Speaker 1: I think I had a round a spyglass. I had
Speaker 1: around a spyglass. I think I had twenty two putts,
Speaker 1: and granted I missed a couple of greens real close,
Speaker 1: you know, so I was putting from off the green
Speaker 1: and they're not counted as a putt. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: like twenty seven twenty eight putts from the ones that
Speaker 1: included off the green. But point being that I just
Speaker 1: get so confident with the thing and I just start
Speaker 1: when I'm on, I just start making everything.
Speaker 2: Put another logal the fire.
Speaker 3: Nobody here is get the time.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the fire Pit with Matt Chanella. In part
Speaker 4: two of this podcast series on the relevance and rise
Speaker 4: of lab golf, we told Bill Pressey's story, the man
Speaker 4: who took to his garage in twenty twelve and used
Speaker 4: a modified cane and then ultimately a crutch to invent
Speaker 4: his revealer. That invention leads Pressy to the technology he
Speaker 4: implemented into his first version of the directed force putter,
Speaker 4: which actually did what face balance and toe hang putters
Speaker 4: claimed to do. Pressy received the patent to what was
Speaker 4: the directed force putter in twenty fourteen and sold his
Speaker 4: odd looking invention out of the trunk of his car.
Speaker 4: Pressy had just enough traction to start a business, but
Speaker 4: not enough marketing skills or manufacturing efficiency to be sustainable.
Speaker 4: When the company was on the brink, Pressey got connected
Speaker 4: to Sam Hahn in twenty seventeen, who, in addition to
Speaker 4: his dad and brother, bought a chunk of the business
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen. Han says that from his perspective, there
Speaker 4: were four magic moments that led to the success of
Speaker 4: Lab Golf. The putter Lucas Glover used to win back
Speaker 4: to back PGA Tour events in August of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: which is ultimately where this series will end. The first
Speaker 4: of those four magic moments was when Hans directed force
Speaker 4: Putter broke and Bob Duncan put him in touch with Pressey.
Speaker 4: Not long after buying into the company, Han relocated the
Speaker 4: home office from Reno, Nevada to Eugene, Oregon, which is
Speaker 4: where Han was living, and although he was an avid
Speaker 4: and scratch golfer, he was new to the golf industry.
Speaker 4: This is where we resume the narrative. Here's Sam Han.
Speaker 5: Damn dude, I mean we it would just school of
Speaker 5: hard knocks I mean just every I had to learn
Speaker 5: everything about what we were doing. I would say now
Speaker 5: in retrospect, one of the absolute best things we had
Speaker 5: going for us was the fact that I didn't have
Speaker 5: any idea how the golf industry worked. And this allowed
Speaker 5: me to keep an open mind on every facet of
Speaker 5: the business. The putter is different, it works differently, you
Speaker 5: have to tell the story differently, you use it differently,
Speaker 5: and consequently, the way that you manufacture and market and
Speaker 5: fulfill is different. It has to be. And if I
Speaker 5: was a golf industry guy, it just it wouldn't have worked.
Speaker 5: And early on, and I learned that. I learned that
Speaker 5: really early. We you know, so we're putting together a
Speaker 5: business plan and figuring out how we're going to do
Speaker 5: this and how we're going to spread the word. What's
Speaker 5: going to go on? And we hired a fella wonderful man.
Speaker 5: His name is Charlie Gerber, and he used to be
Speaker 5: the sales rep from here in North America. And Charlie
Speaker 5: was sweet as can be. And he was tasked with
Speaker 5: putting together a sales force. So he hired fifteen twenty
Speaker 5: different independent reps around the country and to no fault
Speaker 5: of his own. It just didn't work. You know, he's
Speaker 5: got these the guys that were hiring. You know, there
Speaker 5: wasn't enough margin for us to really make this their
Speaker 5: only gig. And so the guys that we're working with
Speaker 5: are selling gloves and balls and shoes and a four
Speaker 5: to seven hundred dollars custom puttern. It just wasn't working.
Speaker 5: And yah, can I ask you real quick?
Speaker 6: So at the time that you buy the company many
Speaker 6: how many of these putters were being sold a year?
Speaker 5: Virtually?
Speaker 7: Non?
Speaker 5: I mean we had they had so twenty one putters?
Speaker 6: Would they did they sell one hundred putters times four
Speaker 6: hundred or like?
Speaker 4: Like what you know?
Speaker 5: Like was it a thousand putters? I would say, I
Speaker 5: would say that the day we bought the company, I
Speaker 5: would be very surprised if there was a thousand putters
Speaker 5: out in the world, and probably closer to four or
Speaker 5: five hundred.
Speaker 4: Press he thinks there might have been a little more.
Speaker 4: But regardless and relatively speaking, there was nowhere to go
Speaker 4: but up or go out of business. What was at
Speaker 4: the top of the priority in your mind, like what
Speaker 4: did you need to do to try to make this successful?
Speaker 5: Branding into her presence. So the first one was branding,
Speaker 5: So I did have I'm a good consumer, like I
Speaker 5: in the sense that like I'm an educated consumer, right,
Speaker 5: I am both clear on on the technology that I'm buying.
Speaker 5: I look into it, I look for validation of it.
Speaker 5: So I already had that.
Speaker 6: But you were doing a lot of obviously because you're
Speaker 6: going through a lot of putters, so like the.
Speaker 5: Consumer exactly, so I'm using some of what was a turnoff.
