The Chasing Daylight Podcast
Four amateur golfers in Las Vegas talk weekly about the game. This show is for the obsessed golf fan who likes to nerd out on the game's different topics. Look for interviews from insiders within the industry and banter from their opinions on golf's current state. And discussions about headline topics like the Major tournaments and the hot new clubs hitting the shelves. Real talk from real people who play the game.
The Chasing Daylight Podcast
321: A Candid Chat with L.A.B Golf's Sam Hahn
What happens when an Instagram critique leads to an unexpected friendship? In this captivating episode, we're joined by Sam Hahn, the innovative mind behind L.A.B. Golf, after a viral social media post sparked a genuine connection rather than conflict.
Sam takes us through his remarkable journey from bar musician to golf equipment revolutionary, detailing how a chance encounter with a peculiar putter transformed his putting and ultimately his life. The conversation reveals fascinating insights about the golf equipment industry that few insiders are willing to share, including how Adam Scott missing a crucial putt at the Masters actually saved L.A.B. Golf from growing too quickly and potentially collapsing under overwhelming demand.
The Revealer, L.A.B. Golf's famous demonstration device, takes center stage as Sam explains its surprising origins. Far from being a marketing gimmick, it was actually the experimental prototype that led to the development of their balanced putter technology. This revelation challenges common misconceptions about Lab's approach and highlights their commitment to solving fundamental problems in putter design.
We dive deep into manufacturing challenges, tour player adoption, and the future of putter innovation. Sam shares candid stories about fitting pros like Phil Mickelson, the complex realities of scaling an American-made golf company, and how social media both helps and hurts small equipment manufacturers. His refreshing honesty about business struggles, customer feedback, and the occasional online criticism demonstrates why L.A.B. has built such a passionate following.
Whether you're a putting enthusiast, equipment junkie, or simply appreciate authentic conversations about golf innovation, this episode offers remarkable insights into how challenging conventional wisdom can lead to breakthrough technologies. Subscribe now to hear this compelling discussion about the intersection of golf technology, social media, and entrepreneurship.
We hope you enjoy this week's episode, and if you do, please consider leaving us a review on either Spotify or iTunes. Thank You!
What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Chasing Daylight Podcast. Typically this time of the year we do a Masters episode and talk all about the Masters and everything that's involved with that. Who knows, we may get into some of that. We have the azaleas going on in the background. For those of you watching on YouTube, thank you so much for tuning in there. Already got a lot of people hopping on. That's great. We are live on Instagram. We are live on YouTube. Thank you so much for tuning in there. Already got a lot of people hopping on. That's great. We are live on Instagram. We are live on YouTube. We are live on X. I brought X back in the fold this week just to see if we can maybe get some more engagement going on. A lot of people were expecting to tune into this one because we have a very special guest with us this evening Mr Sam Hahn from Lab Golf. Thank you, sir, so much for joining us this evening. Mr sam han from lab golf. Thank you, sir, so much for joining us this week.
Speaker 2:Thank you, guys for having me, yeah thank you, sam yeah, so um a little bit of chaos took place.
Speaker 1:Let me put this up here real quick. Uh, so the beginner has not been announced yet just so because I'm sure 100 people are going to be asking about that. A little bit of controversy took place and I got a message.
Speaker 2:Is that what we're calling it? We're calling it controversy. Well, what would you call? It All right, go on.
Speaker 1:So everybody knows by now, I made a post and it got a lot of views and it's still getting a lot of views. And we found out that, uh, the facebook group from lab golf found the video last night. So now the facebook side of it is going nuts. But, uh, you know, there was a lot of comments, a lot of ridiculousness, a lot of really good stuff, and in the end, sam reached out and said we need to get on the phone and, uh, we had what I I thought, personally, was a fantastic conversation. I wasn't expecting it. I thought you were trying to get a hold of me, uh, with a cease and desist, and telling me to pull the video down. And that's expecting, uh. So when?
Speaker 2:when you my name is not chip brewer, so when you uh, early too.
Speaker 1:uh, when you started the conversation and we're like, hey, come on, let's, let's, let's chat and find out what's going on, it was, it was very appealing to me because, one, you didn't have to do that, two, you could have just let it go and been done with it. But but I think that conversation found out that we both had a lot more in common than we thought we did and it led to this. You know, sam wasn't aware we had a podcast, so I told him about it. He said hell, let's get on and let's talk about your company. So I know most of the people that are tuning in watching this know who you are, but let's get let's get a little bit of backstory on how you got involved with lab and and got to the point where you are now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and before I get to that, I just want you know, just regarding what you just said, you know turns out we had a lot more in common than we thought we did.
Speaker 2:it's one of the frustrating things about sort of the the social media golf environment is that, like we all have so much in common you know, we're not even so much in common we have the one thing that matters in common, which is that we fucking love golf, you know, and, yes, yes, you know, and, and um, yeah, I get rubbed the wrong way a lot of times when I see some of the posts and some of the some of the shit people talk about our stuff, but I do my best to try and remember that like in a different world I probably would have been one of those guys talking shit about lap golf. You know, so I get it. You know I get how, how this happens.
Speaker 2:And I was just really excited that you were down to talk because, you know, I'll tell you just a very quick story when Bill and I first partnered up, the inventor of the technology is a guy named Bill Presley and I'll get to how I met him in a second but you know, total genius and you know, came up with this in a trailer, a in a trailer.
Speaker 2:Um and uh, we partnered up but we had no money and so the only, you know, opportunity that we had to promote our stuff was, you know, in Facebook groups and different golf blogs and stuff like that. And there was this one dude that was just relentless about giving us crap. His name is Brett Douglas. They call him the bird man, um and uh, and it was the same kind of thing as this, and not that you know you'll end up being a lab user, like he did, but I mean he was just relentless and relentless, and relentless. Finally, we you know we ended up talking. He ended up getting a putter and talked it through and you know, when he online and by big I mean we sold like five putters and like Whoa. And we totally understand the merit of not reacting, you know, quite so intensely when people throw some shade and instead just having fun conversations, cause if you have the conversation generally, you end up learning something on both sides.
Speaker 2:So yeah, my backstory. I you know, I, I was in the bar music business and actually, as your intro was playing there or the guitar tuning up, absolutely. So yeah, my backstory. I was in the bar music business and actually, as your intro was playing there, I heard the guitar tuning up. I was like that's the sound I've heard a thousand times in different garages. But I was a golf nut because I had plenty of time during the day to play golf.
Speaker 1:Pretty good player. I wasn't when I was young or anything like that.
Speaker 2:I was a very, very late bloomer. I was, I think, when I was 22, when I first started playing out here in Oregon I had a hard time breaking 90. And then when I met a couple of guys that were really good players that I liked hanging out with, and that's you know. As you guys know, that's how you get good, just playing with good players, and I was a scratch player about two years later. And then know that's how you get good, just playing with good players. And um, I was a scratch player about two years later and then, you know, just a total freaking equipment nut. I just thought equipment was the coolest stuff and I loved, you know, screwing around with everything, particularly with the putters. And then, um, fast forward 15 years.
Speaker 2:I met a um, the instructor at emerald valley, which it sounds like a couple of you guys have played. Um, uh, uh. This guy named bob duncan and he had come across the directed force reno putter in australia on a vacation and um told me I had to try it. I, like most of you, you know, blew snot out my nose when I saw it and thought it was absurd looking. Um told him no way and uh, just out of respect for him, I was like, okay, dude, I'll give it nine holes. And I had a crazy experience with it and bought the putter on the spot, had some struggles with it early and then, once I kind of went through my journey and how to sort of unlock the technology, crazy shit happened. I was a one when I started with that putter and then I was like a plus three and a half. About six weeks later it was the best golf I ever played my entire life um and then the head
Speaker 2:fell off the putter. So when the head fell off, I had to send it back. Um, and bill was, you know, great and called me up and, you know, apologized and told me to get it all squared away and we just got to talking and we were um kindred golf spirits. So, um, we got to talking and then, wouldn't have been more than a month or two after that, that, um, directed force, which was the name of the company at the time, was about to you know, they just they couldn't get it going and about to close the doors, and so I, uh, um, I partnered up with bill and we rebranded his lab and that was that was the rest is history.
Speaker 2:The rest is. The rest is history.
Speaker 1:So one of the one of the parts of the conversation that we had that I thought was really interesting and it was something that I never heard and it really like showcased what you guys have been able to do. We were talking about what happened with Carbon Putters, where my golf spy rated them the best putter and they blew up, couldn't meet productions and shut down. And you were telling me about what happened with Seymour and then you told me about Adam Scott missing a putt at Augusta the best thing that ever happened to us.
Speaker 2:And the best.
Speaker 1:Thing that ever happened to you and I was like what? So tell everybody what that was.
Speaker 2:So Lab was officially rebranded in 2018. We got on tour in a pretty remarkable way actually. We got another just incredible lucky break on tour. In a pretty remarkable way. Actually, we got another just incredible lucky break.
