On Sunday, J.J. Spaun sank a 64-foot putt to win the U.S. Open, one of many PGA Tour’s 4 main tournaments. Over the ultimate seven holes, he made greater than 136 ft of putts, together with that curling 64-footer on 18. He was the one participant to complete the U.S. Open below par, and it was his first profession main win. It was additionally the primary main win for L.A.B. Golf, the boutique producer that outfitted Spaun together with his DF3 customized putter.
L.A.B. Golf is the brand new firm shaking up the putter circuit, and its innovation is straightforward. Conventional putters have shafts that connect in entrance of the clubface or on the heel, creating twisting forces in the course of the stroke. L.A.B. putters place the shaft instantly by way of the putter’s heart of gravity, behind the face, the shaft stabbing the putter head like a toothpick spearing a sq. of cheese. This creates a nontraditional ahead shaft lean that eliminates torque and helps the face naturally keep sq. all through the placing movement.
J.J. Spaun reacts to creating the successful putt on the 18th inexperienced in the course of the last spherical of one hundred and twenty fifth U.S. Open Championship at Oakmont Nation Membership on June 15, 2025 in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. [Photo: Ben Jared/PGA TOUR/Getty Images]
“Each different putter you’ve used, you’re attempting to maintain it sq.,” Sam Hahn, L.A.B. Golf cofounder and CEO, says. “With L.A.B., you’re attempting to let it keep sq.. So it turns into extra like so many different stroke sports activities on the market—throwing darts, capturing a free throw, throwing a ball—the place you’re not occupied with managing the instrument, you’re occupied with the goal.”
The corporate has been constructed on one easy philosophy: Placing doesn’t need to suck.
[Photo: L.A.B. Golf]
An unintended storage innovation
In 2014, a Reno-based membership builder named Invoice Presse made an unintended discovery in his storage. Whereas testing new designs, he stripped the grip from a putter, and when he grabbed the slick, ungripped shaft, his hand slipped and the putter face flopped open, nearly instinctively. The putter head needed to twist and switch by itself.
This sparked Presse’s curiosity. Utilizing a makeshift gadget crafted from a crutch and fishing wire, he examined each putter in his assortment to see if any would stay sq. when correctly suspended. None did. So he drilled holes in dozens of putter heads to search out the exact shaft placement that will get rid of the undesirable rotation.
This led him to design (and patent) the primary lie angle steadiness putter, the Directed Drive. He bought his L.A.B. putter instantly out of his storage and at golf occasions and showcases.
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A key early adopter
In 2017, Hahn acquired certainly one of Presse’s putters from a golf teacher and skilled dramatic enchancment on the greens. (For you golf nerds, he went from a 1 handicap to plus 3.5 in six weeks.) Then, the membership’s head fell off. When Hahn referred to as customer support and despatched in his damaged L.A.B. putter, Presse personally referred to as to apologize.
Sam Hahn [Photo: L.A.B. Golf]
“We hit it off immediately,” Hahn says. “We talked for hours on the cellphone and discovered that we’re kindred golf spirits.”
A number of months later, Invoice’s club-making firm was struggling and was about to shut its doorways. Hahn, a music venue proprietor in Eugene, Oregon, and a closet golf addict, noticed a chance and partnered with Invoice in 2018 to type L.A.B. Golf.
“The lie angle balancing idea was there, however nothing else actually was,” Hahn says. “The advertising wasn’t there, the manufacturing wasn’t there, the infrastructure, the branding, the final vibe—there merely wasn’t an organization there. However there was an idea.”
The L.A.B. Rats
With no advertising price range, L.A.B.’s development needed to occur organically. Hahn frolicked leaping between golf boards and on-line teams, explaining the physics behind lie angle steadiness and taking a humble method when skeptical golfers mentioned their putters seemed like branding irons.
“We knew we needed to be a little bit self-deprecating and a little bit humble at first after we had been on the market making some fairly daring claims,” Hahn says.
[Photo: L.A.B. Golf]
Then, in 2021, Hahn found one thing sudden: Two L.A.B. clients had created a Fb group for L.A.B. followers. The group exploded right into a thriving neighborhood the place golfers share placing suggestions and success tales, many singing L.A.B.’s praises. Hahn and his workforce started partaking with members, answering questions, and gathering suggestions to tell their product design. It’s a real-time focus group that Hahn and his workforce have leveraged to not solely proceed to iterate and innovate, however to construct putters that golfers really need to use.
“I go browsing to Fb at night time and see what’s happening,” Hahn says. “So after we sit in a product assembly and check out to determine what we must always do subsequent, it’s straightforward, as a result of the shoppers are telling us each day what they need subsequent.”
