Former World No. 1 Adam Scott and 11-time World Surf League champion Kelly Slater played a consequential weekend of golf together at Pebble Beach in early 2019.
Slater has called golf his second love for nearly three decades and has linked up with golf pros like Scott and Jon Rahm. Over this particular weekend, Slater – who claims he’s a scratch player despite not submitting his scores – caught the eye of the Aussie, and it wasn’t because they were surrounded by Pacific Ocean waves.
“I had a round at Spyglass where I had 22 putts, and Adam was just tripping out on me,” Slater told The Street.
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
The surfing legend was using a peculiar-looking putter called the Directed Force – which had a giant satellite-shaped head and a shaft that fell to its center. The putter was made by a company called L.A.B. Golf which stands for Lie, Angle, Balance. It uses technology that eliminates the “torque” on the putter, or the force that naturally allows the putter head to turn upon movement.
After three days of watching the surfer show out on the greens, the 2013 Masters winner was sold. Scott was fitted for a L.A.B. putter within weeks and debuted it during the 2019 PGA Tour season.
Four years later and L.A.B Golf has become one of the fastest growing golf equipment brands in the game. It’s gone from a garage-operation of two to nearly 50 employees, and has raised $1.5 million in capital. Its putters are now used by more than a handful of pros on both the PGA and LIV Tour.
But L.A.B. Golf was nearly ready to close shop just a little over a year before Scott and Slater’s interaction.
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L.A.B. Golf Just Needed a Chance
When L.A.B Golf CEO Sam Hahn first moved to the West Coast in the early aughts, it wasn’t because he foresaw the tech boom in Silicon Valley or Seattle. He moved to Eugene, Oregon, to pursue a career in music.
He spent his free time obsessing over golf, but he constantly switched putters in an attempt to find the right fit. In 2017, he was introduced to Directed Force – L.A.B. Golf’s company name at the time – though he was initially hesitant to use the putter for the same reason as many others.
“I was like, ‘There's no way I'm using that thing,’” Hahn told The Street. “It’s completely absurd looking.”
But after some persuasion from a friend, Hahn tried out the putter. And it changed his life – within weeks on the golf course, then within months off of it.
Hahn said in six weeks he shaved four shots off his handicap. He fell in love with the putter and its technology so much that he reached out to its inventor, Bill Presse. The two stayed in contact for months until Presse told Hahn that Directed Force was not making enough headway in the game to sustain its operations. It would be shutting down.
L.A.B. Golf
But Hahn wouldn’t let it. He was confident in Presse’s putting technology, and less than a year after first using the Directed Force putter, he pooled together funds and bought out the company.
Hahn and Presse worked together to give Directed Force a facelift, improving its branding, manufacturing, and operations. They changed the company name to L.A.B. in 2018, tinkered with the designs to make more aesthetically-pleasing putter heads with premium finishes, and fixed their e-commerce sales platform.
L.A.B. Golf
However, L.A.B.’s biggest issue was its marketing. The pair knew they just needed more people to get their hands on the putter, and the L.A.B. tech would do the rest.
They didn’t have a background in the golf equipment industry or the budget to compete with the big brands. So instead, Hahn turned to a low-budget option that the music and bar scene taught him: Social media.
“We learned early on that the Tour was going to be a tough nut to crack,” Hahn said. “Bill and I, every night, would spend another three or four hours in different Facebook forums and Instagram forums and WRX and YouTube spreading the word.”
The L.A.B. gospel spread wide enough for one of its putters to land in the hands of a golfer who wound up on the same flight as Slater during a round at Vero Beach in 2018.
“I think on the 12th hole, I finally said, ‘Let me just take a stroke with that,’ and I drained three putts from like 10-12 feet,” Slater said. “In that moment, [I] made a decision – ‘I'm going to get one.’”
Slater’s switch parlayed into Scott – the company’s first real break on the big stage.
Taking the Non-Traditional Route to Success
Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports
Scott’s performance was a major breakthrough for L.A.B. – enough that it was able to move from a small garage space in Reno, Nevada, to a bigger space in Eugene. But Hahn admitted that L.A.B. still couldn’t find much traction on the PGA Tour because the weekly schedule made it difficult for players to adapt new putting habits.
“We needed real life people with real life experiences to be telling the story,” Hahn said.
L.A.B.’s big boost ultimately ended up sprouting from the social media seeds it had planted years prior. In 2020, golf YouTubers began reviewing L.A.B. putters.
Peter Finch, who today has around 556,000 subscribers, posted a video about L.A.B. in October 2020 and said he would be placing the Directed Force 2.1 in his golf bag. A month later, Rick Shiels, who has over 2.5 million subscribers, raved about the same putter.
“The technology behind this perfectly balanced putter is going to go somewhere,” Shiels said.
Matt Fisher, or MrShortGame Golf on YouTube, posted his video in June 2021, and also talked positively about the unique tech and balance of the L.A.B. putter.
All three did have a few qualms, notably the steep price – L.A.B. putters start at $399 – and design. But Shiels said that the performance of the putter is up to par if not better than some other competitors in its price range like Scotty Cameron and Odyssey Toulon.
The YouTuber reviews, mixed with traction across social forums, drove L.A.B. to such a high that the company did not even touch much of its $1 million funding round between 2020 and 2021.
L.A.B. Golf’s Future Is Brighter Amid the Sport’s Changing Landscape
The newly announced alliance between the PGA Tour, DP Tour, and LIV Golf will completely reshape professional golf – and L.A.B. is likely to benefit.
Hahn said that because of the time between events, LIV golfers have been more “open-minded” about trying out L.A.B. putters. As many as eight golfers have wielded a L.A.B. putter during a LIV weekend – including 2011 Masters winner Charl Schwarzel, who won a LIV event using a L.A.B. putter.
Marc Lebryk-USA TODAY Sports
Those golfers will likely have the opportunity to return to PGA Tour events, giving L.A.B. a bigger spotlight for its putters.
“Wonderful news for us,” Hahn told The Street via text.
With its putters continuing to find its place within the game, Hahn said the team is already looking into creating a new club. But they will only do so if it adheres to the company’s core selling point.
“We have no interest in offering other products unless there is a clear technological advantage to it,” Hahn said.
Whatever may come next in the upcoming whirlwind years for golf, L.A.B. seems to have cemented itself as a rising star – just half a decade removed from what could have been its demise.
“We worked for peanuts for those first few years to give the company some legs,” Hahn said. “We've just followed a very different path and a lot of other golf startups have, and it kind of worked out that ignorance was bliss.”
