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