Speaker 5: There were so many turnoffs about this putter when I
Speaker 5: got it, so many, you know, like I hated this grip,
Speaker 5: this rubber oval grip. I couldn't stand it. I actually
Speaker 5: love it now, but I hated I hated the analyzing,
Speaker 5: Like the finish on this putter was just so cheap
Speaker 5: looking like it just it just it looked like a
Speaker 5: fucking infomercial product.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: And then this logo was so bad and Bill's probably
Speaker 5: going to listen to this and he's gonna be mad
Speaker 5: at me. But I love you, Bill, but you know
Speaker 5: your logo sucked, bro, And and there was just and
Speaker 5: then the company was called Directed Force at the time,
Speaker 5: Like that's a fucking mouthful for a company, Like it
Speaker 5: was just it it was so so a lot of branding, branding, branding,
Speaker 5: I mean, we we that was a huge thing. Day
Speaker 5: one re rebranded the company lab Lying of Balance. That
Speaker 5: was Bill's call. That was, as I understand it, what
Speaker 5: he wanted to call the company in the first place.
Speaker 5: And then we needed a logo and took forever with
Speaker 5: these guys in Colorado that were just not not handing
Speaker 5: us anything particularly creative. And it was actually my mom
Speaker 5: uh one day was like, well, putter is a really
Speaker 5: interesting shape. Why not just make it the putter? So
Speaker 5: we tried a couple of iterations of just like the
Speaker 5: straight silhouette of the putter, and then I ended up
Speaker 5: drawing this, you know, this one here on a napkin
Speaker 5: and that became the logo. So when I first drew it,
Speaker 5: it didn't have the notch. It just kind of looked
Speaker 5: like a heart with the tip cut off. And we
Speaker 5: had been like three months deep into finding a logo.
Speaker 5: I drew this thing on a napkin, had some guys
Speaker 5: actually put it, you know, make it real, sent it
Speaker 5: to Bill. Well, I fuck, yeah, we did it. Thank
Speaker 5: the Lord Jesus. The logo conversation is over. This thing
Speaker 5: is incredible, it looks good, it's sexy, it's awesome, and
Speaker 5: we're so excited. The next day, shit, I got a
Speaker 5: back up a second. About two weeks into owning the company,
Speaker 5: somebody sends me an Instagram post that Kelly Slater had
Speaker 5: made the surfer that he had made about this crazy
Speaker 5: new putter that he found at Carl's Bad Golf Center.
Speaker 5: So we reached out to Kelly and you know said,
Speaker 5: you know, I introduced myself. I'm like, hey, I'm the
Speaker 5: new owner of the company, and I saw that you're
Speaker 5: using the putter. Let me know if there's ever anything
Speaker 5: you need. Kelly and I hit it off. We start texting,
Speaker 5: we're talking putters, and we become golfner buddies, and YadA YadA.
Speaker 4: Kelly Slater is the greatest surfer of all time, very
Speaker 4: commonly referred to as the Goat. Slater has eleven world championships.
Speaker 4: He won his first in nineteen ninety two, his last
Speaker 4: in twenty eleven. The next best in surfing is Mark Richards,
Speaker 4: who has five, and he got all of his before
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty three. Simply put, Slater is the secretariat of
Speaker 4: his sport, and if there are no waves. He plays golf,
Speaker 4: not surprisingly, he's very good at it, a scratch if
Speaker 4: not better, and a regular at the AT and T
Speaker 4: Pebble Beach pro Am. Through a love of golf and surfing,
Speaker 4: Slater is friends with Adam Scott. What was your first
Speaker 4: introduction to this putter in this technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the first time I saw LAB I was
Speaker 1: playing a golf course called Redstick in Florida, and actually
Speaker 1: I think the guy runs it used to work at Augusta,
Speaker 1: but he moved down there to work at Redstick.
Speaker 8: Really good course, great greens.
Speaker 1: I was just playing with a buddy of mine, Bill,
Speaker 1: who I played with a lot, an old surfer friend
Speaker 1: of mine, and were paired up with the guy that
Speaker 1: he plays with sometimes just a casual game, and this
Speaker 1: guy had a directed force.
Speaker 8: Lab lab butter, and.
Speaker 1: Like everyone else, I said same thing, like what's that thing?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 1: Blah blah, And I'm I'm pretty open minded, like I'm
Speaker 1: pretty into if something works, it works, I don't care
Speaker 1: what it looks like.
Speaker 8: I've played some goofy clubs over the year just because they're.
Speaker 1: Funny, and you know, just to give you an idea.
Speaker 8: I used to have this.
Speaker 1: I'm a real Mo Norman geek and I used to
Speaker 1: have this this sandwich. It kind of looked like the
Speaker 1: alien that Moe used to play with, and it had
Speaker 1: a giant balance on it. I think it had about
Speaker 1: twelve or fifteen degrees of bounce and a big soul
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the club.
Speaker 8: And a funny story I was in.
Speaker 1: I was on the big island planet Kokio where many
Speaker 1: years ago as a member, and Adam was out there
Speaker 1: and uh, I said, just hit this club out of
Speaker 1: the sand, and he hit three balls to about a
Speaker 1: foot out of the sand.
Speaker 8: He goes, is this thing legal? I said, yeah, I
Speaker 8: guess so. So anyways, I've.
Speaker 1: Always been in mind with these alternative sort of looking
Speaker 1: and feeling gloves and uh, so I'm playing with this guy.
Speaker 8: We get around the front nine.
Speaker 1: This guy's making all sorts of plots, are at least
Speaker 1: scaring the hold, and uh we get on about the
Speaker 1: twelfth hole and I said, you know, let me just
Speaker 1: take a couple of strokes of that thing. And I
Speaker 1: drained three puts from about ten twelve feet and I
Speaker 1: was just sold immediately.
