that
I had, you know, stuck my neck out saying that
this is the greatest thing since slice bread. Because had
I not done that, the two weeks that followed very
likely would have would have resulted in me throwing the
putter in the river. It was. I went through what
I now called the torque hangover period, which is which
(18:38):
is a thing. It's a a very real process and
sort of getting used to to our technology. And I
couldn't roll it into a swimming pool from two feet
like I was losing my mind. But because I was
so stubborn about, you know, not letting my friends be
right about you know, how absurd it was that I
bought this putter, I grounded out. And that was the
(18:59):
beginning of me developing you know, you know, the technology
was there, but we had to figure out how to
use it. And I had my own process in figuring
out how to use it, which was the start of
me kind of developing the curriculum, if you will, as
to how to use these things. And I quickly arrived
at the reality that like, look, I've seen it with
(19:22):
my own eyes, I have in my hand a self
squaring putter. The putter is actually seeking square to staying
square by itself. So if I'm missing lines, we know
it ain't the putter. And that sort of you know,
baseline understanding of what I had in my hand changed
everything for me.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Sam mentioned torque as you make the putting stroke. The
twist and additional weight you feel as the putter head
is opening or closing through the stroke is the definition
of torque.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
There's no more tinkering, there's no more tweaking, like this
is the this is the putter. It stays square by itself.
So all I got to do is let it. And
so I went through my own process in figuring out
how to utilize the technology and ultimately ended up with
a very different technique than I had ever used with
a putter. And then and then the results became off
the chart. So starting then after I kind of found
(20:15):
my groove with it. I was a one handicap at
the time, I was a plus three and a half
six weeks later.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
You go from like new putter, new putter, new putter.
You know, like you know, you're you're like a putter whore,
like it just doesn't matter to all that you.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Didn't have to pay me, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
But its like and then there's something comes along that
you try that you pay a lot of money for,
you make every put with, and then it like it
goes away.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Vanished, completely, vanished, completely. And what's interesting is is that
in that the day that I bought the putter, I
didn't have a putt inside fifteen feet, so they were
all long putts that went in. And then when I
start after I got the putter, the instant struggle with
(21:10):
short puts. It was not lag putting. The lag putting was.
That was the thing that was incredible to me because
and that actually had slightly less to do with the
technology I was using, and more to do with the
size the MOI the forgiveness of the putter, where you know,
there was no fight on the takeaway and the through stroke,
and so I was squaring up the face pretty well.
(21:30):
But from outside thirty feet, nobody hits the center of
the face every time, and with the DF it didn't matter.
So all of a sudden these thirty footers started going in.
Then in close range I was worthless the culprit for me,
as with the vast, vast majority of our customers who
reach out talking about issues with short putting is alignment
with a conventional putter, with a conventional torque putter. I
(21:52):
don't want to say alignment is irrelevant, but it's way
less important than you would think, because no matter what,
with the torquing putter, you are making a manipulation through
impact anyway. So you know, and and and there's data
to support this. Dave David, David Orr and David Adell
did some very in depth studies in the early in
the early the early odds and found out that even
(22:14):
the best players in the world, none of them aimed
their putters. Well, the vast majority of them were outside aimers.
And at the time, nobody more egregious than Tiger and
Mike Weir were both you know, that was when Mike
was playing his best golf and was one of the
best putters in the world, and Tiger, obviously exceptional at putting,
didn't name their putters, So I wasn't a particularly good
(22:35):
aimer at the time. Uh. And that was what got
exposed with the with the the reno, because that putter's
going where you point, and if you're not pointed good,
You're going to struggle period.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I asked sam Hon to explain how and why this
technology mattered to him and made sense versus any and
all of the other success he might have had with
other putters.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
My conflict around and putting was that I had an
instinct that I had an instinct, and I had observations
that did not line up with what the industry told
me this putter or that putter was supposed to do.
Most obviously, and I guess kind of, you know, put
most simply, I had a much easier time reducing face
(23:26):
rotation with a toe hang putter, and then quite the
opposite with a face balance putter. So my experience with
those two different torque profiles was the exact opposite of
what the industry said it should be. So, but I
never really like allowed myself to fully accept that. I
was still thinking, you know, when I was feeling archy
(23:48):
and gaety, that I should be using the toe hang
and vice versa, and so there was always just this conflict.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
And so.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
The Revealer demonstration, when I first started really looking at it,
all find and good watching the reno do what it
did and stay square by itself. The more profound thing
for me was seeing what a toe hang putter did
in a revealer.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
What is the difference between a toe hang and a
face balance.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
As far as how it applies to a golfer, nothing
other than that they're different, they have a different torque profile.
