Speaker 1: Here's the scary similarities. I had an idea just like Carston.
Speaker 1: I started the company with the mill, just like Carston,
Speaker 1: the exact same mill. And I went around in the
Speaker 1: trunk of in my superrew. I didn't have his call,
Speaker 1: but I had a super brew outback, and I drove around, uh, California,
Speaker 1: in Nevada and uh and would sleep in the back
Speaker 1: of the car and sell potters and do demo days.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, just going on.
Speaker 1: So I hire a babysitter for my daughter, and then
Speaker 1: I'd hit the road and then come back.
Speaker 4: Put another log on the fire.
Speaker 5: Here is given time. Welcome to the fire Pit with
Speaker 5: Matt Chanella.
Speaker 6: Thanks again to Joe Horowitz for our theme song. In
Speaker 6: case you missed it, we produced a podcast on the
Speaker 6: writing and recording of the song with Grammy Award winning
Speaker 6: producer Jakir King, which Joe called The Story. If you
Speaker 6: haven't heard it, it's worth scrolling through our archive and
Speaker 6: listening in on the process of producing a song from
Speaker 6: start to finish. As for this story, how and why
Speaker 6: Bill Pressey invented not only a putter, but game changing
Speaker 6: putter technology. How and why a guy like Sam Hahn
Speaker 6: would push all in and evolve and grow Pressy's invention
Speaker 6: in a way that it ends up in the bag
Speaker 6: and hands of Lucas Glover, who used it to win
Speaker 6: back to back PGA tour events in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 6: We're just getting started. In Part one, you hear from
Speaker 6: both Pressy and Han how and why they met, and
Speaker 6: you get a sense of why they work so well together.
Speaker 6: While Pressey had a good idea, he needed Han for
Speaker 6: capital rebranding and to get the unconventional tool in the
Speaker 6: hands of prominent influencers and tour players. But before we
Speaker 6: go any further, another quick appreciation for Dormy Workshop, the
Speaker 6: Canadian based company that only makes quality, handmade leather goods
Speaker 6: such as custom headcovers and accessories. The Bishop Brothers are
Speaker 6: good golfers, good friends, and we're lucky to have them
Speaker 6: putting our logo on their products. All available at Firepitcollective
Speaker 6: dot com. For their complete collection of originals, headcovers and classics,
Speaker 6: go to Dormy Workshop dot com and use promo code
Speaker 6: fire Pit fifteen for fifteen percent off your next purchase.
Speaker 6: For a quick recap of Part one of this series,
Speaker 6: Sam Hahn is an Oregon based golf enthusiast who managed
Speaker 6: a band and a bar by night, played a lot
Speaker 6: of golf by day, and on one day in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 6: Bob Duncan, Han's friend and swing instructor, presented a new putter.
Speaker 7: Bob comes up and, you know, shows me the reno
Speaker 7: two point one by a company called Directed Force at
Speaker 7: the time was how it was kind of branded, and
Speaker 7: I was like, what the am I.
Speaker 2: Allowed to swear? Yeah, of course you are, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 7: Barf likes full on barf. I mean, it was just
Speaker 7: the most ridiculous looking thing I'd ever seen. I was like,
Speaker 7: there's no chance I'm putting with that.
Speaker 6: Duncan doesn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 2: You know, the revealer is profound.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's incredible to see a putter flopping around
Speaker 7: and not doing what you know, the golf putter gurus
Speaker 7: of the world have told you a toe hangg putter
Speaker 7: is supposed to do, or a face balance butter is
Speaker 7: supposed to do. And then you see this one staying
Speaker 7: square all by itself, and it's intriguing. So he's like,
Speaker 7: just give me nine holes, grab a cart, went out
Speaker 7: on the golf course and I one putted the first
Speaker 7: seven greens for a total of one hundred and fifty
Speaker 7: feet worth of putts.
Speaker 6: Like lots of people who get past the look of
Speaker 6: what was directed for us, and now lab Golf, the
Speaker 6: investment for Han was paying significant dividends.
Speaker 7: There's no more tinkering, there's no more tweaking, like this
Speaker 7: is the this is the putter. It's stay square by itself.
Speaker 7: So all I gotta do is let it And and
Speaker 7: so I went through my own process and figuring out
Speaker 7: how to utilize the technology and ultimately ended up with
Speaker 7: a very different technique than I had ever used with
Speaker 7: a putter. And then and then the results became off
Speaker 7: the chart. So starting then after I kind of found
Speaker 7: my groove with it. I was a one handicap at
Speaker 7: the time, I was a plus three and a half.
Speaker 6: Six weeks later, Hans says, there are four very serendipitous
Speaker 6: moments in this company's history. Ironically, the first is when
Speaker 6: his putter breaks.
Speaker 7: One of the fun things about these putters is that,
Speaker 7: because you know, when you start spinning them around, there
Speaker 7: isn't some massive torque pulling in one direction or another.
Speaker 7: This was kind of like my fidget, right, Like I'm
Speaker 7: just always walking around the grain, spinning the potter, spinning
Speaker 7: the putter, and one day I'm.
Speaker 2: Spinning it and I hear a little click. That's not good.
Speaker 2: I kind of go, you know, kind of go like
Speaker 2: this with the head. It goes.
Speaker 6: Fuck Bob Duncan strikes again.
Speaker 9: I knew Sam's background a little bit, and I knew
Speaker 9: that if I got him together with Bill, they'd probably
Speaker 9: go crazy.
Speaker 6: Bill Pressey on chemistry.
Speaker 3: When Sam called me.
Speaker 1: My head fell off, of course, she's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: my head fell off, And I kid you not. As
Speaker 1: soon as I heard his voice, and I think he'd
Speaker 1: probably experienced this, I was like, this guy, it was
Speaker 1: game on.