Speaker 8: They just rolled the end over end. They set up
Speaker 8: pretty perfectly for me.
Speaker 1: It was probably an inch long and maybe a little
Speaker 1: too flat of alive, but I, you know, I just
Speaker 1: set it right and uh to see how the ball
Speaker 1: would roll, and it felt amazing. So a week later
Speaker 1: I went to I was out here in California and
Speaker 1: I went to Carlosbad Golf Center where they did.
Speaker 8: They were like one of the official fitters.
Speaker 1: So I went there and messed around with the fit
Speaker 1: club for a while and you know, just set my
Speaker 1: langle length and ordered one and waited a couple of months,
Speaker 1: And to be honest, I was like so ty to
Speaker 1: get it. I was sending emails kind of hagging him
Speaker 1: on like how long do.
Speaker 8: The ctit go'll be done? But I really want to
Speaker 8: get it.
Speaker 1: They sent it to Hawaii, out to Hawaii for me,
Speaker 1: and the first week I had it, I went over
Speaker 1: to McKenna and I was playing with Tommy Armor and
Speaker 1: in the first round, Tommy goes, don't ever take that
Speaker 1: thing out of the back. You're rolling it's so good,
Speaker 1: and it was just end over end, And I've just
Speaker 1: been leaver since day one and the first time I
Speaker 1: try that guy's putter until I got mine. And when
Speaker 1: I got mine, my confidence and my putting just went
Speaker 1: through the roof, and I feel, I honestly feel like
Speaker 1: I hardly have to practice.
Speaker 4: And I thought, really, well, more with Kelly Slater in
Speaker 4: a bit, but for now, back to Sam Han on
Speaker 4: the new logo, or so he thought.
Speaker 5: Bill was like a huge Kelly Slater fan, so just
Speaker 5: tuck that away for a second. So the next day
Speaker 5: after I give him this logo, he calls me up.
Speaker 5: He's like, stop, the presses can't use this as a logo,
Speaker 5: and I'm like why, What's He's like, I just played
Speaker 5: Charity Scramble with some buddies. I showed it to them
Speaker 5: and they all think that the top piece looks like
Speaker 5: a ballsack. And I'm like, dude, your fucking friends are weirdos.
Speaker 5: It does not look like a ballsack. It's fine. And
Speaker 5: he's like, dude, I'm saying, we are not using this logo.
Speaker 5: It looks like a ballsack. I don't want to be
Speaker 5: the Ballsack Potter company. It's not happening. And I'm like, dude,
Speaker 5: settle down. Your guys are drunk. You guys are being silly.
Speaker 5: It's not a thing. And he's like no, I'm like yes,
Speaker 5: and I'm like all right, let's each do our own
Speaker 5: little focus group here. You've picked six guys to go
Speaker 5: send it to and ask them what their first reaction is.
Speaker 5: I'll pick six guys that I send it to and
Speaker 5: ask them what their first reaction to is. And I'm like,
Speaker 5: I'm going to send it to Kelly because Joe, you know,
Speaker 5: Bill's big Kelly fan. As long as Kelly signs off
Speaker 5: on it will be really good. So I text Kelly,
Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, what do you think of this logo?
Speaker 5: He's like, Dude, it's actually a really really cool logo.
Speaker 5: But if I'm totally honest, men kind of suck and
Speaker 5: all they're going to see is a ballsack and they're
Speaker 5: just going to make jokes about the boss. Oh like fack,
Speaker 5: god damn it. Back to the drawing board. And you know,
Speaker 5: just a couple subtle tweaks made it, you know, much
Speaker 5: much less testicular and much more potter oriented. But I
Speaker 5: do love that story a lot, where I was just
Speaker 5: so positive that was a non thing, and Slater just
Speaker 5: validated completely that Bill was absolutely right and the thing
Speaker 5: looks like a ball sack.
Speaker 4: On that note, and before I go any further, I
Speaker 4: just want to thank Dormy Workshop for their sponsorship of
Speaker 4: this podcast. As you know by now, the Canadian based
Speaker 4: company only makes handmade leather goods such as custom headcovers
Speaker 4: and accessories. The Bishop Brothers are good golfers, great friends,
Speaker 4: and we're lucky to have them putting our logo on
Speaker 4: their products. All available at Firepitcollective dot com. For their
Speaker 4: complete collection of originals headcovers and classics, go to Dormy
Speaker 4: Workshop dot com and use promo code fire Hit fifteen
Speaker 4: for fifteen percent off your next purchase. Back to Samhan
Speaker 4: in his office at Emerald Valley Golf Club in Creswell,
Speaker 4: Organ home of the Oregon Ducks, and.
Speaker 5: Now comes lucky break number two. You know you had asked,
Speaker 5: what what did I think that we needed to do
Speaker 5: in order to get this thing moving? So it was
Speaker 5: branding for sure. The next piece was presence, tour presence.