There is this narrative that if you have I mean,
this is the shit that pisses me off. Is like,
you know, in addition to trying to sell a product,
one of the things that we have to do in
order to sell the product is legitimately educate the consumer.
(24:36):
And there's there's so much language out there that goes
against reality. So the narrative to date when you go
to wherever you're gonna go get fit is that if
your stroke has less arc and less face rotation in
relation to that arc, you should be using a face
(24:56):
balance putter or in other words, a putter that when
you lay the shaft on your finger parallel to the ground,
the face points to the sky. If you're somebody that
you know the path that the shaft travels on has
more depth to the arc, and that the face rotates
in excess of that arc, that you should have a
toe hangputter at it. And for the kind of medium
(25:18):
golf nerd. We've all heard the word toeflow. So when
you know people are advertising answer style putters or you
know Scottie Cameron Newporter like kind of that Odyssey number
nine shape like Phil uses a lot. You know they
talk about toe flow. The toe doesn't flow. There's nothing
flowy about the toe, and there's like it does the
(25:39):
exact opposite from a torquing perspective, The second you pull
back a toe hang putter, it's trying to shut. It's
not opening up allowing your gate to happen or anything
like that. And then the exact opposite on the way through,
if you're able to keep it square in the backstroke
and you go forward, that putter is trying to open.
It is not trying to close. And then a face
(26:00):
balance putter, like I I don't, I don't even understand,
Like who made this shit up? Because like a face
balance putter just opens in both directions. As to why
that suits somebody with less gator, I have no idea.
It's it's it's a total load of crap. What I
will accept absolutely is that different people have different reactions
(26:21):
to these torque profiles. So if I put, if I
put a new port in your hand, and then I
put a two ball in your hand, a face balance
two ball in your hand, You're very likely going to
have different results with each of those putters. So people
do react differently to torque. The brilliance of lyingle balancing
is we just eliminated that variable. We're not chasing some
kind of thing. Because here's what I found and what
(26:43):
I noticed, you know, after I got into lyingle balancing
and after I started to understand how putters actually work,
was that everybody reacts to the instrument that's in their hand.
So if you have access rotator ex exportation one way
or another whatever with the putter that you show up
(27:03):
to your fitting with, and then they put a fitter
in your hand, or different putter in your hand, and
you have a different reaction to it that, at least
on paper is better. That's all fine and good until
you get used to it. And then you get used
to it, and now you've got a whole new set
of problems, and likely you go back and they want
to throw a tow hanging putter back in your hands.
And this is why we all have fifteen fucking putters
in our basement. And so you know, we're always we're
(27:26):
always chasing. Now at a high level, of course, these
guys know how to manage torque, you know, out on
tour and the high level amateurs, and they have a
better understanding of what does what they can calibrate, they
can mitigate, they can do all kinds of things to
accommodate torque. The rest of us we don't have a
quintic at home. We don't have a coach watching us,
we don't have any of that, and so we're chasing.
(27:48):
The most incredible thing to watch over the last six
years with our customers is they just stop chasing finally,
you know, they and I have it in my head
like a lot of a lot of golfers, I think
already think that their putters stay square by themselves, you know,
Like I remember I had rounds I'd miss a couple
four footers. I'm so pissed, and I go to the
putting green after the round, I'm like, okay, if I
(28:10):
just keep my hands really neutral and I just rocked
my shoulders, then this putter should return back to square
all on its own. And like it didn't, and you know,
and here we are, so now I.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Kind of dug a little deep and got some clarification
and some understanding. But at some point you find this putter.
You go through this two week sort of tumultuous stretch
where now it's like you're dug in. You You've picked
this putter because of the success you had from distance putts.