Speaker 7: They were about to close the doors, and I'd ask
Speaker 7: Bill to put me in touch with the guys that
Speaker 7: he was partnered with, worked out a deal with them, Me,
Speaker 7: my dad, and my brother all put everything together and
Speaker 7: bought out Bill's existing partners. And that's how the whole thing,
Speaker 7: that's how LAB started. So then at that point, so
Speaker 7: that was late twenty seventeen. I think we were officially,
Speaker 7: you know, business married in early twenty eighteen, and we
Speaker 7: were off to the races, and or so I.
Speaker 1: Thought Sam possessed the traits I don't. And and and
Speaker 1: it's a ham and eggs thing. I'm a complete uh
Speaker 1: inventor wild you know. It's you're not gonna rain me
Speaker 1: in ever and so uh, which is not a thing
Speaker 1: that you want running a company. And so so Sam
Speaker 1: possessed all those skills and and once uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he expressed interest in in doing a buyout, and we
Speaker 1: could buy out the company and I'll come along and
Speaker 1: we'll reform another company.
Speaker 3: We we did that.
Speaker 6: So consider yourself caught up. And we're going to get
Speaker 6: to more serendipitous moments in this company's history as it
Speaker 6: relates to Tim Wilkinson, Jeff Sluman, Von Taylor, Kelly Slater,
Speaker 6: Adam Scott. And then we do a deep dive into
Speaker 6: Lucas Glover and lab Golf's impact on his career. But
Speaker 6: before we get to all of that, those people and players,
Speaker 6: I felt compelled to go back.
Speaker 5: A bit lie angle balance.
Speaker 6: I understand what all those things are, but is that
Speaker 6: the that's the essence of all of this? That is
Speaker 6: the essence. It's it's you know, like, if you're going
Speaker 6: to like summarize all of that. That's the magic dust.
Speaker 7: Li angle balance is the magic dust. Absolutely, Bill's invention
Speaker 7: is the magic dust. And when you get to talk
Speaker 7: to him and find out how he came up with this,
Speaker 7: it's it'll blow your mind. I mean, happy accidents, man, incredible, incredible,
Speaker 7: just stars aligning for him to discover this thing, because
Speaker 7: it's so fucking simple, right, Like, why wouldn't we Why
Speaker 7: didn't somebody think, shouldn't we have the putter balance to
Speaker 7: go where the fucking ball goes?
Speaker 2: And nobody thought of it?
Speaker 7: And he, uh, he did, and so yes, that is
Speaker 7: the magic dust. And what the magic dust does is
Speaker 7: unlocked people's potential. And that's why we play golf, right,
Speaker 7: it's because we know that that the potential is there.
Speaker 7: We know we know that we could have shot two
Speaker 7: shots better every single fucking round we play.
Speaker 2: And with lab you get that much closer the hope.
Speaker 2: The hope becomes real and it's a lot.
Speaker 7: Of fucking fun when you get these things dialed.
Speaker 6: Meet Bill Pressey, a fifty four year old journeyman. He's
Speaker 6: a good player, an instructor, an inventor. He told me
Speaker 6: that as a kid in mcwan, Wisconsin, in a basement
Speaker 6: tinkering with clubs. His grandfather once told him there are
Speaker 6: four ways to making money. You can win it, marry it,
Speaker 6: sell it, or invent it. The take me back to
Speaker 6: the beginning, Why or when or where did you get
Speaker 6: the idea that you had some sense of technology that
Speaker 6: was game changing and that this was something you were
Speaker 6: willing to kind of push all in on.
Speaker 3: Gouss.
Speaker 1: It must have been twenty twelve or something. I missed
Speaker 1: the Monday qualifier for the Reno Tahoe Open that I
Speaker 1: was playing in, and I just hit the ball te
Speaker 1: the green. This I think I hit sixteen or seventeen
Speaker 1: greens and ended up shooting seventy two. I just about
Speaker 1: I want to go home and cut my wrists. But
Speaker 1: so it was really the thing I did. I had
Speaker 1: a pain SeeU five face balanced putter from the ping
Speaker 1: works department, you know, custom machine line in it and everything.
Speaker 1: And I back in the day when I got in
Speaker 1: the golf business, this is in the eighties, early mid
Speaker 1: mid eighties, they had the Cobra tricep cutter and they
Speaker 1: would go outside your arm, so you'd hold it down
Speaker 1: here in the shaft with slide outside your arm, so
Speaker 1: you couldn't do any risk motion and it was it
Speaker 1: was the tricep putter. So I had one of those,
Speaker 1: and I cut the grip off my pin and put
Speaker 1: a uh you know, steel shaft extension just wedged it
Speaker 1: in the end of the shaft so I could lock
Speaker 1: it outside my shirt and start making strokes.
Speaker 3: And my hands were so greasy.
Speaker 1: From you know, like the sunloation and the sunblock, and
Speaker 1: my shirt was slippery and it was a little sweaty,
Speaker 1: and I could not keep that putter face square just
Speaker 1: holding the steel shaft.
Speaker 3: It kept rotating.
Speaker 6: A rotating face is the issue here, and it becomes
Speaker 6: a theme. It's the basis for Pressy to keep tinkering
Speaker 6: and testing.