Speaker 5: We had no professional tour players, and that that was
Speaker 5: in my mind, Like I was almost thinking of this
Speaker 5: as a flip when I bought the company, Like I
Speaker 5: wasn't really thinking about growing into this crazy behemoth of
Speaker 5: a company. I was thinking that we were going to
Speaker 5: get out on tour and that somebody was going to
Speaker 5: grab the putter and go win a major championship and somebody,
Speaker 5: you know, one of the major OEMs is going to
Speaker 5: call us up and you know, license attack or buy
Speaker 5: us out completely or something. So first app is we
Speaker 5: got to get out on tour. So I call up
Speaker 5: to tour and I find out what's the process in
Speaker 5: getting a credential so that we could be out on
Speaker 5: the green and they're like, well, you either need a
Speaker 5: specific invitation from a player or your putter has to
Speaker 5: have been used in enough tournaments that it qualifies for
Speaker 5: a credential. And I'm like, well, I don't have an
Speaker 5: invite from a player, and how am I going to
Speaker 5: get a putter to use it if I can't get
Speaker 5: out on or a player to use it if I
Speaker 5: can't get out on tour. And they're like, well, tough
Speaker 5: shit fuck. So I'm like, how does it work? You know, like,
Speaker 5: how do you know if a player is using it
Speaker 5: or whatever? And they tell me about the Daryl Survey,
Speaker 5: which I didn't know anything about at the time, but
Speaker 5: you know, it's a company that you know, basically tracks
Speaker 5: every single thing that's in everybody's bag. And the woman
Speaker 5: on the other end of the poem. It was just like,
Speaker 5: just out of curiosity, what's the name of the company,
Speaker 5: And so I told her it was Directed Force. She
Speaker 5: plugs it into the system and she's like, oh, actually,
Speaker 5: you guys qualify. You guys have had you know, eleven plays,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, huh. Tim Wilkinson, a left handed New
Speaker 5: Zealand Germany journeyman. New Zealander journeyman, had bought the putter
Speaker 5: in New Zealand, like somehow a lefty version of this
Speaker 5: putter ended up in Bumblefuck, New Zealand. Random Journeyman tour
Speaker 5: pro picks it up, likes it, uses it for eleven
Speaker 5: events on the nationwide tour at the time, and we
Speaker 5: got a tour credential like day one. So talk about
Speaker 5: your lucky breaks. I have no you know, you can't
Speaker 5: write that shit that otherwise I would have no idea
Speaker 5: how we ever would have gotten out there. It never
Speaker 5: would have happened.
Speaker 4: Meet Tim Wilkinson, as Han describes, he's a forty five
Speaker 4: year old lefty tour player from New Zealand. He turned
Speaker 4: pro in two thousand and three, and although he has
Speaker 4: no wins, he has three top five finishes on the
Speaker 4: PGA Tour, and he has amassed five point three million
Speaker 4: in career earnings.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So twenty seventeen, I believe I was playing the corn.
Speaker 8: Ferry Tour.
Speaker 3: And I think I missed probably missed a couple of cats,
Speaker 3: and I got to Utah maybe on the Sasine. I
Speaker 3: was staying with a friend of mine in Poc City
Speaker 3: and I just found a golf course nearby. I don't
Speaker 3: even remember the name of it now, but yeah, I
Speaker 3: found a golf course nearby, and when at the pro shop,
Speaker 3: asked the pro as he normally do, I asked the
Speaker 3: pro would he mind if I did some chipping and
Speaker 3: parting and hit some balls on the dragon range. And
Speaker 3: while I was doing there, you know, I always go
Speaker 3: and have a look at the putters that they have
Speaker 3: on their racks. So I went in there and I
Speaker 3: asked him about this particular putter that was kind of
Speaker 3: nothing that I'd ever seen before, and he showed me.
Speaker 3: You know, I just asked because it was one of
Speaker 3: the fitting putters, so the net could bend all, you know,
Speaker 3: from right hand to left hand, and it could be
Speaker 3: said at any lie angle. So I'd ask him if
Speaker 3: he could set it up at sixty nine degree lie
Speaker 3: and what it was zero loft at the time, I think,
Speaker 3: So I asked him if he could just set it
Speaker 3: up at left hand at sixty eight and I had
Speaker 3: a few parts with it, and he showed me this
Speaker 3: the revealer, which is the rack that you put the
Speaker 3: putter around, and you can just swing it into the
Speaker 3: face so square, and it all made sense to me.
Speaker 3: So I asked him, you know who makes it and
Speaker 3: where do you get it from? And Bill was actually
Speaker 3: in Utah, I believe, and so I called him on
Speaker 3: the next day, or maybe even that afternoon, or maybe
Speaker 3: it might have been ten minutes later. I don't exactly remember,
Speaker 3: but he came out to San Francisco the following week
Speaker 3: and fitted me it. Brought a whole lot of putterson
Speaker 3: and got me fitted into one. So I started using
Speaker 3: it from there, and I think I did I get
Speaker 3: my I can't remember if I got my PJA took
Speaker 3: card that year or not. And I remember I know
Speaker 3: I one hundred percent used it. I think the Windhom
Speaker 3: Championship was the first PGA to event I used it
Speaker 3: at and I remember shooting sixty two in the second
Speaker 3: or third round but I'm not I'd have to go
Speaker 3: back and have a look at some of the numbers
Speaker 3: from that point.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it was just.
Speaker 3: Out of the blue and I saw the potter and
Speaker 3: the reveala and it just at night sense, and yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess I'd been using it for iight o ten
Speaker 3: events and when that asked for PG two credentials and yeah,
Speaker 3: kind of went from there and now lots of guys
Speaker 3: having a lot of success.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty good story.
Speaker 4: In twenty seventeen, the ten events leading into the Windham Championship,
Speaker 4: which is when Wilkinson put the putter in the bag,
Speaker 4: he had missed seven cuts and had only broken seventy
Speaker 4: three times. At Windham, he shot rounds of sixty three, seventy,
Speaker 4: sixty eight and sixty seven for a T fourteen, which
Speaker 4: tied for his best finish of his year, and the
Speaker 4: sixty three tied his lowest round of the year. That week,
Speaker 4: he was forty fourth in strokes game putting fourth in
Speaker 4: total putts.