You were able to fight through and maybe the money
(28:44):
you paid for it. I don't know if that.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was way more the money I paid for it
and the shit I was going to take for my
friends if I dropped it.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So there you got that, and now you're dug in
and you're stubborn, and you're like, let me understand why
I had that flash of success, because I if I
can get back to that, then then then I have
then I can stop chasing right totally totally. And how
(29:09):
did you do that? So now take me back to
that and you got through that and then and then
that brings us to that this six year path to
where we are now.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Right just about I'll tell you my first film, lab
Golf exists as a series of extraordinary breaks, and the
first one is coming up. So I challenged everything, so
again I was the starting place was the putter's staying
square by itself. So if I'm not returning it to square,
that impact I am doing something. I am manipulating the putter.
(29:41):
And ultimately the you know I didn't have I didn't
I didn't say it like this at the time. But
this is my stick now, is that when you know
people are kind of learning to accommodate the tech, every
other putter that you've ever used in your entire life,
you have to keep it square, and with a lab
(30:02):
putter you have to let it stay square. So just
that mentality shift alone changed everything. So if the task
is now to let the putter face stay square versus
keep it square, the first changes started to happen in
my hands and in the way that I held the club.
So you know, a good portion of us, you know,
use the kind of stand uply reverse overlap grip, and
(30:25):
we do that for stability. And he I think he
even calls out that word in his book, The art
of putting is that this this this, you know, the
lead hand index finger, you know, going over the knuckles
there stabilizes the face. Well, with a lying the balance putter,
you're not looking for stability. The stability is already bilt
into the head. So what's that to like get out
(30:47):
of the way kind of exactly. So, so I had
to get into a mode where, you know, kind of
the words I used that I was making my hands
feel stupid, and so I used to have like a
pretty strong tilted down here. I had a pretty strong
left hand grip like that, or the left hand was
(31:08):
over this way, similar to kind of how I grip
a seven iron, pretty neutral right hand kind of on
top of it. And then I couldn't tell you or
remember specifically how I arrived there, but I eventually started
working my hands underneath the putter and so really weak
left hand underneath it, strong right hand, and this sort
(31:29):
of neutralized my hands to where the putter was just
kind of doing its thing. I felt so uncomfortable gripping
it that way that I had no choice but to
just trust that the putter was going to come back square.
So those two things so kind of the way I
held the putter, and it was more than like the
physical holding it was it was a perspective. I mean,
this was a philosophical perspective shift on what I was
(31:50):
trying to do in the movement of a putting stroke.
Between the way I held it and then the way
I kind of moved it, sort of getting smoother and
more gravity oriented rather than acceleratetion oriented. That was when
things really came alive. And and that's another one of
the things so that you know, usually the first thing
when they if they email us if they're struggling, go
check your alignment. The second thing they call us, and
(32:11):
they'll say, I'm having speed troubles. And one hundred percent
of the time I can be like leaving the long
one short and hitting the short ones by, and they're like, yep.
And the reason being on the long ones is that
that disappearing effect. Most people don't take the putter back
any further from forty feet than they do from twenty.
And if you've got a forty footer and you take
(32:35):
the twenty foot backstroke and just try to accelerate it,
the putter completely disappears on you. It feels vague and weird,
you get uncomfortable, you leave it ten feet short, you'll
overcompensate and jam the ten footer five feet by. And
so I got I got really lucky just working through
all of that on my own. And then you know,
(32:55):
like I said that the vast improvement in my scores
was just it was nuts. It was time. I wasn't
even actually hitting the ball particularly well, but it didn't matter.
I was I could just didn't matter at all. I
could hit any as long as I got it somewhere
within you know, thirty yards of the green. I then
knew I could hit it somewhere within ten feet of
the hole, and I knew I was going to make
the ten footer. It just didn't matter. And my bad
(33:19):
rounds I was, you know, my scoring average, and this
is a very very strong golf course that I play.
My scoring average was seventy two. That's the lowest it's
ever been. So just a regular old ho hum day
for me was even par, And within that stretch I
had some of the finest rounds of golf I've ever played.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
So Han is in. He's a believer, a user, a convert.
He's passed the looks, he's made the adjustments to the
style and the feel he's making putts, which results in
better golf, better scores. Again, the year is twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Then one day I'm out playing. And one of the
fun things about these putters is that because you know
when you start spinning him around. There isn't some massive
torque pulling in one direction or another. This was kind
of like my fidget, right, Like, I'm just always walking
around the green spinning the potter, spinning the putter. And
one day I'm spinning it and I hear a little
(34:11):
click that's not good, and I kind of go, you know,
kind of go like this with the head. He goes fuck.