Speaker 1: If face balance putter isn't staying square, which I could
Speaker 1: see just in my just holding it on my shirt,
Speaker 1: then then maybe these other putters have some something different
Speaker 1: that I was never told as a young professional. And
Speaker 1: long story short, I go and I say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to make something to hang the putter because people
Speaker 1: aren't going to believe me that this tricep that I'm
Speaker 1: doing that. And I invented their first revealer in my
Speaker 1: garage with a with an old handrail stick and a
Speaker 1: shelf bracket and a string and a hook at the bottom,
Speaker 1: and I could just suspend putters. So I went down
Speaker 1: my arsenal of fifty something cutters, and none of them,
Speaker 1: none of them did what I thought they were going
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 6: As we learned in part one of this series, Pressey's
Speaker 6: homemade revealer is key to this story and ultimately the
Speaker 6: success of his brands and the business. It was a
Speaker 6: cobbled together tool that he eventually made out of a crutch,
Speaker 6: the type you'd use if you broke your leg. He
Speaker 6: used the two metal rods of the crutch and created
Speaker 6: a bridge between the two rods that he could suspend
Speaker 6: any putter from which ultimately revealed the marketing behind face
Speaker 6: balanced and toe hank putters is just that marketing, and
Speaker 6: that both types of putters face balance in toe hang
Speaker 6: required manipulation by the player to get the putter face
Speaker 6: back to being squared impact.
Speaker 1: So the revealer, the next stage of that was was
Speaker 1: like a cane, like an old man's cane, instead of
Speaker 1: the stick and hook. And then then I took it
Speaker 1: up to the broken crutch, and the broken crutch got
Speaker 1: quite a bit of attention.
Speaker 3: Early on in the forums, there's crazy guys out there
Speaker 3: with this broken crutch. Well, you hauled the putter right,
Speaker 3: and so we said, well that got quite a reaction,
Speaker 3: and it's showing that all these other putters are It's
Speaker 3: just miss marketing. You know, it's no in no way
Speaker 3: in physics does a face balanced putter stay square to
Speaker 3: a straight back straight There's zero connection.
Speaker 6: One more time, because I know this part of the story.
Speaker 6: It's technical. The term face balance is in reference to
Speaker 6: the idea that if a putter is suspended perpendicular to
Speaker 6: the ground, the face of the putter will sit square
Speaker 6: to the sky. A toe hangputter, if suspended perpendicular to
Speaker 6: the ground, the toe of the putter will point down
Speaker 6: at the ground. And if you hear the term torque,
Speaker 6: that's the twist of the putter face and any additional
Speaker 6: weight you feel as the putter head is opening or
Speaker 6: closing throughout the putting stroke. What press he is trying
Speaker 6: to create was a putter with no torque, a putter
Speaker 6: that essentially didn't twist or turn as you make the
Speaker 6: putting stroke. A putter that actually did what face balance
Speaker 6: and toe hang putters claimed to do, which is b
Speaker 6: square at the point of impact and get that ball
Speaker 6: rolling online press. He didn't stop tinkering and testing until
Speaker 6: he achieved lie angle and balance for his set up
Speaker 6: and putty stroke.
Speaker 1: In my mind, you know, being the creative type, I
Speaker 1: already envisioned what it should look like, right. You got
Speaker 1: to you got to grab onto something and say, this
Speaker 1: is what it should look like, regardless of your predisposed
Speaker 1: thoughts or or or expectations of what something is doing
Speaker 1: when it's not doing. And so I just went about
Speaker 1: making something that did what I thought it should look like,
Speaker 1: which is lyingle balancing. And it started with the old
Speaker 1: bett Ardy hour glass big bend putter I had. I
Speaker 1: had a knockoff of the big bend from in his
Speaker 1: Zone Diamond Tour component company in Chicago. Anyways, it's a
Speaker 1: great little platform because it's aluminum and it's flat, and
Speaker 1: it's got all the holes running through the side. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look at the side of a big ben putter,
Speaker 1: there's all these little hole and so they take weight
Speaker 1: and they put it in the front and back. But
Speaker 1: on top of it looked solid, but inside it's all
Speaker 1: wayfered out, and I'm thinking that's a really good idea.
Speaker 6: Listening to Bill Pressey can make my mind feel wafered out,
Speaker 6: and I'm guessing you might feel the same. But that's
Speaker 6: exactly why he was capable of inventing the original directed
Speaker 6: force putter and no one else did. Another quick step
Speaker 6: back in history and important to note it was nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy six when Raymond Floyd used the ram Zebra putter
Speaker 6: to win the Masters. The Zebra was among the first
Speaker 6: D shaped mallet putters that was quote face balanced.
Speaker 1: When the Zebra came out, that was kind of like
Speaker 1: it was hot and heavy on the market and King
Speaker 1: was losing. Ping was getting their butt kicked in sales,
Speaker 1: and I was selling them. I was in the shop
Speaker 1: in the eighties, you know, fitting and selling pings, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the Zebra and ray Floyd came out.
Speaker 1: So then Ping's counter to face ballotalancing was well, the
Speaker 1: potter doesn't really do that. We have toe hang tow
Speaker 1: hag flows and there was nothing to substantiate that. This
Speaker 1: was just the marketing tool to stop the bleeding. A
Speaker 1: term that was developed to stop the bleeding to face balance,
Speaker 1: because the face balancing was the greatest buzzword that had
Speaker 1: come out in putters since whatever healed tow waiting. So
Speaker 1: the whole story you know of how we got to
Speaker 1: toe hang and face balancing, and this is just my
Speaker 1: opinion forty something years in the business. It came about
Speaker 1: when when Ray Floyd was started rolling the Zebra and
Speaker 1: ping was getting crushed in the post shops, and so
Speaker 1: they decided to come out with toeflow. Prior to this,
Speaker 1: and if you go back in the history books, toflo
Speaker 1: did not exist before.
Speaker 3: Face balancing in any marketing or advertising.
Speaker 1: Ever, it was not even talked about until face balancing
Speaker 1: came out.
Speaker 6: Almost thirty years later. What Pressey came up with where
Speaker 6: he inserted the hazzle and how he manipulated and placed
Speaker 6: the weights throughout the manufactured knockoff putterhead he had his
Speaker 6: garage invention did in fact stay balanced throughout the stroke
Speaker 6: and was square at impact with no manipulation from any
Speaker 6: outside agency. He achieved lie angle balance. That's what his
Speaker 6: revealer in fact revealed not only to Pressy, but eventually
Speaker 6: the industry and marketplace.