Right now, the group has been rebranded because the “Lab Rats.” It has greater than 32,000 members and has been a important part of the corporate’s natural development in recognition amongst beginner golfers.
Adam Scott holds a customized L.A.B. Mezz.1-style putter on the Hero Dubai Desert Traditional at Emirates Golf Membership on January 14, 2025 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. [Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images]
L.A.B. cracks the PGA tour
Professional golfers are notoriously conventional and skeptical towards innovation. Sure, there are outliers, like Bryson DeChambeau, a well-known tinkerer who has even used 3D-printed irons.
Then there’s Adam Scott: 2013 Masters champion, former World No. 1, and son of a membership producer.
Scott first noticed L.A.B. design in motion in the course of the 2019 Pebble Seashore Professional-Am, when browsing legend Kelly Slater used the Directed Drive to dominate placing competitions.
“Kelly rolled it higher than anybody in our group—the 2 professionals, the opposite beginner,” Scott recollects. “You couldn’t assist however take discover.”
Scott started utilizing the putter on the Tour in 2019, pivoting to the L.A.B. Golf Mezz.1 putter in 2022. The next yr, Scott’s curiosity advanced into collaboration when he and Hahn met on the L.A. Nation Membership for a few beers, speaking putters and sketching designs on cocktail napkins.
The end result: the L.A.B. OZ.1.
“The preliminary inspiration for the OZ.1 began far-off from putters and was extra about traditional, timeless designs that I like, like a Porsche 911 or a Rolex Datejust watch,” Scott explains. “That was the start line, after which the great factor was that we bought to incorporate a number of the actual L.A.B. look on this extra standard design.”
Scott turned L.A.B.’s first official model ambassador, and it’s straightforward to see why. Since switching to L.A.B. putters full-time in 2022, Scott has achieved outstanding consistency, rating nineteenth and twenty seventh on tour in strokes gained placing the final two years, a big enchancment from his earlier placing struggles that when noticed him rank as little as 188th.
And when one golfer tries one thing new and has success, others take be aware.
[Photo: L.A.B. Golf]
The Putter that received the U.S. Open
Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler, and Lucas Glover are amongst roughly a dozen PGA Tour professionals who’ve used L.A.B. putters. With them, after all, is Spaun, who wielded L.A.B.’s DF3 mannequin on Sunday, a refined model of the corporate’s authentic Direct Drive design.
Span’s particular setup features a 34-inch size, 70-degree lie angle, TPT graphite shaft, and two-degree shaft lean custom-made with a blacked-out Scotty Cameron grip. The putter paid dividends all through the event, the place he gained over 10 strokes on the sector together with his placing—the second-best efficiency within the event. His final-round heroics included not simply the tournament-clinching bomb, but in addition essential birdies from 40 and 22 ft on the again 9.
“It’s been actually good for me currently,” Spaun mentioned in a press convention earlier this yr after The Gamers Championship, the place he misplaced to Rory McIlroy in a playoff. “Hopefully it retains doing what it’s purported to be doing.”
[Photo: L.A.B. Golf]
Spaun’s win places L.A.B. on the map
L.A.B. positioned two gamers in Sunday’s last teams with Spaun and Scott every beginning the ultimate spherical within the prime 4, demonstrating the know-how’s rising acceptance amongst golf’s elite performers, regardless of resistance from each gamers and producers.
“The entire setting is wildly aggressive, cutthroat even,” Hahn says. “The opposite reps actively work to maintain their product in individuals’s arms, they usually don’t prefer it when no one from nowhere begins taking market share.”
Nonetheless, efficiency trumps politics. Along with the dozen gamers on the Tour who’ve used L.A.B. putters, the corporate’s European tour rep experiences 16 putters in play on the DP World Tour, signaling the putter’s sluggish however regular adoption.
Spaun’s U.S. Open win is yet one more windfall for the younger firm seeking to earn a bigger share of golf’s large gear market, valued at $11.7 billion globally in 2025. The corporate itself has grown anyplace from 150 to 300% yearly since inception, in accordance with Hahn, quadrupling its worker headcount to 225 during the last two and a half years. Gross sales tripled in each 2023 and 2024, and the corporate is at the moment on tempo to double gross sales in 2025, although Spaun’s win may speed up that trajectory.
And so they’ve performed all of it whereas sustaining full monetary independence, and by defying standard business knowledge about advertising and endorsements—which Hahn says they’ll proceed doing, so long as it retains working.
“We don’t create product within the title of development,” Hahn says. “We create product within the title of constructing a greater product. The expansion simply form of takes care of itself should you honor the patron.”