And I didn't want to touch it, you know, I
didn't want to do anything. So now I spend the
next like month and a half like just not even
breathing on the putter. Like I was putting it in
(34:32):
the cart next to me. I wasn't putting it in
my bag. I just like just so desperate to keep
this thing together because I could feel the head was loose.
And then finally I think balls off. And so at
that time talked to Bob. Bob said, you gotta you know,
here's here's Bill's number. Bill Pressy was the inventor of
(34:53):
the putter Litill Pressy the fourth. He's from Reno, and
he gave me Bill's number. I sent back the putter.
Bill reached out, you know, to you just apologize for
the head fallen off and tell me how it was
going to go, and gave me a shipping label and everything.
We sent it back and then we just got to
talking and we just hit it off. I mean, he
(35:15):
just absolute kindred golf spirits and he is to this
day the highest golf iq of any human being I
have ever met, and certainly within within the realms of putting,
for sure, just an absolute genius. And then all the
way through the bag and it's everything. He's a golf historian,
(35:35):
certainly an equipment historian, a wonderful instructor. And he'd been
you know, up and down the every facet of the
golf business. He'd been in sales, he'd been an instruction
he tried, you know, a couple of different times to
get out on tour. I mean, just a just an
everything golf guy.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
When Sam called me, a head fell off, of course,
so he's like, hey, you know, my head fell off,
And I kid you not. As soon as I heard
his voice, and I think he probably experienced this, I
was like, this guy, this guy right here, he's got something.
(36:14):
And and you know, when we started talking and he
expressed interest in looking at purchasing the company and through
a couple hours of talking and phone calls, I quickly
realized that he had the vision and excuse. He had
(36:35):
the vision and the skill set, the people skills that
that I desperately wanted as a partner.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You're back to making putts, You're spinning your putter again.
Your you're fucking winning money and winning your matches or whatever.
Like life is good, and you're staying in contact.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
With Bill yep, yep. And we were, I mean actually
had some fun on online too. So at this point
I got into it. You know, he led me to
a couple of different you know, kind of golf specific
Facebook groups and stuff, and you know, and Bill, uh,
you know, I was doing his best to promote the
product and get it out there and taking a lot
(37:13):
of shift for the way it looked. And so then
he and I kind of became my teammates online, you know,
kind of just trying to extol the virtues of of
lying a balance to the world. And then it kind
of a month or two of doing that. I don't
have the timing quite right, but I think I think
it was probably two or three months. Uh, the company
(37:37):
was in real trouble and they you know, builded an
incredible job with the technology and the patents and all
the stuff. And to kind of get it going, he
partnered with some folks that just I just didn't know
what they're doing. They just they you know, they tried
their hand at marketing and manufacturing and whatever, and it
just it just wasn't working. And uh so, uh they
(38:00):
were about to close the doors, and I'd ask Bill
to put me in touch with the guys that he
was partnered with, worked out a deal with them. Me,
my dad, and my brother all put everything together and
bought out Bill's existing partners. And that's how the whole thing,
that's how LAB started. So then at that point, so
that was late twenty seventeen, I think we were officially,
(38:25):
you know, business married in early twenty eighteen, and we
were off to the races and or so I thought
back to Bob Duncan.
Speaker 9 (38:35):
I knew Sam's background a little bit, and I knew
that if I got him together with Bill, they'd probably
go crazy. And so I talked to Sam a little bit.
It's kind of funny, but you don't, you know, some
(38:55):
questions not to ask when you're talking about money, And
so I just mentioned to him that THO was looking
for some new uh investors, and Sam kind of took
the took the reins and he and he started talking
to Bill and they got together kind of without my knowledge,
(39:18):
but sooner, no, sooner was there meeting than they started
to come up with some kind of an agreement. And
Sam's I think Sam's family may have gotten involved. I
don't know.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Sam possessed the traits I don't and and and it's
a ham and eggs thing. I'm I'm a complete uh
inventor wild you know, it's you're not going to rain
me in ever and so uh, which is not a
thing that you want running a company. And so so
Sam possessed all those skills and and once uh uh
(40:00):
you know, he expressed interest in in doing a buyout
and we could buy out the company and I'll come
along and we'll reform another company. We we did that, and
and so Uh I took. I didn't get I mean
I did get bought out, but my my equity and
(40:22):
shares and everything that I have just transferred into LAB.