Speaker 2:Kiwi, by the name of Tim Wilkinson, picked up the putter a lefty. He's a lefty and there happened to be a lefty putter at some random tournament. He was playing, I think, in Utah or something like that and you can't get a credential unless you've had some plays. And we called up to get a credential and they're like well, you need somebody to invite you or you need to have had plays. I'm like, well, we don't have anybody. They're like what's the name of the company? He's like actually, you've had 10 plays, so got a tour credential, got out on tour and had a little bit of success here and there. We had a really cool experience with Vaughn Taylor, but no major players were really taking a look. Then Kelly Slater, the surfer, had bought the putter at a pro shop and then Kelly ended up playing with and we got in touch with him and then Kelly ended up getting paired with him with Adam Scott at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in 2019.
Speaker 2:And Kelly out-putted everybody, everybody including I think it was pat cantlay and and adam in that group and like dude was just filling it up. And so I got a call the next week from adam scott and, um, you know, it's like out of a movie. I literally thought somebody was fucking with me and I was like okay who is?
Speaker 3:this really sure yeah and it was.
Speaker 2:And it was adam. He told me to meet him in the locker room. I met him and um, just awesome, dude. I mean he's just twice as awesome as you would imagine from hearing him talking in the press rooms and stuff. Just a delightful human being.
Speaker 2:And um, and bit him for a putter. He didn't use it that week but uh, put it in play the following week, which was the honda at the time, and um and the players, and then a few other tournaments in the Florida swing and he was putting really well, took it to the Masters and and bear in mind, this was the short one, this is not a, this is not a sweeper, this was a conventional length directed force. You know the original og branding iron in red, in red nonetheless, so you could see this thing from two, two fairways over, and uh, and dude was leading the masters through two days in 2019. And um, you know, and and look, I knew nothing about the golf business. You know, when I got into this, I knew nothing about the equipment industry or anything, and my just stupid idea was panning out exactly as I had foolishly thought like, yeah, we'll just get out on tour Somebody. Great, I'll get it.
Speaker 2:They'll make a bunch of putts, one of the big sell a million call and write it write us a big check and you know we'll be on our way. And um, and so he's leading the masters and all of a sudden it's happening. The phone's ringing off the hook and orders are coming in, and it's all crazy. And um, and and we're starting to panic a little bit because we don't have enough putters.
Speaker 2:We don't have enough head covers, we don't have enough grips, we don't have enough anything. And then on Saturday he putted pretty poorly, but was still close enough to the leaderboard.
Speaker 2:The cameras were on him and he ended up missing like an 18-inch putt on the 16th hole and the phone stopped ringing and they showed this putt over and over and over and over again. I'm like thank god I had to turn off the tv and you know, I'm just like devastated as I look back on it now, like if he'd have gone on to win, we'd have suffered the same fate as many, many companies, you know, scaling a business.
Speaker 2:You just, you just can't imagine how difficult it is, even if you're deliberate about it, even if you have, you know, the right sequencing of growth and all that stuff. I mean, I look back on our journey from where we were, you know, certainly then. But even even where we were, you know, three years ago, to where we are now, like many, many companies haven't been able to make that. That jump into being able to produce thousands of clubs every month and cause it's. It's a whole different thing. You start a company with a process and a certain you know manufacturing protocol and certain components and you know certain vendors that are helping you get all this stuff.
Speaker 2:But you know, especially at the time we were, you know we, we make everything in america like nobody was prepared to, you know, have our volume triple, then triple again, then quadruple, then quadruple again, and you know, and on and on, and so, we got a lot stop stop that's, that's what's so interesting, right like I don't, I mean I make like my own t-shirts.
Speaker 5:Right like, and it's just like, do I order 50 or 25, you know? And it's like I mean it's not gonna hurt me financially, right, and it's just like, do I order 50 or 25?, you know, and it's like I mean it's not going to hurt me financially, right, but it's like I don't want to be stuck with them.
Speaker 2:You know you don't want to be stuck with them.
Speaker 5:And if somebody comes up with like a hundred order, like I don't have them for you, you know, and I mean you don't have them, and then you're calling up a vendor and the vendor wants the business, but can't say no, and then they end up screwing you because they over-promised. And then you're waiting and I totally get it, totally get it. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:All right, so we got Joe. There's a couple of questions coming in.
Speaker 2:I got them written down, I think we just do Q&A at the end and we just go and then I'm writing everything down when are we going to talk about the fucking bullshit that you pulled on Instagram, on us?
Speaker 5:hey, call him out. I love it.
Speaker 1:Fire away, fire away oh, one of my favorite things was.
Speaker 5:People were calling him an angry old man and he's my golf buddy, but, but I call him dad as well, we call him dad because he is older than us.
Speaker 2:Why does your AI caricature look like a baby then?
Speaker 1:Because I have to do it 16 times to get it the way I want it to look like me.
Speaker 5:This is the greatest podcast ever. This is the greatest podcast ever, and.
Speaker 2:I want to know what you should probably show the people, what the original caricature of me was like. Did you just type in neurotic glasses and that's what you wrote.
Speaker 1:I can find it Hang on.
Speaker 5:A second Big Matt did say, play the video if you didn't see that.
Speaker 3:Let's see, I don't think Sam wants to see that anymore.
Speaker 2:It's like I shared it with all my friends and apparently it's everybody's profile picture for me now.
Speaker 5:No, when matt started going it was like I, I mean, it was just he didn't even plan on it that was the original all strung out oh that's so good.
Speaker 1:Heavens ai man, ai it'll get, you it'll get you not prepared, it'll get you. Uh. So what were you saying, joe?
Speaker 5:I think, uh, I mean, when matt posted that video, I thought I mean he didn't mean for it to go that way, right, like he didn't think it was going to blow up. And that's just Matt, being the nerd golfer that he is, and I was just like wow, that's really like that just happened spontaneously. And I told him I thought it was brilliant. You know, I was like wow, I wouldn't have never thought about posting that video. And yeah, I wouldn't have never thought about posting that video. And yeah, it was just crazy that it took off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a big learning experience for us for a couple of reasons. Number one I realized that if I comment on something, I'm still used to having 6,000 followers instead of 140,000. If I comment on something. It ends up in everybody's feed, so yes, it does.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, man.
Speaker 2:I mean, I, I, I think a lot of why lab, you know, came to be is because I do look at social media every night and every single night I ask myself why the hell am I doing this? Because it's, you know, it's frustrating.
Speaker 5:And what's the world we live in now? Unfortunately, it's the world we live in is the world?
Speaker 2:and and for the longest time, up until really the last kind of two years, it was manageable.
Speaker 1:You know like there was a you know I could have conversations with people.
Speaker 2:I had the time to actually address almost every thread or every comment or you know, whatever it was Now it's. You know it's almost impossible to do that, but I tried to the extent possible. But for whatever reason that one caught me, you know, at just the right time and you know at night, and you know I fired back and so it was important for me to understand. You know A that we ought to be a little bit more careful with what I comment on.
Speaker 2:if I don't want to post a particular amount of attention, but what a lot of the success that we've had is because, I think, more than a lot of other companies out there, we've listened to the consumer and while you know?
Speaker 2:yeah, I thought your video was stupid and a lot of people did, but oversimplified the message a little bit, but what I did see not only was your original sentiment, but any number of people who agreed with you revealer, um, I would not have bought the company um, if the revealer didn't exist. Um, because the, the, it's just such an easy explanation. If you, the, the general consumer sees numbers or data or whatever and they scroll right past they, they see some dude saying this one's going to change your game and they scroll right past. You know, like it's um, it's just such a simple explainer and um, and so uh, and I, I get the fatigue, you know. I I understand the frustration, like for people like you guys who I'm sure have seen the revealer videos for seven straight years now. Um and um, and I get it. I get that it's, it's tedious.
Speaker 2:I understand the sentiment of like well, we don't put with a real, I understand all of it, but at the end of the day, we have a technology that does separate itself from you know, not including the last six months, that was different than anything that you know that anybody had ever done, and we needed a way to explain and it works. And there's something, there's an important piece I want people to know about the Revealer. The Revealer came first. Like a lot of times, the comments are like why do we care about a device that somebody invented just to promote their own product?
Speaker 5:The revealer is what gave birth to Ryan's imbalance, not the other way around.
Speaker 2:When Bill was trying to figure the technology out, he sort of like picked up a putter and noticed that it just flopped. And he's like, well, really right, do all putters just flop? So he made a, he made a revealer out of a crutch with some fishing wire and started hanging putters in there to figure out what putter sat square, none of them did, and that's what he used to start to develop the technology. So it's not as though this was some device, you know, retroactively created to make us look good. It was the device that was used to create what is, you know, whether it works for you or not is profound and different technology than anything that had come prior, including other toe-up models that you know. Other people say well, this butter was first, or this butter was first. Nobody actually did to the full extent what Bill has. You know, what Bill invented with this technology, and so, but anyway, your post inspired, you know, we have a large marketing team and we've, you know, some people internally, a bunch of marketing firms that we work with.
Speaker 1:Oh, I bet I'm their fanboys right now. Huh, what's that I said? I bet I'm number one on their list right now.