Speaker 7: Does it feel good to know that, you know? As
Speaker 7: Sam was looking to try to get it in the
Speaker 7: hands of more tour pros and looking to sort of
Speaker 7: figure out how he could get a tour credential that
Speaker 7: it was you that popped up and had been using
Speaker 7: it and ultimately got him the access he needed to
Speaker 7: to take this company to where it's going now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably one of the most unlikely you know, from
Speaker 3: New Zealand. Yeah, you would think you'd get the putter
Speaker 3: in the hands of a you know, right handed probably
Speaker 3: American player really to be honest, but for me just
Speaker 3: to come across the pastor and a pro shop and
Speaker 3: just be intrigued with it and and you know, like
Speaker 3: just to shave fractions of shots off your score as
Speaker 3: huge and professional golf as you know. Yeah, and to
Speaker 3: be kind of I guess at the forefront of I
Speaker 3: guess taking a chance on a different passer. You know,
Speaker 3: in the past many people haven't wanted to take it
Speaker 3: chance on a crazy looking grip.
Speaker 8: That's the Ford Press grip.
Speaker 7: And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a what do you call it? Cattle Proude
Speaker 3: looking potter. But the science behind it was amazing and
Speaker 3: I felt like I could just kind of aim and
Speaker 3: hit with it.
Speaker 5: And then you know, the.
Speaker 3: Conversations I had after that, the the original director force
Speaker 3: was really big and I said, I said, the only
Speaker 3: thing I think you need to do is add just
Speaker 3: a touch of laught and bring down the footprint of
Speaker 3: the potter, and I think more guys would use it.
Speaker 8: And it took a while, but you know that that happened.
Speaker 4: So Han has the credential that gets some access to
Speaker 4: practice putting greens and thus the people who are the
Speaker 4: gateway to validation and success. Seems simple and straightforward, but was.
Speaker 5: It the first The very first tour event I went
Speaker 5: to was a corn Ferry event in Chicago and at Ivanhoe,
Speaker 5: and uh and I was really lucky that I had
Speaker 5: no idea about rep culture or how it works out there,
Speaker 5: which gave me the luxury of being very aggressive doing
Speaker 5: shit that now I understand is completely inappropriate. Walking right
Speaker 5: up to players my my, my, my, My pickup line,
Speaker 5: if you will, was like, hey, I want to see
Speaker 5: a magic trick, and then I'd show him the revealer
Speaker 5: and stick there putter in there and make it look
Speaker 5: like a you know, fish on a hook and then
Speaker 5: show them my putter and they're like fuck and uh
Speaker 5: so they grab You know, got gotta remember if I
Speaker 5: actually got any even play at Ivanhoe that week, but
Speaker 5: I certainly got a few guys to take it made
Speaker 5: some friends, learned a little bit. Actually met gear and
Speaker 5: Rife that week, who was you know, rep and even
Speaker 5: Roll and uh he kind of at the time, you know,
Speaker 5: took me under his wing a little bit and showed
Speaker 5: me the ropes and uh, you know how it all works.
Speaker 5: And that was a lot of fun. That's twenty eight
Speaker 5: would you say that's twenty eighteen. You're the summer of
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen. And so I knew that I needed to
Speaker 5: open up accounts. So that was so I lived in Eugene.
Speaker 5: My folks were still living in Chicago. So I decided
Speaker 5: to just go home and spend June in Chicago because
Speaker 5: there's like, there's no golf in Oregon. Like it's just
Speaker 5: not a thing. And the golf that is here is
Speaker 5: very very Nobody out here is buying a six hundred
Speaker 5: dollars custom putter. Have fun at Ivanhoe. Next week I
Speaker 5: go to the Champions Tour. This is where she gets
Speaker 5: really fun because the Champions Tour guys are a fucking blast.
Speaker 5: Like I really don't like doing tour events anymore. I'll
Speaker 5: totally go to a Champion Store event anytime. These guys
Speaker 5: are you know, there's five guys out there that ticket. Seriously,
Speaker 5: the rest of them are drinking Bloody Mary's and having
Speaker 5: telling stories and talking shit and having a good time.
Speaker 8: Totally agree.
Speaker 6: I tell everybody I've been a part of the Pure
Speaker 6: Insurance event at Pebble every year for the last I
Speaker 6: don't know, seven eight years. Those are my guys, They're
Speaker 6: my generation. They're the ones who I've covered since the
Speaker 6: beginning of Sports Illustrated and Digest And I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 4: Like I love I love all those guys, even the
Speaker 4: guys who were prickly dicks and asses, and you know
Speaker 4: back in the day, they're all like super cool and
Speaker 4: fun and friendly. Like they've started wine labels and they're
Speaker 4: into cool shit and travel and they're like they're they're
Speaker 4: their grandparents now they're like they they're like, they're so
Speaker 4: much fun.
Speaker 5: Lovely, they're they're the happiest they've ever been there, living
Speaker 5: the dream. Money's been made, the things are taking care
Speaker 5: of their It is just so much fun. So I
Speaker 5: go out to this Champions Tour event and you know,
Speaker 5: in addition to it being pretty chill out there, like
Speaker 5: from a putting standpoint, like eighty percent of that tours
Speaker 5: got the yips bat so they're they're down to try anything.
Speaker 5: So so I come out to that event and the
Speaker 5: inventory that I inherited was nil. Like we had a
Speaker 5: handful of putters. We were actually out of headcovers. I
Speaker 5: didn't know that, you know, it didn't didn't even occur
Speaker 5: to me to ask what the headcover inventory was. And like,
Speaker 5: you can't not have a headcover for this fucking thing.