Speaker 1: Once I had the product doing what the original protos
Speaker 1: doing what they were supposed to do, then I started
Speaker 1: expanding and making the revealer. I took it to work.
Speaker 1: At the time, I was the director of his stroduction
Speaker 1: at Golf Tech, and you know, just teaching teaching, teaching, teaching,
Speaker 1: and so I take it to work and show some
Speaker 1: of my clients and they were blown away, you know,
Speaker 1: putting their putter in this little funky looking broken stick
Speaker 1: thing and standing around and they're like, well, what does
Speaker 1: that mean? I hold the putter. I'm like, I know,
Speaker 1: you hold the potter. You hold your steering wheel on
Speaker 1: your car too, but your car drives straight right.
Speaker 6: Bill Pressey got the patent for his product and his brand,
Speaker 6: the Directed Force Putter, in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: My initial launch of the company, man that I get
Speaker 1: some heat and some angry folks.
Speaker 7: And.
Speaker 1: Then a lot of great a lot of great comments,
Speaker 1: and those outweighed the angry ones.
Speaker 3: And the reviewer was then like the thing.
Speaker 1: And and so that showed really what was happening. And
Speaker 1: from an unbiased perspective, when you're going up against marketing
Speaker 1: dollars from major OEMs and you don't have marketing dollars,
Speaker 1: because you know, the people can be brainwashed and and
Speaker 1: through marketing, and we see it right now in our
Speaker 1: in our social.
Speaker 3: And the media and just in Americans in general, it's
Speaker 3: really easy.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing happens, and then the next person is
Speaker 1: just assumes that that's right.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 1: The revealer was great because it cut through all of
Speaker 1: that and there's no batteries, it's just gravity and no
Speaker 1: smoking mirrors. Here's what your cutter is doing. It doesn't flow,
Speaker 1: that doesn't stay squere. And so they were there were
Speaker 1: years and years of you know, just trying to make
Speaker 1: headway in the industry in overcoming the perception and changing
Speaker 1: the paradigm of what we perceive a putter is doing
Speaker 1: because of marketing dollars and a message that was sent
Speaker 1: out over generations.
Speaker 3: Like I was one of those pros.
Speaker 1: You probably were too, uh that for I don't know
Speaker 1: how long I thought face balance was going to be
Speaker 1: square backs, square through.
Speaker 3: It's just not. And so.
Speaker 1: As a connoisseur of golf clubs and a master club repairman,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was like the go to guy
Speaker 1: for golf tech for clubs, like on the national level, and.
Speaker 3: I was so embarrassed. I was kind of mad, Like
Speaker 3: I really was.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, director instruction and people what my
Speaker 1: word carries credibility, and so when I'm talking to my clients,
Speaker 1: credibility and accuracy of comments and accuracy information and what
Speaker 1: you're telling people has to be good. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I was pretty offended as a pro when I found
Speaker 1: out that when I figured out none of this was real,
Speaker 1: and so LAB was ultimately started as a as a
Speaker 1: desperate attempt to fix my own yips, because I had
Speaker 1: the yips really mad, like I was shaking, like the
Speaker 1: plutter when I took it back, maybe rotated in thirty
Speaker 1: three different directions by different degrees.
Speaker 8: It's just.
Speaker 3: I couldn't stop it.
Speaker 6: The USGA and RNA announced the ban on anchored strokes,
Speaker 6: all anchored strokes, not just putting, in May of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 6: and although it wouldn't go into effect until twenty sixteen,
Speaker 6: press he had to go back into the garage and
Speaker 6: back to the drawing board and called a slight audible
Speaker 6: on his invention.
Speaker 1: Original grip was called the billboard bill and then this
Speaker 1: grip was twenty one inches and real wide, and there's
Speaker 1: a flat grip that went outside your arm.
Speaker 3: The USGA changed those rules.
Speaker 1: At the time, I just three D printed the original
Speaker 1: press gript, which was not lap. It was just a
Speaker 1: it was just a tricep locking grip. To bring the
Speaker 1: tricept putter grip back into the mainstream. So USJA dropped
Speaker 1: their ruling about anchoring, which prohibited tricep locking.
Speaker 3: And that that type of nature.
Speaker 1: So when I got back and they did that, I
Speaker 1: realized that my original putters that were just shafted in
Speaker 1: the back.
Speaker 3: Were not balanced.
Speaker 1: And that's where they'd all kind of like I did
Speaker 1: grips and.
Speaker 3: Then and then they changed the ruling, and then I
Speaker 3: took it.
Speaker 1: Off, and then I removed the shaft to a balance position.
Speaker 1: And this all happened like I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember when they changed the rules. They came about pretty quick,
Speaker 1: like there was a little bit of chatter about it
Speaker 1: for a week or two and then bang it's that
Speaker 1: was that. And so I was in the process of
Speaker 1: trying to start my first company at the time based
Speaker 1: upon these rules, and they'd changed the rules like that,
Speaker 1: and so I scrambled to invent LAB because I couldn't
Speaker 1: lock it anymore. And that's how the balance thing kind
Speaker 1: of came about. You know, I was tinkering. This is
Speaker 1: all over the course of like two weeks or some
Speaker 1: three weeks or something.
Speaker 6: I asked Press if he had any financial backing or
Speaker 6: partners who were helping him produce his product.
Speaker 1: I was teaching and one of the guys I was teaching,
Speaker 1: nick Off Tech, owned a piston company, and so he
Speaker 1: made pistons for race cars, and he had basically the
Speaker 1: ability to make putters. I saw that right away too.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I know what machines you need.
Speaker 1: And so he had the capability and the passion for golf,
Speaker 1: and so did I. So, you know, he was my
Speaker 1: original partner, and I was, you know, I was the brains.