Speaker 2:Well, it inspired a lot of conversation about revealer fatigue. And how do we? You know, like the world knows now, like for the most part, not everybody, but a lot of people have seen it what can we talk about? You know differently about the tech. How can we, how can we help people understand the purpose of the revealer, what else the revealer is doing other than just marketing our product? And so you know, to that extent I thank you guys. I mean, and I think everyone on social media that's giving us shit I sort through the, you know the, the vitriol and and try to find the nuggets of you know that help me understand what the consumer is thinking I believe for him yeah, I believe, and that's that's what's fantastic about your brand you are taking the feedback and trying to make it better, and a lot of people don't do that.
Speaker 5:A lot of people don't do that. A lot of people don't do that. You know TaylorMade is not listening to their customers like you. Like you know I'm not going to say the C word, but you know there's a company man on the call, but you know there's there's other brands that are not going to take the feedback as well as you and try and implement it into their brand as as lab, as as well as you're taking it right, you're.
Speaker 2:You take it as we can make it better because of the feedback and that's 100 because we're listening and and and I'm no different than the people that founded all the companies that you're talking about, and I think that there's just simply a different mentality, um, when you're, when you're a founder, versus when you're, you know, three, four generations removed from the, the core values that made the brand what it is. I'm now, you know, dealing with um pnls.
Speaker 5:Oh well, I mean that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, but just yeah just the mass the, the mass demand. Definitely I understand how, how, how people end up where they do. I understand how brands end up frankly resenting their customers. I understand.
Speaker 5:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:How brands end up taking the easy way out. I see that decision. We're not making it. We still make the good decision and it's not that hard to make the good decision and to make the decision that is, you know, consumer, um, consumer, positive, but, um, but I get it, you know, and, um, and yeah, I mean we, we, we, we absolutely listen. And you know my, my personal sensitivity is, like you know, internally fucking sucks. I'm an anxious wreck all the time, but it serves the brand really well because, like I, I hate when people don't like our stuff, I hate when we're misunderstood, I hate when people are, you know, speaking things that aren't true. Um, uh, and so, you know, social media has, you know, provided an opportunity for um, me to be a sensitive little bitch and actually, you know, engage with, uh, with a lot of the folks that have the opinions that they do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got snarky with me. I was like, wow, okay, let's do this. It was funny because it took that meme where the guy gets caught looking at the girl and his wife sees him and he just drives off the cliff. It took a right turn really fast and I like real quick, whoa.
Speaker 1:I said okay, hang on a second and then, then, you know you're like, hey, I'm sorry that wasn't, that wasn't cool, let's, let's have a conversation, so, um, but I, what a lot of people. This is the. The sad part about social media is, you know, you didn't know any of my backstory, none of it. And and when we talked and you learned a lot about my backstory, it's like, okay, you're, you're not just an idiot on on instagram. Well, I mean, I am sometimes, but you're not just an idiot on instagram that doesn't know what the fuck talking about.
Speaker 1:You have some actual input in this and you know I've I never said in that video that you shouldn't play a lab putter. I didn't say the lab putters suck. I didn't say it's not going to help your game. I, I just my beef with it is the revealer and my beef is not with your putter in the revealer, it's with other putters being showcased in the revealer, and that that is. That is what was the. You know, the.
Speaker 1:The metamorphosis of that video was I got hit with an ad from club champion and it just like it was. I was on the putting green, I took a break to scroll through some Instagram and I saw it, and it's like the world came together and went go make this video. And so I just and that's what it was, I didn't, I didn't sit down and plot it out, I didn't script it. I grabbed my phone, put it one handed and just was having some fun with it, cause I was like, okay, enough of everybody else's putter spinning around in a revealer, because I I'm I'm pretty sure, based on my knowledge of putters and putter manufacturers, I don't think any of those guys care what their putters are doing in your repealer. I just, I just don't the other manufacturers yeah I, I mean, I care.
Speaker 2:That's why they're making ones that work in the revealer.
Speaker 1:But they're making a different putter, not the ones that are in the revealer. Scotty Cameron and his Newport 1.5,. I don't think he gives a rat's ass what his putter does in the revealer, because it has no bearing on.
Speaker 2:I can tell you that I'm not trying to flex, but I know for a fact that he oh no, no, you know he, I know internally there was a couple people on his staff who actually told him five years ago, when they showed him the lab, that this was going to be a problem and he said no, it's not, don't worry about it. And now, as you see, they've got a zero torque or tow up you know version of their Phantom. I just saw a tow up version of the Fastback that they're making. I have no idea if they'll go to market, but I think they care and I think that you know this is one of the things that you and I talked about on the threat and one of the purposes of the revealer, one of the things that the revealer has done that I wish. There's times where I wish I wasn't attached to the company so that I could, you know kind of more, have what I talk about be received in more of an unbiased way. But like the biggest revelation to me about the revealer, like the first time I saw it and the first time Bob showed me, you know what it did and what you know lab were at the time it directed force putter did versus other putters. I was kind of like you know, okay, whatever. The thing that actually blew my mind personally with the demonstration was the off center strikes in the, in the, in the revealer, and I was like whoa, that's impressive.
Speaker 2:But then the more time I spent with the revealer, with other putters, not with ours that's where my education and understanding and all of the light bulbs and all of the questions that I could never answer about my journey with other putters actually began, starting with toe hang. So I know I knew from my own personal experience that my strokes with the shallowest arc and the smallest face-to-path ratio took place with a toe hang putter, like 8802s, like full toe hang putters. And then as soon as I grabbed a face balance putter which was supposed to, at least according to the narrative that all fitters use as far as how a putter should be fit and what it's supposed to do for stroke types or whatever to the exact opposite. That's when I started gating and you know the path got all fucked up and whatever. So the narrative that I was told was supposed to be happening around toe flow um, just didn't check out.
Speaker 2:And then when I saw a revealer, I understood why the toe flow putter actually shuts in in in the takeaway and then it opens in transition. It's going heel first in in in each direction. Now, I'm sure this could have been explained to me by somebody who knew more, but I went to Adele fittings multiple times. I went to you know different fancy fitters and all this stuff and they would, you know, see me with my putter, see that it had some depth of arc and or, at the time, if the arc was shallow, they'd hand me this putter or that putter or whatever. And there was no relationship between the way that I was stroking the putter and the torque profile that they were handing me.
Speaker 2:And the revealer shows you why. It shows you that this narrative that nobody bothered to test why it doesn't work, as well as the algorithms that different fitting you know platforms would have you believe that it does. And if you think about it, it's not different than track man. Like Matt when you grew up, you know I'm sure that you were told in order to hit a fade, you aim the club face at the target and in your body a little left of it, and you know the ball, over and over again, started at your target and faded away from it rather than starting left of it and, you know, going over it wasn't until we saw a drag man.
Speaker 2:Actually, the face is shut relative to the target in order to produce a fade that we actually knew the rules. This is it's kind of that same thing where we just have information that we didn't have. I'm not saying anybody was trying to fool anybody. I think that people thought that they misunderstood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally so. The. I think that people thought that they misunderstood. Yeah, totally so. The revealer is very impressive in that regard and it really helps open up a a lot of eyes as far as what torque profiles do. We're excited soon to be introducing a torque meter where we can actually measure it with a, with a numeric value, as far as how much torque in either direction, you know, in the takeaway and in the change of direction, all that stuff, and I think that will help some folks that will. But yeah, the revealer has a lot of good purposes beyond just marketing our kick-ass putters.
Speaker 5:Hey shout out the Greg Norman book how to Hit a Golf Shot. I got it in the bathroom right now. You know. He said exactly what Sam said and I guess he was wrong. Yeah, what sam said and right, I guess in the face but I would like to go back to where you said that they care about the revealer. I'm curious do you think they care about the revealer? Or do you think that they care how hot lab is because of the use of the revealer?
Speaker 2:I mean a little of both. I mean I know a little of both. I mean the industry is unfortunately very small and incestuous and weird and everybody talks and so I know what you know to some extent what's going on in these R&D rooms, I mean you made it hot.
Speaker 5:What's that? I mean? You made it hot. It's the Kendrick Lamar.
Speaker 2:oh for sure I mean, there's no question, but that they're responding to market share reports, and you know exactly any amount of stuff that we're taking up. But you know you got to give these guys a little credit, like they don't just respond to market share reports, like it. You know the right and the market. You know like and this is one of the points I made to you that you know I make all the time around the revealer and the marketing in general, Like if you have really good marketing.
Speaker 2:You can do really good marketing with a product that doesn't work. You can do one run. That's what infomercials are, that's what you know look really good. You know, if you explain the technology without having to validate it, you can set it and forget it, shout out Ron.
Speaker 5:Papil, you know yeah they do.
Speaker 2:They do one run. They sell a million of them and you never hear from them again because everybody buys the thing and realize it's garbage and it doesn't work. You cannot market your wear to wear we've gotten to. The product has to work Like. There has to be enough people out there playing with their friends saying I'm putting better with this lab. Otherwise you could do all the marketing in the world and it ain't gonna. It ain't gonna get you to um, to the market share that we've got. So it's a, it's a, it's a double.