Speaker 5: It's huge. It's gonna, you know, kill somebody. And so
Speaker 5: I show up with a with a pink Sunday bag
Speaker 5: about six of these putters with socks over them at
Speaker 5: the Champions tournament and uh, and like the guys loved it,
Speaker 5: Like they absolutely loved it, and they're all trying it
Speaker 5: and they're all checking it out. And I want to
Speaker 5: say I had four or five putters in play that week,
Speaker 5: guys going out on into tournaments with socks on the putters.
Speaker 5: And because there's no headcover that fits on it, not
Speaker 5: even a fucking driver headcover fits on it. It's so big.
Speaker 5: And I had so much fun and got so excited.
Speaker 5: And the first real exciting, exciting kind of anything that
Speaker 5: happened on TV. Jeff Sluman picked up the putter at
Speaker 5: that event, and he ended up using it for quite
Speaker 5: a while. I think I want to say he used
Speaker 5: it for at least a few months and led the
Speaker 5: Senior British later that summer through two rounds and was
Speaker 5: making bombs and he had a blue one and so
Speaker 5: everybody saw it. Everybody's like, what the hell is this
Speaker 5: blue branding iron thing that Jeff Sluman's using, And yeah,
Speaker 5: we got some fun pictures and that you know, really
Speaker 5: felt like things were going to happen fast at that point.
Speaker 5: It really really did.
Speaker 4: Here's Jeff Sluman, one of the true gentlemen and men's
Speaker 4: professional golf. He won the nineteen eighty eight PGA Championship
Speaker 4: at oak Tree Golf Club in Edmund, Oklahoma. He's a
Speaker 4: six time winner on the PGA Tour and a six
Speaker 4: time winner on the PGA Tour champions Do you remember
Speaker 4: directed force or how did you get this putter in
Speaker 4: your hands? And because I know it was kind of
Speaker 4: a bit of a monstrosity at that.
Speaker 9: Time, Well, if I'm recollecting correct, it was at our
Speaker 9: Senior Players Championship in Chicago. Does that sound right?
Speaker 5: Yep?
Speaker 8: They were on the putting green, the.
Speaker 9: Champion stores a little more lax about you know, Uh,
Speaker 9: manufacturers reps out there on the on the putting green
Speaker 9: versus the PGA Tour, and you know we understand that,
Speaker 9: but we were just you know, we're always happy to
Speaker 9: see new product. And you know, I was searching for
Speaker 9: anything at that time as poorly as I was putting.
Speaker 9: So they described their philosophy and what the putter did,
Speaker 9: and you know, so I kind of went with it.
Speaker 9: And Uh, as I mentioned in my email or text
Speaker 9: back to you, I just needed the bigger hole THET
Speaker 9: two at the time. I've I've since honestly kind of
Speaker 9: really found out what what ailed me For a long
Speaker 9: long time. I didn't I didn't putt well for certainly
Speaker 9: an extended period of time. If I looked at my
Speaker 9: stats and Champions Tour, and they're not as in depth
Speaker 9: and detailed as regular tour. I had a few good
Speaker 9: years in the early fifties, and then you know, really
Speaker 9: went in the tank. So when you're kind of on
Speaker 9: the back end of those stats, maybe not last but
Speaker 9: not far from last, you're you can't hit it good
Speaker 9: enough to overcome that in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 6: You kind of had a short stint with it, right,
Speaker 6: It was kind of a one run. You didn't have
Speaker 6: much of a run with it.
Speaker 9: No, And it was if I'm telling you the truth,
Speaker 9: I think it was so bad that I was trying
Speaker 9: it and then also trying to close my eyes when
Speaker 9: I was putting the short one. So you know, there's
Speaker 9: a lot of bad stuff going on in the old
Speaker 9: noggin at that point.
Speaker 4: Back to who was grinding in and outside of the ropes, we.
Speaker 5: Knew we were going to lose money in the first
Speaker 5: year or two and just doing our best not to
Speaker 5: lose too much. I think I was working for free
Speaker 5: at that point. Maybe I had a small salax, I
Speaker 5: still had my bar. I had a bar here in
Speaker 5: the Gene, and without that bar, I wouldn't have been
Speaker 5: able to do this because I was still feeding my
Speaker 5: family with the bar. And and so yeah, we're just
Speaker 5: mosying along. I'm learning a little bit about production and
Speaker 5: manufacturing and all that, even though that kind of wasn't
Speaker 5: really supposed to be my side of it. Bill was
Speaker 5: going to be doing a lot of that, but he
Speaker 5: was busy building the putters, and so we both kind
Speaker 5: of had to work together to figure out how to
Speaker 5: take the manufacturing up a notch and all that we're
Speaker 5: figuring out, we're figuring out going along and going along.
Speaker 5: I'm hitting tour events, doing my best to get out there.
Speaker 5: And then it was getting close to the end of
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen and we didn't know what the threshold was
Speaker 5: on usages. And I also didn't realize at the time
Speaker 5: that the champ applied, so Jeff had actually probably already
Speaker 5: gotten us in to get a credential the following year,
Speaker 5: but I was really worried. So getting towards the end
Speaker 5: of the season twenty eighteen, I end up at the
Speaker 5: Barracuda in Reno and lucky break number three. One of
Speaker 5: the things about being a REP as an owner that
Speaker 5: makes it different than just being a rep as you know,
Speaker 5: a guy who didn't get his tour card and is
Speaker 5: taking his second best option, is that I don't clock
Speaker 5: out at five. And I was, you know, the for
Speaker 5: the few years that I was out there, I was
Speaker 5: the first one there every morning and the last one
Speaker 5: to leave every night. And that was always when it
Speaker 5: happened for us. It was the only time I ever
Speaker 5: got interest because the putter is so ridiculous, looking like
Speaker 5: tour players are no different than you were. I like,
Speaker 5: they don't want to get made fun of. They don't
Speaker 5: want to think that they're using a crutch. They don't
Speaker 5: want any of that shit. And so it was, you know,
Speaker 5: usually the real early in the morning, a related night
Speaker 5: that I would get guys to be even slightly.