Speaker 1: He used the money and the ability to manufacture and
Speaker 1: bring something to market, and that was down in Carson City.
Speaker 1: So we partnered fifty to fifty, and that's how we
Speaker 1: started direct to Force putters.
Speaker 6: In addition to the trials and tribulations of trying to
Speaker 6: invent a putter, the pivot based on changing rules and regulations,
Speaker 6: getting a patent, going to market, and competing with the
Speaker 6: power and marketing dollars of the OEM's original equipment manufacturers.
Speaker 6: Pressey was a single dad, widowed in two thousand and six.
Speaker 6: His partner and five year old daughter were in a
Speaker 6: car accident. His partner died, his daughter survived. Roughly eight
Speaker 6: years later with his daughter at the age of thirteen,
Speaker 6: Pressy and Directed Force were forging the aluminum heads in
Speaker 6: Los Angeles. They machined the product in house or through
Speaker 6: a local vendor, and the anadizing stage was outsourced.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was starting lab I look back, I
Speaker 1: don't even know how I got off the ground because
Speaker 1: it was you know, we were just shoe straining in
Speaker 1: it and literally like there was there was marketing dollars
Speaker 1: was zero. Like And I'll tell you what's interesting, Matt,
Speaker 1: this is the first I think most people would consider
Speaker 1: us an OEM. Now, this is the first time an
Speaker 1: OEM company, from start to finish, has been tracked on
Speaker 1: social media. Anything that was important from very day one
Speaker 1: to current to current I put on my social my
Speaker 1: Facebook page. So all the old protos, all the old
Speaker 1: you know, when Bryson turned pro, oh he was rolling
Speaker 1: director for us and I had him down in Vegas.
Speaker 1: So all the all the old protos, new accounts, the
Speaker 1: entire history of a company going from startup to boutique
Speaker 1: to OEM has all been documented on social media.
Speaker 3: First time ever, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Bill.
Speaker 6: So twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, how many how
Speaker 6: many putters? How many putters are you selling?
Speaker 2: Per year?
Speaker 6: Like you out there, you're onto something. You've got this revealer.
Speaker 6: Some people are like, quack, bullshit, get the fuck. Some
Speaker 6: people are like, hold on, let me see that, let
Speaker 6: me try it. How many are you selling? You're going
Speaker 6: to merchandise shows. You're out of your trunk. Basically, how
Speaker 6: many are you selling a year? In those first few
Speaker 6: lean years.
Speaker 1: You know, I would order heads at like a thousand
Speaker 1: at a time, fifteen hundred at a time, and we
Speaker 1: would we would show a few thousand a year.
Speaker 6: That's a lot, a few thousand putters a year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we would show you know, my demo
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be I'm gonna give this a shout
Speaker 1: out to this guy. So there's a fella is a
Speaker 1: PGA professional name. His name is Matt Holmes, and he's
Speaker 1: down in Palm Springs now. He was one of my
Speaker 1: early sales reps and he sold. We brought him in
Speaker 1: as a sales rep for NorCal and he was a
Speaker 1: fitter of the Year in Northern California. PGA. He sold
Speaker 1: so many putters in one trip with his credibility and
Speaker 1: the revealer and some demos and a little pop up
Speaker 1: it and you know the table with the directive force.
Speaker 1: He went around arcount and so so many putters he
Speaker 1: had me back ordered for six months.
Speaker 6: Meet Matt Holme. He's a PGA teaching pro at Desert
Speaker 6: Willow Golf Resort in Palm Desert, California.
Speaker 8: Twenty twelve. It's the first time I saw a directed
Speaker 8: forest putter. I believe it was at a like a
Speaker 8: local trade show in the Northern California PGA section. Twenty thirteen.
Speaker 8: I'd seen several guys in our section use a putter.
Speaker 8: Finished second. I finished second in the stroke play, so
Speaker 8: the senior stroke play at Halfmoon Bay, and the guy
Speaker 8: that wanted shot out sixty seven in the wind. Stuart Smith,
Speaker 8: I'm sure you know Stuart, great professional at Areno, and
Speaker 8: he ended up winning the tournament, beat me by five
Speaker 8: and then and then it kind of rolled from there
Speaker 8: and I was I was not a user at that point.
Speaker 8: It was a bullseye guy, right, So I was an
Speaker 8: old school of And twenty fifteen I did a little
Speaker 8: stint on the Radio with Golf Guys show a nine
Speaker 8: seventy at of Modesto, and he came on the show
Speaker 8: and I just talked about the putter a little bit,
Speaker 8: and that's how kind of get started.
Speaker 2: Is Bill Pressy a genius?
Speaker 8: Bill Press he is a genius. Don't tell him that though.
Speaker 8: And he's a very creative, outside the box kind of guy.
Speaker 8: And he's one of these guys that he has the
Speaker 8: ability to look at something for what it is and
Speaker 8: not kind of what it's been marketed to.
Speaker 2: He's not a marketer. I told him.
Speaker 8: In fact, I ended up spending my own money. I said, hey, Bill,
Speaker 8: you're going to do this, I'm going to spend some money.
Speaker 8: I bought a tent, I bought a staff bag with
Speaker 8: my name on it. I bought a tablecloth.
Speaker 2: At had thing.
Speaker 8: He was basically operating it like a scientist, not as
Speaker 8: a marketing guy. And I've had a background a little bit.
Speaker 8: He was a PG pro and managing golf courses and
Speaker 8: seeing presentation, and he was not into that. He was
Speaker 8: just into this is how it works. And I said, well, Bill,
Speaker 8: you got to have both to really be successful in
Speaker 8: this business. He kind of jumped on board with that
Speaker 8: and then the rest of his history.
Speaker 6: You almost put him out of business. You were so
Speaker 6: good at your job and doing what you did. You
Speaker 6: had him back ordered for like six months. He said,
Speaker 6: you almost put him out of business.