Speaker 2:You know, they the a, I think they're seeing that the tech works, um, b, they're um, uh, you know, responding to some market share stuff.
Speaker 2:You know, I remember early on I wish I could name him, but out of respect for him I won't. But a tour rep that worked for, you know, one of the three biggest manufacturers in the world one of my first weeks out on tour, grabbed it, called the head of R&D and said we have a problem, this thing's a problem, it's going to be an issue because this thing really works. They're one of the companies that have issued a, put out a competitive product here. It's both. They're responding to the market. I think that they were hoping that it didn't take off so that they wouldn't have to respond, that they were hoping that it didn't take off so that they wouldn't have to respond, and that's one of the really sad things I've learned about the industry is the number of technologies that are acquired by these companies and then put in a drawer. There's so much cool shit out there, there are so many great inventions that simply do not have what's that?
Speaker 1:JP wedges Title is great, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And there's, there's a I mean tons of really awesome stuff that will never see the light of day, because these companies bought the ip just to put it in the drawer, just so that they wouldn't have to work too much harder and divert too much from what they already do. Um, I think there's probably a few companies that are kicking themselves that they didn't do that with us, because they certainly all had the opportunity, and I think they just thought it wasn't going to take and it did, and it did. And it's going right now.
Speaker 1:So here this is kind of off topic, but our buddy, chris Torres, wants to know what wine are you sipping on? That's a good question.
Speaker 2:I'm not even that much of a wine guy. I was uh shout out the world famous I was, uh, I was having a shitty day and I was like jesus, I have to do a podcast right now. Maybe it is spring valley, spring valley. She looks like a nice lady. Spring Valley. Spring Valley.
Speaker 1:She looks like a nice lady, the Willamette wine country is amazing.
Speaker 2:Willamette wine is real. I'm going to actually have another glass. Best pinots in the world, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:So I'm told Okay, joe, did you want to get into some Q&As now, jeremy, you've been quiet, I'm sure you have a question you guys have both been very quiet.
Speaker 2:It's honestly a little creepy. They're usually pretty quiet.
Speaker 1:Joe and I are the talkers. We needed to force them. So we found two good handicaps to help us in scramble events.
Speaker 2:You guys look like enforcers. I can't tell you, you guys are big. You guys both look kind of like they're in security.
Speaker 3:We're too famous on yeah like security. Yeah, no, I do have a question. Has jordan spieth?
Speaker 5:reached out to you about getting a lab putter I knew it um no, uh he
Speaker 2:has not reached out and in fact and I'm certain that that'll never happen, because I completely fucking blew it with Cameron McCormick. Cameron, I met him. He's a nice guy and very, very hard worker and he was working with Jimmy Walker who was using our stuff kind of off and on for a while and in the relationship with him Jimmy was pretty short-lived. I had been working with jimmy for a year and a half before he started working with um, with cameron and then, um, uh, again actually at the honda.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, he got into one of our putters and like I I mean it was a catastrophe. Like I mean I think he lost like five shots in a round to the field putting. And I'm looking at these videos and I knew that he'd been working with Cameron on the stroke a little bit, and so I texted Cam and I was just like, looks like he's crowding the ball and I don't know. I mean we got to and he was, you know, basically, just like who the fuck are you Like fuck off and or you like fuck off and so, um, my guess, is uh, he would um much sooner be grabbing.
Speaker 2:If he was interested in the technology, I imagine he'd probably be grabbing it from cameron or somebody else yeah, jeremy.
Speaker 1:Uh, we have. We have a bet with jeremy that if he has to get a lab, putter if jordan speith was one in his bag, so he he's more looking out for himself with that question yeah, yeah, for sure, definitely you're good, not saying I wouldn't get a lab putter, but jeremy is like his whole journey with putters, like where people are.
Speaker 2:You know, I understand the. I mean, I used to. I used to to intentionally just ride honeymoons with my putting that like I would switch putters every round, even if I putted well the round before, just because I believed in the power of honeymoon. Look at what he's doing. I mean he's got that last WRX post. He got 15 of the exact same fucking putter. Like what are you doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Dan, you got anything.
Speaker 4:I'm just curious on if you have any plans or anything like that with R&D right now on maybe experimenting with different metals like carbon steels or different metal type inserts or anything like that in the future.
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah, the insert thing, for sure Carbon. I love carbon.
Speaker 5:I'm a carbon steel freak.
Speaker 2:The best, it's the best, the link that I have that I use every once in a while is carbon. And the problem with carbon is it arrests. And you know there are certainly certain customers we're actually just talking about this. We were considering doing a direct-to-consumer-only carbon release so that we could handle the customer service about it, because that's the biggest issue. If people are buying carbon off the rack at Superstore, they don't read the stickers, they don't read the stuff and then they'll go out to, you know, abandoned dunes or whatever, stick the putter in a head cover, wake up the next morning and it's orange and they get pretty pissed off.
Speaker 2:So I love dealing with people that like of course everybody on this thread, and probably the people listening to it, love a nice patina. Joe Blow plays 15 times a year and leaves his wet putter in his head cover at the country club. Not so much. So I love carving and we'll experiment with that for sure. The reason we use aluminum so much, particularly with the mallets, is because our whole thing is moving the CG around. Being able to manipulate the CG per lie, angle, per swing, weight, per length, per grip, per everything All of these things factor into how we balance the putter. Aluminum, being so light, gives us maximum flexibility with which to do that. So we'll probably start experimenting with some carbon fiber, you know, to do much the same where you know, gives us the headroom to be able to move the CG around a little bit.
Speaker 2:I would love to start messing with titanium, just because I think it would be cool to make a titanium putter, but just so expensive, I mean, it's just so difficult to machine and the materials expensive, that's a lot of time, and so you know, and we like we talked about it one time and you know you have to think about like, well, like we're, we're very committed to no bs, you know, like we're not going to customers and we're not going to you know, start to tell people that materials or this or that does things that it's not going to do. So we were talking about titanium. We were like, okay, okay, well, what's the story? What's better about titanium? Nobody could come up with an answer other than that it was really cool to use titanium.
Speaker 1:It's a great PR segment.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I did have a question come through.
Speaker 2:With inserts you were asking about inserts like the, you know, the Oz. There's no question, one of the biggest, you know, complaints that we get about our stuff is ball speed, um, and that's for two reasons number one, the groove pattern that we usually use. Number two, yeah, three reasons, uh. Number two, aluminum is pretty soft. It's not a, it's not a terribly firm material, so the you know deflection isn't quite as hard. And then three, the center of gravity's relationship with the face has a big impact. So the closer the CG is to the face, the faster the ball comes off. And so that's why, with, like, our biggest one, the DF 2.1, that's the slowest putter we have because the CG is so far behind the face. That's the slowest putter we have because the cg is so far behind the face. Um, so, uh, that's so.
Speaker 2:We've made the odds with the specific intent of solving for that issue and we, you know, offer that that stainless insert, and that was kind of a double whammy. So we had the stainless insert and we moved the cg closer to the face than any of any other mallets that we've made so far. Um, it's been a hit and people are really stoked and it's solving the problem that a lot of people had. So people are like when's the df3i coming out and when's the 2.1i coming out and all that, and it's just it's. It's very difficult to explain the engineering feat that adding that much weight to the front of the putter is while still allowing us to balance at 28 to 48 inches and 63 degrees to 79.5 degrees. It's really hard. So it'll be a minute before we have those options, but the demand is clear, the customers have spoken and we'll do it. It's just a matter of you know how much time it's going to take Gotchacha how much?
Speaker 1:how much weight difference is going to be between a carbon, df2, and a, an aluminum? Have you guys looked at that?
Speaker 2:oh, a carbon df2 is a non-starter. I mean that would be 500 grams. I mean yeah, it's not, it's not possible, uh, possible no and none and none of the mallet putters that you see are are just billet, you know, like like a spider or a two ball. Oh no, none of them are that.
Speaker 5:That's cast very rare, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:so yes, it's steel but it's cast, so it's much more porous, like there's a lot of air in the material itself, that that enables it to be so light. And then a lot of them are hollow, you know, like a. You know I don't think that, I'm sure you guys know, but the general consumer might not be aware that like you unscrew a spider, like it's hollow in the middle, it's just, yeah, it's two pieces of cast steel that you know we're screwed together and it's a driver. At that point, yeah, basically.
Speaker 2:All right. So you guys all see the april fool's joke from yeah, my golf, yeah, yeah, I had multiple tour players. I had multiple tour players reach out bro, you got to keep your head on a swivel on april 1st like you.
Speaker 1:Oh, I got got bad.
Speaker 5:Oh, yes, he did. I got, I got bad.
Speaker 2:I'll save his name because I love him dearly, but a broadcaster. One of the broadcasters texted me this morning asking anybody in the masters was going to be using our new driver.
Speaker 5:Dude, I like even to this today. I'm like I see something I don't believe. I'm like how, how many days ago was that posted? Because I got to check. I get my head on a swivel man.