Speaker 4: Interested to meet Von Taylor. He's forty seven turn pro
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety nine. He has three PGA Tour wins,
Speaker 4: his last being the twenty sixteen AT and T Pebble
Speaker 4: Beach Program where he held off Phil Mickelson. Spinning forward
Speaker 4: to August of twenty eighteen, Taylor was coming off a
Speaker 4: seventy four to seventy five miss cut at the RBC
Speaker 4: Canadian Open.
Speaker 10: I got kind of an interesting story. I had never
Speaker 10: seen it before. I was out in Burracuda, struggling to
Speaker 10: keep my card. I'm around one twenty or so, one
Speaker 10: twenty five, and I need a good week. And we
Speaker 10: get there, and Reno used to be like perfect vent
Speaker 10: grass the first couple of years I played there, and
Speaker 10: then I came back a few years later and it
Speaker 10: was the hardest to putt Poana I've ever seen. And
Speaker 10: I showed up on Monday, I couldn't make a three
Speaker 10: footer to save my life, and just immediately had this
Speaker 10: high anxiety about my putting that week, and was using
Speaker 10: an old faithful putter. You know, felt like I was
Speaker 10: putting good, but just immediately I've never felt that before,
Speaker 10: and Monday, this is Monday. I'm feeling like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 10: what's gonna happen this week? And uh, Tuesday, putted all
Speaker 10: day long, just grind and grind and grind on the
Speaker 10: pudding green and still felt the same way leaving that
Speaker 10: day and decided to take a last minute trip down
Speaker 10: to the end of the range by myself. I was like,
Speaker 10: I'm gonna go down there, work.
Speaker 8: Do whatever.
Speaker 10: And it was kind of late, it was almost dark,
Speaker 10: and I'm like, there was no shuttles coming back to
Speaker 10: the clubhouse. So I was like, you know what, I'll
Speaker 10: just walk.
Speaker 9: It's fine.
Speaker 10: Kind of took a little different path to the clubhouse,
Speaker 10: came up by kind of the backside of the putting
Speaker 10: green and nobody's there but Sam, and he's got this
Speaker 10: bag of putters, and I kind of turned the corner
Speaker 10: and you know, I looked at the bag and the
Speaker 10: putters and I'm like, what it's this, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 10: these these things look like you know, space shuttles back
Speaker 10: to Sam Hun.
Speaker 5: I'm there late at night. Son's going down and Von
Speaker 5: Taylor comes up on the green and Vaughan is somebody
Speaker 5: I respected deeply. I love the dude and loved his
Speaker 5: putting stroke, always have. And he's messing around with his Seymour,
Speaker 5: that same Seymour that you know he was so successful
Speaker 5: with early in his career, made a Ryder Cup team
Speaker 5: with that Seymour putter, and then, you know, while he's putting,
Speaker 5: I pull up the phone. I start looking at his stats,
Speaker 5: and putting stats are bad and he's been putting real,
Speaker 5: real bad. And then I look up and I see
Speaker 5: him putting and the dudes just can't make anything and
Speaker 5: he's struggling and uh and then he uh, it's just
Speaker 5: me and him on this putting green and I go
Speaker 5: up to him and I think, I think I used
Speaker 5: the magic trick line and uh. He takes a look
Speaker 5: and he's such a sweet guy, you know, like I
Speaker 5: don't know if you met him at all, but I
Speaker 5: mean just kind as can be, an easy going and
Speaker 5: lovely dude. So even if he wasn't interested. He was
Speaker 5: the type of personality that he was going to make
Speaker 5: a few strokes with it, and he did and they
Speaker 5: went in and then and then he rolled a few
Speaker 5: more and they went in, and then he kind of
Speaker 5: laid a few balls down on this kind of short
Speaker 5: right to left bugaboo for him at the time, and
Speaker 5: they started going in, and then we really get talking
Speaker 5: and he asked me show him the revealer again, and
Speaker 5: we end up spending you know, forty five minutes an
Speaker 5: hour out of the putting green, just talking putting, talking
Speaker 5: about the tech. He's putting all over the green and
Speaker 5: he's making him finally and postures getting taller, and everything's
Speaker 5: just looking better, you know, and he's got he's got hope.
Speaker 10: Sam was just super friendly, you know, chill. He's like,
Speaker 10: hey man, you want to check out a buttter? And
Speaker 10: I'm like, yeah, why not, you know, like why not?
Speaker 10: And so he looks at my putter, he grabs one.
Speaker 10: He thinks it's going to match. I dropped a couple
Speaker 10: of balls like ten set make, Make, Make, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 10: this is really interesting. And I putted with him for
Speaker 10: probably twenty minutes, and I mean I made nine out
Speaker 10: of ten just from everywhere. I mean, we went all around,
Speaker 10: different breaking putts, couldn't miss, and I'm like, I was
Speaker 10: just in shock, and I'm like, this head is huge.