Speaker 8: Well, I think that's kind of he's kind of jokes
Speaker 8: about it. But yeah, I sold a few putters. I
Speaker 8: traveled around a lot. I had, Like I said, I
Speaker 8: had a big Lincoln town car with a big trunk
Speaker 8: and threw a bunch of putters in there in a
Speaker 8: tent and drove around. And I think the most putters
Speaker 8: I sold them one day. And again, this is a
Speaker 8: putter that no one ever heard about, and a lot
Speaker 8: of these people were buying putters, weren't even in the
Speaker 8: market for putters, so I think they My most I
Speaker 8: ever sold was like sixteen.
Speaker 2: In one day.
Speaker 8: Those small club Turlock Country Country Club in northern California,
Speaker 8: a great little membership there. But and then I kept
Speaker 8: calling him up and saying, when a they going to
Speaker 8: show up? When they're going to show up. And so
Speaker 8: it was like he was, you know, hand making him
Speaker 8: in this friend's machine shop in Rino, and you know,
Speaker 8: there's like one or two employees, and it was as
Speaker 8: hard because he was you know, I was selling them
Speaker 8: much as I can. And then you know people are
Speaker 8: they want it right now.
Speaker 6: So Home ended our conversation with some insightful perspective and
Speaker 6: a useful analogy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's interesting.
Speaker 8: I mean I'm a big Ernest Jones fan, and a
Speaker 8: lot of people don't know mister Jones, but mister Jones
Speaker 8: is a very famous instructor. Unfortunately he lost his leg
Speaker 8: in World War One. The end of his book Swing
Speaker 8: the Club that he makes a statement and this really
Speaker 8: validates Bill's product. The truth is first derided and then
Speaker 8: debated and then accept it as a matter of course.
Speaker 8: So when I got in, everybody was like, oh, that
Speaker 8: thing's junk. To look at that thing, it looks like
Speaker 8: a spaceship. And then people started seeing what was happening.
Speaker 8: Then they kind of did a debate about it and
Speaker 8: started inquiring and now it's like boom, Okay, now it's
Speaker 8: accepted as something that's really true. So it doesn't really
Speaker 8: validated for me because I knew it. I saw it,
Speaker 8: and I understood it. The only thing I had to
Speaker 8: do is I just had to change my perspective little
Speaker 8: bit on how I teach putting, because a lot of
Speaker 8: it was just manipulation, trying to manipulation the putter, keeping
Speaker 8: pressure in a certain position. It's just like if you're
Speaker 8: driving a car. You you're a kid and your dad
Speaker 8: hands you down a twenty year old Lincoln and it
Speaker 8: always pulls to the right and you just hold onto
Speaker 8: the steering wheel. The thing's always pulling to the right.
Speaker 8: And then you get in a new car and it's
Speaker 8: not pulling to the right. It's like, well, okay, I
Speaker 8: learned to drive with this car wanted to pull to
Speaker 8: the right. I learned to pot with a face wanted
Speaker 8: to open. That's what this did. It didn't want to
Speaker 8: do that. The face stays square point. You're driving a
Speaker 8: car that doesn't pull the right. But it's basically a.
Speaker 6: Good analogy back to Bill Pressey.
Speaker 5: How much were you so? How much were you selling
Speaker 5: him for?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think when he first started, ah, it
Speaker 1: was like two seventy five or something, and I thought
Speaker 1: that was crazy, but I so. Another key person in
Speaker 1: how this kept going with Stuart Smith. He's a PGA
Speaker 1: member in the Northern California. He's an excellent player on
Speaker 1: the national lever played for UCLA. So he played with
Speaker 1: Todd Yoshitaki, who is the director of golf at Riviera,
Speaker 1: and Todd is a super cool guy. So Stewart called Todd.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, you got to check out this putter
Speaker 1: by this local pro. And and so I got the
Speaker 1: invite to go down and do a demo day at Riviera.
Speaker 1: And I drove down on my subie with with a
Speaker 1: trunk full of putters. I sold twenty something putters on
Speaker 1: that demo day at Riviera and or no, not twenty.
Speaker 1: I show like twelve. And then Todd said, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget this. He says, what you I the revealer and
Speaker 1: watching that and you show people what their putters are
Speaker 1: doing and what your putter does. He says, my members,
Speaker 1: you could I sold twice as many putters if you
Speaker 1: would have charged three fifty or four hundred bucks because
Speaker 1: they're not seeing the perceived value at two seventy five
Speaker 1: if you charge more, and sure I should you not.
Speaker 1: I ramped up to three to fifty and I sold
Speaker 1: twice as many putters.
Speaker 2: I'm Stuart Smith.
Speaker 10: I'm the PGA Director of Golf at Somerset golfam Country
Speaker 10: Club here in Reno, Nevada. That was certainly my initial
Speaker 10: tie in with Bill Pressey. And after using a long
Speaker 10: putter for nineteen years and the band coming with taking
Speaker 10: that anchoring out of my my repertoire after a long stint,
Speaker 10: you know, I just I that the lab Hutter was
Speaker 10: the way to go for me. So here I am.
Speaker 10: I mean, I've used it ever since.
Speaker 6: Both Matt Holme and Bill Pressey mentioned Stuart Smith as
Speaker 6: a critical component to the company's evolution.
Speaker 10: I gave him a lot of fe back on what
Speaker 10: I liked, and he I mean, I must have. I
Speaker 10: have quite a few of them here, even still in
Speaker 10: my office. I have a couple of the prototypes and grips, older,
Speaker 10: older grips that he used with the press grip. And
Speaker 10: I think, you know, he appreciated, appreciated me as a
Speaker 10: sounding board. He appreciated, you know, my ability at that time.