Speaker 1:Too funny Too funny. So you guys are sticking with putters, no desire to go to anything else, correct?
Speaker 2:No, I definitely have a desire. I would love to do it and maybe one day. There isn't specific, there's nothing specifically in the works. I do have, you know, certain technologies that I've seen out there that only we could do, and that's one of the cool things that you know, our brand has established is like, if we do get into other products, um, you know the confines of palatability of the consumer, drive most manufacturers, you know it's like they might have this incredible technology, but if it looks too weird they're just not going to do it.
Speaker 2:Look at square drivers right, like there was merit to that technology. Those things were stable as shit and they were really, really good golf clubs and they just took so much shit because, you know, the Callaway customer was used to a nice pear-shaped driver and they were upset that you know there was a divergence from that, whereas with Lab, people are expecting us to do weird shit. So if there's technology out there that works, I think that we've built the consumer trust that we're not going to put something out there just for the sake of put something out there. We're gonna. We're gonna make sure that it works and and, and you know, have the, the science and the, the physics to, to to support that claim. Um, so yeah, one day, but not anytime. That's nice though.
Speaker 1:That's nice, though, that you, if they bring you something and you go, what the fuck, let's do it right, let's do it yeah.
Speaker 2:That, if they bring you something and you go, what the fuck, let's do it Right, let's do it yeah exactly If a major manufacturer puts it out there like oh, they're just, you know, looking for marketing and looking for collection.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If Lab does it, it's like maybe worth trying.
Speaker 5:Well that's very interesting right, because you've bred yourself to more creativity, you can be more creative and take more risk.
Speaker 2:because you've built a base to where they expect something new out of you and other other manufacturers aren't going to do that no, you can't make anything great without taking risk and the numbers like we talked about before. These companies, you know, are run by folks that are risk averse. That's their whole job is to just steady the ship. And then I always think it's so funny when people talk about the way that our stuff looks because, like, tell me name a single iconic golf product that has ever entered the market, not as the ugliest thing that anybody had ever seen. When the ping answer came around, it was just like lab. Just like lab. He stood on the side of putting greens for two years with people saying I will sooner three putt 15 times before I would put that ugly thing in my bag. Fast forward 60 years. It's the standard of beauty.
Speaker 2:The big Bertha came out. God knows how many people were saying what is that? God awful monstrosity. It's a gimmick. I hate it. Take it away from me. Yeah, it gave birth to the. You know the modern driver, so you know people, I, I, I get it. I get why people are afraid to. You know, put themselves out there like that because you have to deal with the. You know idiots like matt talking shit online and shots fired.
Speaker 1:Okay, um, a couple questions. Shoot. What for people that are buying lab putters used uh, yard sales, trade-in stores, ebay, that they weren't fit to it and they're gaming it? What? What? Tell them what they need to do?
Speaker 2:I, uh, you know, unfortunately, because of the way that we manufacture them and because of the nature of the technology, there isn't much you can do retroactively without sending it back to us. The lie angles can't be adjusted. No matter what we bore the, we bore the lie right into the head and so it's not like a bending a spud or something like that. Um, but I, I tell people not to overthink it. Like if the, if the, if you lay the putter down and it sits flush on the ground without a fight, you're fine, like you know, if you aim it, good and it, and you're not like forcing yourself to raise or lower your hands in order to get the putter to sit flush, get it, see if it works. If you get it and it works, kind of, but you feel like there's something missing, go to the remote fitting and see. You know how different your spec might be. And if it's vastly different than the one you have, throw that one up on eBay, check out our outlet store, check out eBay or whatever, and you'll find one in your spec. So you don't have to go drop 650 bucks on a new one. You know, until you're figured out.
Speaker 2:But, like you know, I think that you know and I've said this before in other podcasts and stuff I think that a lot of modern putter fitting is a little over complicating. You know, for us kind of comfort is king, like most of modern putter. Most of modern putter fitting is about determining the torque profile. Right, should you have toe hang? Should you be face balanced? How much toe hang should you have? All that? Well, you know.
Speaker 3:A.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of that narrative is kind of BS and B. We only make one torque profile, so that part of it's already you know fit. If you're coming to try out a lab, you already know, you know what the torque profile is. So then it's about choosing a shape, um, that you like looking at, or um, or gives you confidence or whatever Um, and then after that our whole fitting philosophy is comfort is King, that's it. Like we just want you comfortable and want you comfortable and and um.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I'm so proud of that we do is like everybody has somebody that they play with. That's got the toe or the heel, you know way in the air. You know that they just there's a way that they want to stand over the putter that a stock putter simply doesn't accommodate um and and we do anything anything A 63-degree putter if you've ever grabbed one is psychotically flat and it would just feel so crazy to you to hold on to that thing. And those are the happiest customers we have. Those are the guys that really just start to have incredible results because they can finally just stand over the putter. That, the way that they want to stand over the putter, I I'll I'll try and cruise this through this story really quickly, but there was there's a course up in in bend called broken top and I got a call from the pro.
Speaker 2:This is years ago. This is when we kind of were first starting out and um, and the guy uh said you know, I've got this member who's just an absolute golf tragic. He just loves the game he plays every day. He's in his mid-70s, um, and I've given him god knows how many putting lessons he I've bent his uh, he had a ping putter. He's like I've bent it as flat as I'm comfortable bending it without it breaking. Um, he's still got the the toe of the putter. He's like I bent it as flat as I'm comfortable bending it without it breaking. He's still got the toe of the putter two inches in the air, like it's just you know and I heard.
Speaker 2:I heard that you guys can make anything. So we go up and we fit them and the dude came out. He actually came out to 59 degrees, which is which at the time we only had the DF 2.1 and the, the. The shafting platform on it was smaller than it is now, shallower than it is now, so there wasn't enough room to us for us to go into that angle and have enough material for the shaft to hold onto. So I was like, you know, I think the best we can do is 61 degrees. And so we, we, we made him a putter at 61 degrees.
Speaker 2:Dude had never broken 90 in his entire life and he broke 84 times that summer. And wow, and like, what other putter could that guy use? You know like it was. It was so cool, it was so cool to be able to do that and that and so and and look, you know he doesn't go to putting. He doesn't get putting lessons anymore. You know, like, not because they didn't work, but because, like, if that's how he wanted to stand, there was no instructor in the world that was going to be like, okay, let's work with that. You know they, they change his grip and they change this and they're trying to get him to do what isn't comfortable, and so, you know, putting in a lot of ways, ain't that freaking hard man? We're just trying to roll the ball into a hole and um, and one of the real, you know, easy ways to make that happen is to be comfortable when you're standing over the ball yep, would agree with that.
Speaker 1:100, okay. So the guys on tour how are they getting fit? What are you directly working with them? Are you having them stand in the doorway and and do that? Is that?
Speaker 2:yeah, a lot of times. Um, uh, I mean, for for the most part they know what lie they're normally comfortable with. What a lot of the tour players don't account for is how flat the sole of our putter is, so they're used to a little bit of camber.
Speaker 2:So you know, occasionally we'll get a tour player that says you know, I've always used 70 degrees so make me a 70 and then I'll go check out some video to see if they're actually setting it up at 70, which which is, you know, most of the time probably, but there's plenty of times when that's not the case, and so we'll take a stab in the dark. We absolutely do remote fittings for pros all the time and it's incredibly accurate, especially with them, because they know exactly how they want to stand and how they do what they do. So, um, uh, but yeah, we, we do remote fittings, um, uh and or or we just kind of hear what they have to say. Um, we also, you know, we, we try to assuming they're open to it and don't want to get, you know, kind of over complicated we'll send them a bunch of shit, you know, and they can, you know, figure out what, what lays down the best, and yeah, the, the.
Speaker 2:The trickiest thing with tour pros is usually finding the appropriate cocktail for shaft, lean and press grip and then swing weight. You know the swing weights that those guys use are generally quite a bit lighter than the general public would like. And then, you know, swing weight with our stuff is a bit more complicated than just adding weight to the handle or whatever. You know, we have to do some fancy stuff in there. But besides that it's really not different than you or me, you know, we obviously just take a little bit more time with them and go back and forth a few more times.
Speaker 2:One of the ways that we hope to innovate fitting is. The biggest flaw and it's a fatal flaw in putter fitting is what happens two weeks later. You go into these fittings and they spit out a spec and that spec is based on how you were putting that day and how you were seeing putts that day on a straight 10 foot putt, with some dude sitting there judging you with a generally a 70 gram clip on your shaft, telling you information that you don't know anything about, and um, and then you get your putter and it works great, because everybody's new putter always works great on a honeymoon. But what happens two weeks later? And then? So with the tour guys, obviously we have the opportunity to rectify what happens two weeks later and they you know, as long as they're they're open and communicative and give us the feedback.
Speaker 2:we can, you know, dial it in perfect, and we try to do the same for our customers to the extent possible.
Speaker 5:I'm a. So you, you hang on, Joe, Joe, one sec, hang on one sec.
