If you’re even the least bit familiar with L.A.B. Golf and its putters, there are a couple of things you probably know.
The shapes are unconventional. (I’m being diplomatic).
The fitting methodology as explained by the company’s signature “Revealer” apparatus is different from the golf industry’s standard operating procedure.
And, if I’ve pieced things together correctly, the former to no small degree necessitates the latter.
I guess you could say L.A.B. putters are weird because weird is what makes them work.
It’s an interesting concept but does any of this suggest L.A.B.Golf has figured out something its competitors haven’t?
Is L.A.B. Golf right?
Is Anybody Right?
“Right”, in the world of golf equipment anyway, is not always an absolute. There are definitively wrong answers but irrefutable rights are fewer and farther between.
Some of the smartest R&D guys I know have never given me a straight answer on anything. That said, and with allowances for the fact there are multiple ways to skin a cat (have you ever considered how gruesome that expression is?), some ways of doing things are inarguably better than others.
Even among a collection of right answers, some will work better than others. More to the point, some will work better for some golfers than others.
With that in mind, L.A.B.’s “lie angle balancing” approach can be right without anybody else being wrong. And while I’ve been resistant to the notion, I’m starting to wonder if L.A.B. might be right for me.
The L.A.B. difference may eventually pique your curiosity as well.
If it takes a while, that’s fine. We’re not so different.
The L.A.B. Golf Evolution
This is a story I feel like I’m uniquely positioned to tell. I’ve been here since before there was L.A.B. Golf, or at least before anyone was talking about it.
I’ve kept my distance. You might even say I’ve avoided L.A.B. and its putters as it has transformed from Directed Force, a small brand that seemingly nobody other than the guys who blew up our inboxes any time their putters weren’t included in Most Wanted testing, to a legit up-and-comer winning the hearts and minds of everyday golfers and a few PGA Tour trophies along the way as well.
With that growth, L.A.B.’s cult following has expanded (they’re still noisy AF, as are L.A.B.’s detractors) and, for whatever its worth, L.A.B. has become the most-played putter brand among MyGolfSpy staff members.
L.A.B. isn’t Odyssey or Scotty Cameron but it’s getting harder to ignore.
My L.A.B. Introduction
My recollection is that our former staff member, Harry Nodwell (now at Wilson Golf where I assume his L.A.B. putter has fallen victim to a 14-club contract), was the first of us to put a L.A.B. putter in the bag.
Harry is a hell of a golfer—the best we’ve ever had on staff. He’s a legitimate plus handicap who drives the ball well over 300 yards but, by his own admission, Harry couldn’t putt for shit.
Among insanely good golfers, he’s likely the second-worst putter I’ve ever seen. I won’t out the first, except to say he’s also British.
L.A.B., Harry said, made him a better putter.
My first hands-on experience with a L.A.B. putter was rolling a few balls with Harry’s before a round at The Country Club at Brookline (humble brag). I remember thinking that the pictures I’d seen didn’t do it justice.
I should clarify. I mean the putter, not the golf course. The Country Club is beautiful, the putter … not so much.
The DF2.1 is massive. Even if you hated putting with it, I’m sure you could repurpose it as an over-the-air HD antenna. And because … physics, maybe, all L.A.B. putters are center-shafted and center-shafted putters will never not be weird to me.
Strike that. Never say never, but they’re traditionally not my thing.
The grip, which I’ve come to learn is L.A.B.’s Press model, put my hands in such an unusual position that I couldn’t rule out the possibility that it had been installed backwards.
I’m not opposed to weird ideas and weird putter shapes (I played a PXG Blackbird for two years) but absolutely everything about Harry’s L.A.B. putter was different than what I play.
I’m not opposed to unconventional shapes. I played one of these for 2 seasons.
Was I curious? Only to the extent of wondering how bad a putter you’d need to be to end up here.
That was at least three years ago. Time passed and more L.A.B. putters found their way into the bags of our staff members. Phillip, Connor, Chris, even Dave from time to time.
When you’re around them every day, it seems they catch on.
Not me, though. Still avoiding them.
Was I curious yet?
Go home. You’re all drunk–and I putt better than the lot of you.
(Admittedly, I was starting to feel like a contrarian)
What Makes L.A.B. Different
Like many of you, I’d wager, I had watched the videos of L.A.B. CEO Sam Hahn explaining the technology with his Revealer apparatus but I was skeptical. Honestly, all I saw was an excited guy with a questionable haircut doing something seemingly silly with a putter.
I was barely listening.
I’ve been at this golf writing thing for more than a decade and while it’s not lost on me that there are a handful of seemingly contradictory fitting methods that produce successful results, this L.A.B. stuff all seemed a little hokey.
As I mentioned, there are a variety of tried-and-true putter fitting methods that other brands use. By most accounts, they work. That is to say, they’re not wrong.
The most conventional and most popular among them is the idea of fitting putters based on your stroke type.
It’s an approach that looks at the putting stroke to determine if the golfer has a straight-back/straight-through stroke or swings the putter on an arc, the classification of which falls somewhere between slight and strong.
To this day, many golfers believe they have a straight-back/straight-through stroke (that’s who faced-balanced putters are for), when very few actually do.
I digress.