Speaker 10: The grips, you know the Bill Pressey like forward press
Speaker 10: in the grip and it was way bigger around, different shape,
Speaker 10: you know, just everything different. And I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 10: But I noticed, you know, the ball was rolling with
Speaker 10: just like I've never seen on poem. I'm like, it
Speaker 10: was just hug in the ground and I just couldn't
Speaker 10: deny that. And I was like, Wow, I'm gonna use
Speaker 10: this tomorrow in the pro am and just see what happens.
Speaker 10: And so I told my Caddy I come out the
Speaker 10: next day and I'm like, all right, dude, listen, I
Speaker 10: got this big, crazy putter. I'm gonna use it today.
Speaker 10: Let's just see what happened. He's like, okay, it was
Speaker 10: Mike kicks, by the way, And Mike's like, sure, man,
Speaker 10: let's let's give it a shot. And I think I
Speaker 10: made eight out of the nine pots on the nine
Speaker 10: holes or something. It's like made everything and he's like,
Speaker 10: we got to put it in. I'm like, we got
Speaker 10: to put it down and so all week long, I
Speaker 10: just filled it up, was making Potts, wasn't playing that grave,
Speaker 10: and I just kept making Potts, hanging in there, and
Speaker 10: I think it was in the top ten headed into
Speaker 10: Sunday and you know, had no idea what was going
Speaker 10: to happen, and the same thing, just just rolling it good,
Speaker 10: making putts, and I think I finished ninth or something,
Speaker 10: finished top ten, kind of locked up my card and
Speaker 10: I'm like, wow, this is you know, just one of
Speaker 10: those bizarre, you know, happenstance meetings and you.
Speaker 8: Know, just rolled it like a champ.
Speaker 10: And Sam was out there all week.
Speaker 8: He was cheering me on and.
Speaker 10: Just want of those feel good weeks, you know, and
Speaker 10: how things come together like that.
Speaker 5: Vaughn was kind of our first kind of big deal
Speaker 5: player that used it. He's it for a while. I
Speaker 5: think he used it probably for close to a year.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and then we were then we were kind
Speaker 5: of off to the races there on tour. We got
Speaker 5: our credential back and then you know, we're able to
Speaker 5: get a little bit more aggressive and ever so slightly
Speaker 5: more validated, because it's crazy when you get out there,
Speaker 5: like the difference, like like who's using it makes such
Speaker 5: a big difference, you know, and Vaughan was a deeply
Speaker 5: respected putter, you know, like all those guys. If Vaughan's
Speaker 5: using it like this is not a gimmick, this is
Speaker 5: not a silly thing. Here's a very deliberate guy that's
Speaker 5: used the same putter for fifteen years. So if he's switching,
Speaker 5: there's got to be something to it.
Speaker 6: So how does Adam get to it?
Speaker 5: Lucky Break number four.
Speaker 4: We covered how Slater got the original directed force into
Speaker 4: his bag and at the twenty nineteen at and T
Speaker 4: Pebble Beach Pro Am, he was paired with Adam Scott. Slater,
Speaker 4: as an early adopter, became an authentic ambassador and influencer.
Speaker 1: I've just spoken about the club to anyone and anyone
Speaker 1: who wants to listen, and generally I'll just play with
Speaker 1: people and they'll see me roll the ball and it
Speaker 1: just rolls so pure off the club that they can't
Speaker 1: help but ask about it, and you know, to get
Speaker 1: to the point with Adam, and that's that's how it
Speaker 1: happened with Adam.
Speaker 8: I was playing with him.
Speaker 1: We were paired in the same group at Pebble for
Speaker 1: three days and at the end of the third day,
Speaker 1: he goes, man, you gotta just show me that club.
Speaker 1: You got to just show me, like what how it
Speaker 1: works for you and go on the putting green and
Speaker 1: just just tell me, because he goes to the ball
Speaker 1: is just rolling so pure off your club.
Speaker 8: And I was making all sorts of putts.
Speaker 1: I didn't strike the ball very well, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: scoring great, but I was baking putts. I think I
Speaker 1: had a round and spyglass. I had around a spy glass.
Speaker 1: I think I had twenty two putts, and granted I
Speaker 1: missed a couple of greens real close, you know, so
Speaker 1: I was putting from off the green and they're not
Speaker 1: counted as a putt, so maybe it's like twenty seven
Speaker 1: to twenty eight putts from the ones who footed off
Speaker 1: the green. But point being that I just get so
Speaker 1: confident with the thing and I just start when I'm on,
Speaker 1: I just start making everything. And I did the same
Speaker 1: thing at Tahoe. I played that tournament up there, and
Speaker 1: I didn't score very well. I was really nervous and
Speaker 1: not striking the ball well and missing lots of greens.
Speaker 8: But man, I made everything on those greens.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just people just I play with friends
Speaker 1: and they see the ball roll off the club.
Speaker 8: And they want to try it. It's just that simple.
Speaker 4: Here's where we're stopping down again, just before we get
Speaker 4: into Lucky Break number four, in which Adam Scott becomes
Speaker 4: a believer in and a user of Lab golf.
Speaker 2: There's a fabitous stuff going on with the Lab, from
Speaker 2: the grip to the head of the angles in between,
Speaker 2: and being so non traditional it raised his eyebrows for sure.
Speaker 2: But I I just had this sense like this, you know,
Speaker 2: if you can embrace what this part of does and
Speaker 2: stay out of your own way, the results could come.
Speaker 2: And I just had this feeling and I said it
Speaker 2: to Sam. Although it didn't pan out, but like, this
Speaker 2: was the part of that can win around Augusta.
Speaker 5: Put another log on the fire.
Speaker 4: Nobody here is getting tied