Speaker 1:I know that's my job. That's my job. Uh, steven jackson just hopped in the chat on instagram. Sam I, I would like you to to give a warm, heartfelt thank you to mr jackson.
Speaker 5:He has, I think, 14 lab putters uh you were on that if you're on that app, where where you like, ask for people to say happy birthday to you? I forget the name of the app. Like he's one of your customers for sure?
Speaker 1:yes so he is the probably your your leading customer in in the nevada region. Um, he's a huge fan of yours loves the, loves the putters, he's a buddy of ours and uh, so he's in the chat.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you. My friend Matt put me in touch with Mr Stephen after this podcast.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. He bought the green Oz, he bought the regular Oz Every week.
Speaker 2:Did he get the Master's Special release this morning?
Speaker 3:I'm sure he did.
Speaker 1:I'm sure he did.
Speaker 2:It went pretty quick. It went about 28 minutes.
Speaker 1:I think they were gone he was probably up right when it loaded. Yeah, he's a fiend he is a fiend he was at Banner with us. Alright, joe, what were you going to say?
Speaker 2:I forgot you forgot see, that's why I said so. You mentioned bands. As you said, you've done the solstice thing a few times.
Speaker 1:Has been an annual uh well, we try we try, yeah try, but so next time, next time you do it like let's do a thing, let's give you guys the big tour, let's get some cameras going put it on your podcast, I would love to host you guys I tried to get these guys to go to emerald Valley when we went in August, but they wanted to go to Bar Run instead. Bar.
Speaker 5:Run's sick.
Speaker 2:Oh, bar Run's sick though it's cool, but it's not Emerald Valley.
Speaker 5:You don't like Dan Hickson. You don't like Dan. You don't like Dan Hickson. I love Dan.
Speaker 2:Hickson and I play with his brother all the time. Dan's an incredible designer. I was just a standard piece of property I had to work with and, to his credit, he did an incredible job. I love Bar Run. I'll tell you a quick story about Bar Run. So what is the name of the hole that he mimicked with the concrete wall? Oh, Prestwick?
Speaker 5:No, it's not Prestwick, it's North. Barrack, but the name of their name, the name of the hole is yeah, I forget, see. Anyway, I love, let's figure it out.
Speaker 2:I played that hole the first time and I was like I heard the story that it was like mimicking some hole in scott and I'm like this is some seriously stupid, what the on wall doing in the middle of this golf course. And then I played north Berwick last summer and I was like that hole's badass and Dan Hickson's the man, it's super, super cool. Well anyway, yeah, definitely come down to band and when or come, come to Amarillo when you guys come through next, we'll take you out and have a good time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was my buddy, Andrew and I. We did it. We did it twice and I did it once with joe. We tried to get on the list for like five years, finally got on the list. We played it once. We got in the second time and then they changed it to okay if your grandfather didn't know more, because they wanted to open and I got it. I understood they want to have more people experience it called the pit, the pit okay, the same people every year at home that's right.
Speaker 1:And then so joe and I uh got in on not the lottery, but just signing up. You know when it sold out in 12 minutes, and so then we did it, and then we try to go, each every, we try to go, you know, every year, every year and a half, um, and but now that they got this lottery thing, that it's just, it's crazy it's tough.
Speaker 2:Well, I, the invite is is and I would love to host you guys. That would be awesome.
Speaker 1:I want these guys to play Emerald Valley so bad, because it is such a fun golf course. Well, todd Haas.
Speaker 5:You're going to have to book Bannon for us. You're going to figure out a way.
Speaker 2:You know I'm down, I can get you guys some time.
Speaker 5:Well, so we're planning on coming in January 26. So January birthday trip every year Very cold, that's not a fun time to play Emerald Valley either. It's San Diego, bro, san Diego.
Speaker 1:You know a friend of ours, todd Haas.
Speaker 2:He's out there.
Speaker 1:And you know Ryan Hardenbrook.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I'm not great with names.
Speaker 5:Okay, Ryan he used to be in Eugene. Yeah, yeah, the cigar don, the cigar don.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ryan and I actually started this podcast way back five years ago. It was me and him that started this, but yeah, we love that area, I love that area, I love that, I love playing golf up there.
Speaker 2:So, um, we'll do you want to know, uh, you want to know how I met todd we, we, uh, we were. I don't even know how the sale came about, but we met in a in a toyota car dealership parking lot because I was selling him some hybrids um long before I had anything to do with the golf business and then fast forward probably five years, we end up playing together.
Speaker 2:I think I just ran into his group or something like that and we played a game. He said he was an eight handicap and like I'm making this up, but I think he might have shot. You know, I think we hooked up like on the third hole or something like that, and I think he might have shot three over for the round and he was saying he was an eight. I'm like you're a fucking sandbagger. This is bullshit, fucking Todd.
Speaker 2:And so then, at the end of the, at the end of the round, like we're exchanging numbers, and I put him in my phone as todd asian eight and um and then, um and then and then, when I um, when I was like, and then so I put that in as the name, and then I, when I put in the number, it popped up that I already had the contact and I looked through the text and I realized that he was the dude I'd sold those hybrids to. We both knew that he was somebody that I recognized.
Speaker 1:That's hilarious.
Speaker 2:But then I actually texted him to fill in for us for League one night and he proved that indeed he is an A to handicap.
Speaker 3:I love that, that man, I have some fun conversations with him.
Speaker 1:Good dude. All right, joe, let's do the Q&A. We got a bunch of questions and then we'll do the giveaway. Here I'll show everybody. We got 109 names in the giveaway.
Speaker 5:Some of these. I think you kind of uh generally answered. But um uh, someone asked what do you do for qc? Is there a tour issue?
Speaker 2:uh, that's a great question. So, uh, um, yeah, total, totally total, full disclosure. The components um are all the same for the tour as they would be for anybody else. Um, occasionally we will do some fancy drilling and some things like that, for you know very, very specific shaft leans or very specific lie angles, um, but other than that, it's the same product and and to that end, about three months ago, our president, robert Johnson, floated the idea, you know, like you know, I mean, we're all, we're everybody, we're all fucking golf fans, and most of us were just consumers, not that many years ago, and we love the circle t shit, you know.
Speaker 2:And so we were like, oh sweet, let's put a lab tour stamp on our stuff. And we were doing it for a minute only if it was going out to a tour pro um. And then our our, our president robert, was like is it tour issue though? Is it? Is it actually anything different? So we actually killed it. We don't put any tour markings on any putters anymore, because there's no need. It's the same stuff and just seems silly to like give somebody an opportunity to sell it on ebay for 1500 bucks yeah because500?
Speaker 2:because it is the same thing. Our QC process is nuts. One of the things that we do that other companies don't are all these custom options. The reason that companies don't do these other options, all the custom options, is because they are a massive pain in the ass, fortunately for us. It's all we know.
Speaker 2:We've always manufactured putters with 15 different options for everything sightline, shaft, lean, lie, locked, um, different grips, different everything. And so, um, there's, you know, with that many options, there's a lot to screw up. So, um, our qc. So a single putter is going to touch anywhere from eight to 10 hands and there's effectively a QC checkpoint at each one of those hands, and when the putter is absolutely complete, it then goes through the QC gauntlet, which is a group of these days, I think, probably close to 12, 12 plus people whose only jobs is to go through every single spec on the putter, make sure that we got all the options sorted out, and then all the regular stuff. They hit it for sound, they inspect it literally with a magnifying glass to make sure we don't have blemishes on there. They check grips and we screw up, and there's no question. But we stand by. If we do screw up, we try to make it right. It's a hard job these folks have.
Speaker 2:Very recently, you guys know about this Facebook page, the Lab Rats Facebook page. That's not us, that's somebody else started that. It's got about 30,000 members and these are full-on Lab fans. It is a blessing because of the real-time feedback that we get. It's incredible. I mean, these guys literally like when we have special releases and they'll see a glitch in the website. We know about it like that, because you know somebody's monitoring that page. It's really, really good. The downside of it is is that when we screw up, um, somebody takes you, but no everybody knows about it so you know we had a, we had a couple of crooked grips grow out, and you know.
Speaker 2:And then the 30,000 members are all like.
Speaker 3:I don't know. I think it's crooked Zoom in zoom in.
Speaker 2:We do the best we can. You know, I'm sure that by the end of an eight-hour shift the same person looking at the same type of putter, you know, for eight hours straight. You know, I know it gets tough and we do our best to kind of keep their experience varied so that they don't get burnt out. But we're very, very proud of our QC process. Yeah, people get tired.
Speaker 1:Here's a YouTube question from our friend Julian. I used to figure players at Club Champion here in Vegas. How did you get connected with Nick Sherburn?
Speaker 2:Yeah, nick's the CEO at Club Champion and it's a pretty distant story, honestly. So when I first partnered with Bill, I grew up in Chicago and out here in Oregon there's not a lot of golf courses.