Speaker 10: You know, I played in some nice tournaments the last
Speaker 10: ten eleven years, so he knew I was a good
Speaker 10: accomplished player. And of course as his Bill, you know,
Speaker 10: don't ever sell Bill short. You don't want to give
Speaker 10: him to a side or anything. So that's how our
Speaker 10: relationship started, and we kind of went back and forth.
Speaker 10: He dropped some putters. I did some things here at
Speaker 10: my golf course trying to get the members involved with
Speaker 10: LA B. And I would say, I have probably fifteen
Speaker 10: or twenty of my members that used the lab putter.
Speaker 10: And it's still and I get funny enough, now is
Speaker 10: I'm a wreck ignized fitter? I mean I get even
Speaker 10: I get calls all the time. I should say all
Speaker 10: the time. I mean I'll fit one or two every
Speaker 10: couple of weeks, it seems.
Speaker 6: I asked Smith what exactly he liked about the putter
Speaker 6: and technology.
Speaker 5: First of all, the feel.
Speaker 10: You know, I know a lot of people sometimes maybe
Speaker 10: can't get over maybe the looks of it.
Speaker 11: I use.
Speaker 10: I use the big reno slash, two point one slash
Speaker 10: whatever we call it now, you know, the big mallets.
Speaker 5: So I think.
Speaker 10: Just of course, the feel of the solidness of strike,
Speaker 10: and just in my mind knowing that that thing depends
Speaker 10: irrelevant of how long a putt I have. I know
Speaker 10: what's I know that work is absent, So to me,
Speaker 10: that's allowing the putter to do work, do a little
Speaker 10: bit more of the work.
Speaker 6: Meanwhile, back to Bill Pressey, where there was maybe a
Speaker 6: little too much work for the startup.
Speaker 3: And this is a good time to set this straight.
Speaker 1: People think that I ran directed for us, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't the brains my partners. My partner, Scott was the
Speaker 1: company officer, and so a lot of the decisions.
Speaker 3: Or we're not what I wanted.
Speaker 1: And and me being in the golf business, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, just if you just listen to me, we'll
Speaker 1: do good. But people want to make their own input
Speaker 1: and do things, you know, the way you might run
Speaker 1: another company. Golf business is not like that. And you
Speaker 1: know that. And so when my my father, uh, who
Speaker 1: was kind of a strange for most of my life,
Speaker 1: he kind of came back into my life and he
Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, be involved. And I wanted him
Speaker 1: to try to, you know, because I had a granddaughter,
Speaker 1: he had his granddaughter and stuff and uh and and
Speaker 1: so he wanted to get involved with company, and uh,
Speaker 1: he invested a little bit and then he became the
Speaker 1: kind of like Scott put him in as the company
Speaker 1: manager or whatever. Well, I don't roll like that. And
Speaker 1: so my father classic father's son, crap, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you think could happen happens. And and so I stepped
Speaker 1: away because they didn't like the decisions that were being made,
Speaker 1: especially with some of the social media forums and burning
Speaker 1: some bridges, and it was just it was not good.
Speaker 6: And now we've come full circle. Twenty seventeen. This is
Speaker 6: when Sam Hank called Pressy because his putter head had
Speaker 6: fallen off. It was instant chemistry again. Pressy described the
Speaker 6: relationship as ham and egg.
Speaker 1: And once, you know, he expressed interest in doing a buyout,
Speaker 1: and we buy out the company and I'll come along
Speaker 1: and we'll reform another company. We we did that and
Speaker 1: and so uh, I took I didn't get I mean
Speaker 1: I did get bought out, but my my equity and
Speaker 1: shares and everything that I had just transferred into LAB.
Speaker 1: And then we bought out the original investors and partners
Speaker 1: and and then Sam and uh and myself and his family.
Speaker 1: You know that the Hans took Lion, you know, the
Speaker 1: Lions share of the company, and which was which was
Speaker 1: nothing new to me that I was never in the
Speaker 1: controlling seat. So it worked out great. And uh, and
Speaker 1: as we started LAB over the years, it taken quite
Speaker 1: a toll on my on my psyche, and so I
Speaker 1: had to step away for mental health and and just
Speaker 1: find myself and you know, society and and just starting
Speaker 1: a company.
Speaker 3: You know that they beat you up pretty good.
Speaker 1: And you know, especially people feel threatened by new technology
Speaker 1: and uh and.
Speaker 3: Everything and just burnt out.
Speaker 1: So I stepped away from day to day operations a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago from LAB to do some things
Speaker 1: and and fulfill some of my own goals that have
Speaker 1: just been totally swamped out and neglected by the enormous
Speaker 1: task of labbing, getting LAB to where it was and is.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it'll it'll take it right out of it.
Speaker 1: So uh, it's Sam is an amazing person because he
Speaker 1: can he can do things that I can't do, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. But together it's it's really a powerful uh concept.
Speaker 1: And and you know, when when you're a CEO, you
Speaker 1: have to have a good product. To be a good CEO.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not gonna you're not going to find
Speaker 1: same you know, and the same thing. A good CEO
Speaker 1: can crash a great product. But those two have to
Speaker 1: exist coherently to be successful and to scale the company
Speaker 1: and to garner you know, when we go out on
Speaker 1: social media.
Speaker 3: Now I give the whole respect.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's cool, but you know for years, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, it was brutal.
Speaker 3: I just stayed off social media and what some of them?
Speaker 6: But what were some of the comments that that you remember,
Speaker 6: you you know, probably personal, calling you crazy? What?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, there's all starts. Well I put the
Speaker 1: hands on my potter or you know, the uh, the
Speaker 1: branding irons. At a certain point it became at first
Speaker 1: it was pretty offensive. But you know, I got some
Speaker 1: stones and so I said, all right, well I've called
Speaker 1: I called the the the old power pod driver, some
Speaker 1: various things back in the day.
Speaker 3: So the branding iron and that that came with the territory.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's really uh, when you when you're
Speaker 1: putting something out there in the public, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: judged and you have to accept that.