Fitting for stroke type works by finding the right pairing of head and hosel to alter where the face points when the putter is balanced (aka, the toe hang) and ultimately how it rotates through the putting stroke.
The moment of inertia (MOI) can move up or down depending on the head but, at the most basic level, we’re talking about tweaking the torque profile of the putter to make it work for the golfer.
When the components match your stroke type, the face will still rotate open and closed during the stroke but it takes less effort to deliver the face squarely at impact. You don’t feel like you’re fighting the putter.
When stroke type and putter design align, you putt better.
The L.A.B. fitting approach is different. It’s based on lie angle balancing (it’s where the L.A.B. name comes from).
I’d heard about lie angle balancing for years but it’s only recently that I stepped back long enough to realize that while the name is intuitive enough, I hadn’t really thought about what the hell it actually means (because I had been dismissive of those Revealer videos).
“Our putters are balanced in a way that has them sitting on the shaft where their biased position is towards the target and it stays throughout the stroke,” said Hahn said in a recent episode of our podcast No Putts Given. “If you’re not manipulating and twisting the shaft and twisting the putter head on your own, gravity actually wants this putter to return to square.”
While face-balanced and toe-hang putters want to flip around during the stroke, Hahn says L.A.B. putters want to stay square. I guess that means it’s on us not to screw it up.
To paraphrase from the parlance of the youths: Let that L.A.B. putter cook.
Curiosity Grows
If there’s a tipping point in this story, it happened early last season.
I play in a Tuesday night match-play league. In my second match of the year, the strangest thing happened.
Both of my opponents showed up with L.A.B. putters. Other than the guys on staff, I couldn’t swear I had ever seen one in the wild before. Ever.
Two in the same night? You guys are messing with me, right?
My buddy Shane, like Harry, had the DF2.1. He had always putted well when we’d played together, so it seemed odd. When I asked about it on the first green, he said he loved it and, for what it’s worth, he was lights-out that night.
L.A.B., he said, made him an even better putter.
It turns out that he had recently bought it from his playing partner. He loved the DF2.1, too, but decided to unload it after having grown tired of his friends making fun of it.
Tough crowd.
He replaced it with a L.A.B. LINK 1. It gave him similar performance to the DF2.1 without all the background noise. Shane doesn’t care what anybody thinks, apparently.
At this point, I wouldn’t say I was coming around to L.A.B., but the scales were tipping a bit.
The Hottest Thing on Tour
Fast forward to the middle to late part of the 2023 PGA Tour season. L.A.B. got hot and got noticed. Lucas Glover–LUCAS FREAKING GLOVER!–won twice using a L.A.B. putter. Camillo Villegas won once.
Greyson Murray won on the Korn Ferry Tour last season and then this year’s Sony Open with L.A.B. in the bag.
Charles Howell III (2023) and Charl Schwartzel (2022) have won LIV events.
Adam Scott and Will Zalatoris are playing L.A.B. putters. They’re just two more on an increasingly longer list.
The quirky little putter company run by the guy with the mop-top hairdo went mainstream and I was starting to feel less like a skeptic and contrarian and more like a guy who might be missing out.
That’s how they get you.
The thing is, I’m not a putter guy. I don’t have a garage full of them. I’m not involved in the limited-edition, custom 1 of not many, that’ll be $2,000 scene. I appreciate what Sean Toulon and Co. are doing but it’s a “no” from me, dog.
The putter is the least interesting club in the bag. Put that on my tombstone.
I’ve always been perfectly content with what I have. Granted, it’s easier to be chill when you’ve been fitted by PING a few times, by PXG just as many, and even Odyssey is willing to help you putt smarter.
Save an excessive amount of screaming in a commercial or two, there’s nothing unconventional in that mix. The toe-hang, fit-for-stroke approach has worked pretty well for me.
The stat tracking apps say I’m a pretty good putter. On my home course, my putting handicap is often scratch or better.
So even if I am more than a little curious, if it ain’t broke …
It’s Always Broke
But I am a golfer and there’s something inherently broke(n) in all of us.
There’s a little voice in my head that says, “What if you could putt better?”
It’s still early in the 2024 golf season. The greens aren’t up to speed and my golf legs are still a bit wobbly. I mean, I haven’t even switched drivers yet.
I’m not putting badly but I’m not lights-out either.
I could be better.
And, so, with every putt that doesn’t drop–even when the misses are by the smallest of margins, the little voice grows louder. It’s starting to sound more like Sam Hahn and it’s becoming oddly specific.
“What if L.A.B. Golf could help you putt better?” it whispers.
I don’t know the answer. For years, I’ve avoided the question like a rectal exam. What I know is that I have co-workers and friends who swear by the company’s putters. The pro tours have been less resistant than I have.
Ask any of them and they’d likely say that L.A.B. is right.
What Next?
It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In the world of golf equipment, it’s also the greatest validator. When a larger brand comes along with its own take on the L.A.B. design (the momentum suggests it will happen), we’ll know that L.A.B. isn’t wrong.
None of this proves that L.A.B. is absolutely right but it sure as hell has me wondering if I’ve been wrong this whole time.
It might be time to listen to that voice and try a L.A.B. putter (but probably not until after I switch drivers).
This article is written in partnership with L.A.B. Golf.
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