And then we bought out the original investors and partners.
And and then Sam and UH and myself and his family.
You know that the Hans took lion, you know, the
lion share of the company, and which was which was
(40:43):
nothing new to me that I was never in the
controlling seat. So it worked out great.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
How much did it cost to sort of buy out
partners of I have no idea of a plot or
a Putter company? Is that one hundred grand? Is that
five hundred grand? Is that a million dollars?
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Is that less than a million? More than one hundred?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Okay, somewhere from there, you guys, you guys bought in
and and you this was so fucking cool that you
were willing to put in your money, your dad's money,
your brother's money into this and say, let's fucking do this.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Totally and and it's actually really funny. I I have
no memory of this at all, But one of the
guys that works for us here now, fella named Mike
Fritchman just told me Slash reminded me the other day.
He's like, I saw you at the bank the day
that you were sending that wire to get this all going,
(41:43):
and he's like, you were white as a ghost and
scared Shitlessen. I have no memory of it, but he's like, yeah,
I absolutely remember running into you. And you told me
what you were doing, and you were just wide eyed
and freaked out and this and you know, I mean,
this was such a as I look back on it, like,
I have no idea how I convinced myself that this
(42:08):
was something I could do.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Here's Mike Fritchman, who has known Sam Han for almost
thirty years. After Han bought the company, Frichman became employee
number ten. They're now up to eighty employees. Frichman's official
title is Jack of all Trades. I get his reflections
on that day in the bank.
Speaker 10 (42:28):
I've used Sam as like born the wrong time. He
should have been hanging out with Sinatra and those guys
in the rat pack because he's just, you know, for
lack of a better term, a cool cat. So he's
always he's wearing he can wear, you can wear hats
and stuff, and he's just a whole different vibe kind
of a guy. And you know, you know, he's one
of the cool kids, you know. So then I see
(42:48):
him at the bank and he is completely freaked out,
which is not the Sam Hon that I know, And
I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Man?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
You okay?
Speaker 10 (42:55):
Because he's like, I mean, you can tell when someone's
just you know, everything okay. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna
because I'll get ready to buy. I'm going going in
and buying lab Golf. And I'm like, and I think
at that time I already had one of the putters too,
because he was like trying to sell him and so
I'm not sure if I had my putter in the
din or not or just after he bought it, but uh,
(43:15):
but I saw I saw technology, and it's like, you know,
I've been playing golf since I was like three, I'm
sixty two now or something, so and I just saw
someith He's just completely somewhere else. You know, you'll be
able to, you know, sign your first mortgage, how freaked
out you are. And that's that's kind of look he had.
And he goes, yeah, I'm buying the company, and I'm like,
(43:37):
that'll be awesome, you know, and it's just like and
then a couple of months later, he's they moved the
company here, and I see has a little Facebook ad
about I'm going to I guess I can work you know,
two jobs and go work for lab Golf for a
little while, so you know, it starts taking off. So
that was kind of the short version of how it
all happen.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
And I thought that positively every single human being in
the world was going to have the exact same experience
I did, and that I was going to be turning
around and selling the company for hundreds of millions of
dollars in two years. And it did not turn out
that way. Yet. Yes, yet, yet the two years thing
did not happen. And so yeah, and then and then,
(44:20):
I mean, damn dude, I mean we it just school
hard knocks, I mean, just every I had to learn
everything about what we were doing. I would say now,
in retrospect, one of the absolute best things we had
going for us was the fact that I didn't have
any idea how the golf industry worked.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Before we get to the four critical moments that Han
will identify as the keys to lab Golf's success, which
includes Von Taylor, Kelly Slater, Adam Scott, and Lucas Glover,
it's only fair to go back a bit and get
to know more about Bill Pressey, the inventor. We'll do
exactly that in Part two of this podcast series on
how and why lab Golf is changing the way we
(45:04):
look at putters and how we put.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
I started with zero dollars, just an idea. I mean
I put everything I had into it, you know, time
and the kid. And I was widowed with my daughter
with seven so trying to launch a Putter company and
you know, just plow through everything, and then all of
a sudden, this was thrown in my face.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Put another log on the fire. Nobody he is gift
the time
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