Speaker 3: But when people start.
Speaker 1: To get personal, that's where that's kind of where the
Speaker 1: line gets drawn. And uh, no, people don't know my story.
Speaker 1: They don't know how much crap I've overcome to to
Speaker 1: be successful.
Speaker 3: From accuse you not, I was homeless in.
Speaker 1: Two thousand, like literally homeless, and so yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's a lot, Uh, there's a lot more than than
Speaker 1: just like creating a putter to get to get to
Speaker 1: overcome the crap that the big oams pull on you, uh,
Speaker 1: to you know, to try to keep you out of
Speaker 1: stores or to keep you away from players. It's savage, savage,
Speaker 1: and uh.
Speaker 2: It takes.
Speaker 3: It's exhausting.
Speaker 6: So any examples, any any specific examples or any stories.
Speaker 1: You'd yeah, I mean, well, here's an interesting story. So
Speaker 1: when Bryson turned pro, I flew to Vegas. I drove
Speaker 1: to Vegas, brought him some putters. Mike Shi, his coach,
Speaker 1: was in Sack and so you know, Mike had seen
Speaker 1: my putters and Stuart Smith and whatnot. Anyways, so you
Speaker 1: remember when Bryson went to this side arm lock or
Speaker 1: this side saddle thing that got banned. So I was
Speaker 1: at I was at Whisper Rock Cavin lunch with McCord
Speaker 1: and Case tends.
Speaker 3: He sleans over with his phone.
Speaker 1: He says, look at this and and Bryson was in
Speaker 1: his living room. He's like his apartment living room, showing
Speaker 1: me the stroke that he wanted to do. And if
Speaker 1: I would make a putter that suited that li angle,
Speaker 1: you know, eighty degrees and with this lean and and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the stroke and I look back at Gary,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Gary, that's a non conforming stroke, like that's
Speaker 1: that's an intentional breach of USGA, which was I don't
Speaker 1: know how else he can look at it. So he
Speaker 1: wanted me to move the shaft or make a really
Speaker 1: upright thutter with the shaft length and the lean amount
Speaker 1: hand drilled so that he could do that.
Speaker 3: So so and I and I this is the biggest
Speaker 3: no I ever.
Speaker 1: I said, no, I'm not going to do that because
Speaker 1: I think it's not unconforming and it's not in the
Speaker 1: spirit of the rules, and I just I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make that. So then the next week, two weeks later,
Speaker 1: he shows up at that at that Bears event, you know,
Speaker 1: doing his side saddle arm locked in with the beer
Speaker 1: can the half beer can putter. And then and then
Speaker 1: the USGA saw that and they made they made that
Speaker 1: guy's putter, which was conforming, they made it non conforming
Speaker 1: unless he moved the shaft to the back of the head.
Speaker 1: That's how that stuff works. And if you get caught
Speaker 1: in those traps. The best know I ever said was
Speaker 1: right there, because that putter is no longer in existence,
Speaker 1: and they made him change the shaft location and everything
Speaker 1: because it could be effectively used in this certain condition
Speaker 1: of vertical.
Speaker 6: You said, the biggest, the most important know you made
Speaker 6: was to Bryson on what would have ultimately have been
Speaker 6: non conforming. What were is your best yes?
Speaker 12: Ah, that was yes to Sam buying the company, and
Speaker 12: and and basically, uh, because because I had so many
Speaker 12: shares in the original BF that I was able to
Speaker 12: kind of force a buy out.
Speaker 3: And uh, that was the best.
Speaker 1: Yes when he said he wanted to to make a
Speaker 1: move at buying the company, that was my best Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: let's do it.
Speaker 3: By far.
Speaker 6: So that's Bill Pressey's story within the Directed Force Lab
Speaker 6: Golf story, and one that I really felt that I
Speaker 6: needed to tell before we can get to more of
Speaker 6: Sam Han's four magical moments that lead to Lucas Glover
Speaker 6: winning not one PGA Tour event using lab putter, but
Speaker 6: two back to back Pressi's life is now very much
Speaker 6: in order. He's a grandfather, he's lost fifty pounds, and
Speaker 6: on Super Bowl Sunday twenty twenty four, he will be
Speaker 6: sober for three years. In episode three, you'll hear from
Speaker 6: Jeff Sluman, Von Taylor, Kelly Slater Adam Scott and several
Speaker 6: other protagonists. As we build to August of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 6: you went from like selling five putters a week or
Speaker 6: whatever the number was.
Speaker 7: We sold more broomsticks in the last week than we
Speaker 7: had in the last two years combined.
Speaker 5: Put another long on fire.
Speaker 4: Nobody here is getting tired, settled down, and the story
Speaker 4: hears about to begin, The circles starting to take its shape,
Speaker 4: seats filled, and the tired, some lands ANSI escape.
Speaker 5: And everybody's got some glory. Just wait on to unfold.
Speaker 5: Everybody's got some story. Just wait on to be too.
Speaker 11: The place for that is here, all those smiles and
Speaker 11: all those tears, Let them go.
Speaker 5: Put another long five.
Speaker 4: Nobody hears getting tired, settle down, and settle in.
Speaker 5: The story he is about to begin.
Speaker 4: The tales were told of war, and that was lost
Speaker 4: in a lifetimes dreams that were so Maybe you should
Speaker 4: stop and listen at the wisdom and me maybe you
Speaker 4: shoulpoil your heart out.
Speaker 5: We ain't going the way. Bind you mercy and the
Speaker 5: sound as the smoke gets pushed around in your soul.
Speaker 5: Put another log on the five. Nobody hears getting tired,
Speaker 5: settle down, and settle in.
Speaker 13: The story. Hears about to begin the story, hears about
Speaker 13: to begin the story here was about to begin.
Speaker 9: H