Speaker 2:It's actually one of the lowest rounds per state of any state in the country Fourth, I think, in 2023, and that includes Bandon. So nobody really golfs out here and we needed to open up some accounts. So I posted up at my folks' place for about a month and a half, because there's so much golf in Chicago, there's a ton of golf courses, a ton of businesses, a ton of golf activity and including club champions. So I was opening up accounts and then our you know big sort of end of the trip thing was we were going to go, you know, pitch Nick Sherbert on the putter, and this is 20, this is very early summer 2018. I met with Nick and you know it went really well. He liked the putter, the other guys liked the putter and they were going to bring it in. Then he was like cool, just send us the demos. We're like what do you mean? Send you the demos? You're not going to buy the demos. No, you don't buy the demos, bro, I was like yeah.
Speaker 1:How many stores?
Speaker 2:Exactly, we literally couldn't afford to, you know, to put them in there and a few other op, you know, issues with our operation and so, uh, um, I was pumped, you know, because I thought, you know, when I left there I thought we had locked down a deal and I was stoked and then, when I let you know, a weeks later, I found out it wasn't going to go through.
Speaker 2:And I don't think we, I think it was like gosh, two plus years later that ultimately we were, we were in a position where we could, you know, front the front, the demos, to all the stores, and at that time we had multiple models. So it was a big deal and they're, you know, one of one of our best customers, for sure. And, um, you know, they're a cool business. They it's it's custom fitting but accessible, you know. And, um, it's definitely a little bit expensive, but it's less expensive than a lot of the really hoity toity kind of of, you know, upscale fitters and stuff and, um, yeah, it's been good, okay, I got like I got like seven questions, okay, true, okay, let's try and bang these out.
Speaker 5:And then, um, uh, I did get a question from Miles, which I think would be decent. At the end we had somebody comment that they were out at. It's a buddy from Oregon in Bend, the homie Josh. He said he saw some junior players playing lap golf putters and somebody, before he even commented, said well, you make a junior model or is are. Are those guys just playing cut cut down or you know how does that work?
Speaker 2:yeah, we don't have like a junior specific thing. I mean, as far as we're concerned, every putter is, and if you enter the custom portal, every putter is a custom and doesn't matter how short or tall you are. We can make it. Um, okay, what we do do for juniors sometimes, um, you know how many listeners you generally get I don't want to advertise this a million a million, easily 37.
Speaker 2:We tell people that we tell people to to email the um, the outlet store, and a lot of times we'll get blemished parts and scratched shafts or scratched heads. Where you can get your kid a putter for less than the custom price of a new lab, that's a good way to go.
Speaker 1:We do make them, and we swing, weight them appropriately and we do all the stuff. Steven Jackson's calling all the outlet stores tomorrow.
Speaker 3:Just to comment on that, because I was actually gonna ask juniors, because I got a junior and I will admit he does want a lab putter.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I was gonna say this earlier too, because I'm like, just because I like a blade putter doesn, it doesn't mean my son has to like a blade putter.
Speaker 3:You know what I?
Speaker 4:mean we make a blade putter. Oh, I know I know, I know I know.
Speaker 5:I know about the blade, I know about the blade.
Speaker 3:So let's say, let's say he did get a lab putter and as he grows taller and whatever his, his fit's going to change, do you adjust the putters, you send them in and you refit like every. Okay, do you adjust the putters you? Send them in and you refit Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay, absolutely. I mean it depends upon like which areas grow and stuff like that, and also depending upon the model. Like a lot of times the kids end up pretty flat. You know they're short and their hands are low and you know whatever, and so if the lie angle changes, it's a new putter. We do our best, man no-transcript.
Speaker 5:Are the influencers of the world getting the putters before people that have already ordered them? At least that's how people feel it's so funny.
Speaker 2:The influencers of the world get the putters before you do, because they're the ones selling our product for us. Obviously we need them. They're the people out there telling the story. We need to advertise the product. We don't have big-time marketing budgets like these companies that sell drivers and golf balls and all the other stuff. We sell putters and putters only and, despite what people might think, given the price of our putters, we actually don't have a very big margin. Our putters are incredibly expensive to make. We do the best that we can to keep the price down and so, yeah, we got to get the word out and, to be clear, we're talking about 25 putters. We're talking about probably 25 putters that you know go out a bit in advance, and it's also they go out not just to get them in their hands, for advertising and for all that stuff. Those guys are the ones giving us the feedback, like we do when we're releasing a product, like we test the whole system. It's not just the putter, but like the ordering process and the way that it's subtracting from inventory and the whole backend, everything like. So there's, you know, tour players, influencers, vips, board members, you know, investors all these people. There's a giant group of, say, a little over a hundred that generally kind of get the first of each thing. That helped to make it so that we can test the entire process, test the entire putter before it's, you know, released to the general public.
Speaker 2:Lead times currently, I think, are about six weeks, one of the, I mean, we fuck it up every year, man, we, we have our budget meetings in October, november and and try to forecast the best we can. And every year I go in there and I'm like guys, I'm telling you it's going to be like this, and then I have to last few years. They believe me. And then the last few years I've been wrong and it's just, you know so many more than than we thought. The, the retail stores, in particular this year, um, are what's hammering us. They're, they're just going so quickly at at the retail locations and and keeping up with those guys is is really, really hard.
Speaker 2:Um, so for a minute there we um, we actually had a meeting about this today. For a minute there, we actually had a meeting about this today. For a minute. We separated the lead times, so we were doing this lead time for direct-to-consumer people and this lead time for wholesalers. And then the wholesalers got super pissed off that the D2C folks were getting them pissed. So you end up pissing everybody somebody off, no matter what you do. So we're doing our best. You know you end up pissing everybody somebody off, no matter what you do. So we're doing our best.
Speaker 2:Um, we are, uh, we, we had forecast and designed, um a production line to accommodate our forecast, which was off by about a hundred percent. Um, and so, uh, we're now, you know, hiring into that and training. But like training on building our stuff is not a just hire some club builder off the street, like it's a process, you know it's. It's fully three months before you're actually capable of properly balancing putters and you got to go through the whole you know process and everything. So it takes a minute. I'm absolutely confident. By the time you know, summer rolls around, we're going to be down to, you know, two to four weeks, like we used to.
Speaker 5:Okay, hang on hang on, hang on, hang on always oh, like I told you, always cuts me off hey, we're gonna go back and forth here.
Speaker 1:He says how much more technology or engineering does lab have to explore, keep refining existing models or continue to look for new designs? What does the future hold? I think you talked a little bit about that with.
Speaker 2:You know different materials, but if you wanted to pinpoint anything on that, yeah, I think that you know, I used to say for a long time, I used to say lab was in its infancy.
Speaker 2:I would definitely say it's in its adolescence now you know it's an unruly teenager there's absolutely potential for what we can do, from whether it's adjustability, you know, at home customizations that you can make, is, you know, an area in which I'd like to move into. I'd love for them to be more modular so that people can try more things without having to buy a whole new putter every time they want to try a new face or a new lean or a new, you know lie or anything like that. And you know, I one of the areas that I personally struggle with, like sort of the progress and the advancement of what you know is possible with our tech. And I actually had a really long conversation, a couple long conversations, with the guy who I guess you know, mattid fritch from goodwood.
Speaker 2:Good, yeah, yeah and uh, you know, like I don't know if my pr teams would be mad at me for saying this like I accept that lab. Might you know that our specific tour profile might not be best for everyone. Um, mostly what I see when people are struggling with it. Give me 10 minutes with them and they aren't going to struggle with it anymore. I think it's, you know, sometimes it's just hard to kind of shake off.
Speaker 2:You know, the, the, the, the torque hangover yeah, old feels and all the stuff, um, but I know a couple of good players you know with for who have given me the time and, you know, tried all the stuff and it didn't work for, and so I would love to find a testing and fitting protocol that that would accommodate the fluidity that is people's relationships with their putters. You know, like that would accommodate the reality that one day we show up and it feels this way and the next the fluidity that is people's relationships with their putters, you know, like that would accommodate the reality that one day we show up and it feels this way and the next day we show up that way.
Speaker 1:What does that actually look like? You know, mental heads, yeah. What's that? I said we're schizophrenic, mental psychotics, you know yippy boys, yippy boys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like you know, like I'm not yippie, but I'm fucking chaotic. You know, like every day. I, I have a you know experience, something new you know on the green, and I want to see if there's something that can accentuate that you know new experience or, um, or avoid that new experience if it wasn't pleasant, and I would love it if my putter could just do that without having to go into the build room to get a whole new putter.
Speaker 5:I mean, people don't change their batteries in their putters, you know, and maybe we need a battery powder powered putter, you know, maybe that'll help who knows, change the putter, the putter juice. Who knows?
Speaker 3:Solar.
Speaker 5:Joe, it's solar.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Throw a solar panel on top.
Speaker 2:What's the next question? I would love the fucking post that matt would make about us.
Speaker 5:You know putting out, oh fuck people would call him an even older man. He's like you are. You're cooked, oh my lord uh, I have a. I have a couple personal questions after this one, but people wanted to get a little personal with you, so they asked do you have any hobbies outside of golf and do you play different lies on your putters?
Speaker 2:those are all good questions. Do I have any hobbies outside of golf? No, if I'm totally honest, I really don't. I um, I have things that I like to do. Um, I love playing chess, uh and uh. It's uh tough to um get in enough chess time. I enjoy playing chess. I've got a partner who is she is just the coolest woman on planet earth, and whenever I can, I just like hanging out with her.
Speaker 2:She's a shrink and brilliant, and so listening to her talk is pretty much a pleasing hobby of mine. I got a couple of kids kids too, 17 and 15 so I spend spend time with them when I can, but sometimes I wish I had another hobby. Um, but no, it's hard.
Speaker 5:It's hard when you're in golf, man. It really is hard.
Speaker 2:It grabs you all golf, all the time and then what was the other half?
Speaker 2:of that question oh, yeah, yeah, so I my my you know, if I was going to go play a you know a tournament tomorrow, I'm grabbing a 35 inch 67 degree putter. Um, we prototype um at 69 generally. Um, and you know, we, we just built this beautiful fitting studio. I can't wait to show people pictures of it. 4 500 square foot putting green indoors, um, and there's like a bazillion. You know virtually every combination of length, lie, shaft, weight and everything that you could think of, um, and so, yeah, I'm in there all the time and messing around with anyone.
Speaker 2:I can putt with anything I putt and like, statistically, I'm not really that much better putting with my preferred spec than you know with the other stuff.
Speaker 2:I don't know that I've ever played around with anything over 72.
Speaker 2:But you know, I spend a lot of time looking at people's strokes and, like, one of my favorite things to do in my job is to mimic strokes and um, it helps me learn.
Speaker 2:And so when I, when I see somebody, um being successful, um, you know, even though my body type might not be the same and the you know relationship with my elbows, arms, shoulders, all that kind of stuff might be a little different, I still do my best to try and just get inside so I can understand, you know, what somebody's putting experience is like, because it helps me be a better fitter and a you know um and all that. So, um, and it's frankly a detriment to my putting that I'm always around with stuff you know and um, you know, especially in the winter, like when we're prototyping a lot and there isn't real golf to be played, I'll end up like right now, like right, this, this period, you know, april is where I'm like, fuck, how do I do it again? Like what's my actual stroke way. I don't even remember anymore, so I'll spend most of may reacquainting myself with how I want to putt.
Speaker 5:But yeah, for the most part, I try to keep my gamers right around 67 68, depending upon the model and some other factors yeah, um, my other personal question is is since you are such a golf nerd, golf freak, golf lover, um, what are some of your favorite brands outside of the major manufacturers, or brands that people can find in a store, like mine, like I love cousin clubs, I love, you know, olsen, like are there any up-and-coming brands that you love and you see that they are doing some awesome stuff that people don't know about?
Speaker 3:um, yeah, uh, awesome stuff that people don't know about.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, uh, um. I've had a few conversations with recently who I really like, um, and he actually recently um made a Torclas way. He calls it Torclas. Um, uh, skylar, I think, is what it's called. Um, uh, it's Jamie Coghlan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean the dude makes beautiful stuff and it's really interesting stuff, and I actually recently just got a set of irons from him specifically for Bandon. I have always had it in my head that I would play better at Bandon with eight clubs, and so I had him make me kind of a half set where the irons are separated. The ghost he was very sensitive to the fact that I'm a lab guy. He's like do you? Mind if I put a tiny little ghost in the corner.
Speaker 1:I'm like yeah go nuts dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, his irons are beautiful. I think they're Kioi heads, but he puts his own kind of spin on them and rides them a particular way.
Speaker 2:So they're all separated by six degrees, and those are great. Who else do I love? You know, I wasn't really a businessman before all this happened and now that I'm kind of more business minded, um, I appreciate some of the, the, the business brands. Uh, like, there's a dude actually in your neck of the woods, I think he's in vegas, who's fucking brilliant and he's buying up, um the naming rights to like every nostalgic brand from the 90s, so I think he owns Zebra, snake Eyes, mcgregor yes.
Speaker 1:They're in Henderson.
Speaker 2:It's good stuff. He sent me a set of those McGregor Eyer's. They're freaking great.
Speaker 1:They look, fantastic, they look fantastic.
Speaker 2:They feel really good. I was very impressed. I liked his stuff.
Speaker 1:So glad you didn't say Matt Plummer. What's that I said? I'm so glad you didn't say our friend Matt Plummer. That's a brilliant guy in Vegas is doing something amazing.
Speaker 2:And then there's I really appreciate technology. There's a guy in michigan uh, named bruce sizemore and bruce is worth googling. I mean he uh effectively invented super stroke and uh, any number of other patents out there that, um, he's got his name on and he's got a set of irons. That, um, bruce, if you're listening, I'm, you're welcome and I'm sorry, all at the same time. They are 50 fucking mind-blowing like. They're so brilliant in the way that they were designed and solved for so many issues, um, with irons. And then they're also 50 completely underdeveloped and not horribly playable, but the mod one irons that more golf makes are are just brilliant. And the way that he puts those together, um, you mentioned jp earlier um, I mean, that's some really cool stuff. I uh brilliant guy he's.
Speaker 2:He's brilliant and I'm bummed to hear that you know, jp I think is no longer a thing. Um he, uh, I think is working for somebody else now. The JP brand, I think is still owned by somebody in Korea, but those wedges were absolutely gorgeous. I personally had some issues using his technology with the, you know, uber leading edge bounce for the lob wedge but for everything else for full swings best ball flight I've ever seen out of a wedge. There's another guy, terry Kaler, who he's the fellow who brought Ben Hogan kind of back from the dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, edison, but before that it was.
Speaker 2:Score. Yeah, score, wed. But before that it was uh, I have some score, score, score, wedges. Everything was law.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, he did score and um he had a great blog for a long time too. He's an incredible writer, dude.
Speaker 2:He is a really, really, really wise, wise man. Um, he's super smart. We, um. We've had a lot of great conversations. I like Terry a lot, but, yeah, edison Wedges is his brand now and they're absolutely worth checking out. I think a lot of the major manufacturers caught on to what he was doing and they're trying to mimic it, but haven't done so as well. But he's legitimately developed a wedge that launches lower, spins more and lands at a more vertical landing angle, which is kind of the holy grail of what you're looking for. Those score wedges are good. Score wedges are great. You know, I think there's so many products out there that, like you know, I'm not an inventor, I'm not a. You know, I'm good at product development. I'm good at helping to develop products that you know are ultimately going to be palatable by the general consumer. But you know, there's a lot of great, great products out there that never made it to the mainstream just because they weren't marketed properly.
Speaker 5:I mean, I'm a somewhat newer golfer and I love to see the rebranding of older brands. Like you mentioned, mcgregor and and power built is doing some of the dopest irons I've seen. I mean, those things are clean, you know what I mean like sick so and I, I do like I have a persimmon and I I play it when it's not tournament time, but you know, it's just, it's it's good to be a golf nerd.
Speaker 1:Joe is our resident soul golfer. He doesn't play for score, he plays for the moments. Love it but he also refuses to take a 60 degree out of the bag when he plays badminton. When they go low, we go high.
Speaker 5:When they go low, we go high.
Speaker 2:That's me. I gotta call out my new buddy, uh that I mentioned before, david from from goodwood. He made, uh he made a mallet shape, that um, kind of in that low torque category. That I thought was really really cool looking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, somebody asked uh, let's see where's that. Uh, what percent of the masters field are gaming labs?
Speaker 2:uh, I don't know how many people are in the masters um, but somebody actually asked me um just a moment ago. I believe we've got Lucas Glover, ben Onn, jj Spahn, michael Kim, adam Scott, charles Schwartzel, will Zalatouris and Johnny Vegas, and maybe Mike Weir I know Mike Weir was using him.
Speaker 1:He's a contender this year.
Speaker 2:Mark my words.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:He's really old and wasn't long to begin with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bernard said the same thing. It's why his last Masters is this one. He said I just can't play at 7,600 yards anymore.
Speaker 2:It's ridiculous. But no, mike's a brilliant dude, he's a really really great guy and he's a really really great guy and he's been on and off with our stuff for a few years now. So so that's the roster. I don't know what percentage that is, but, um, but we've got a few. I was. I was bummed that phil's not using it right now. Um, I was really hoping, uh, it might make it into the bag because he's um, rest of his game is really rounding into shape. He's actually been playing some kick-ass golf. I think he's actually going to be a relevant contender this year, but he has been absolutely filling it up with that old 8802 of his or whatever, whatever it's called.
Speaker 1:That, that.
Speaker 2:Thing that company with that funny squirrel he's got.
Speaker 1:So the hosel on that thing looks like it's been ran over by a semi-truck.
Speaker 2:It's hilarious dude, he's so awesome, he is the coolest guy. I mean I, I we're working with him, like most of the time I'm I'm, you know, I'm so in the weeds on just the, the realities of running a business that.
Speaker 2:I'm not complaining, but like it's not fun stuff, you know, I mean it's, it's hard. You know, just 200 employees and outward facing stuff, inward facing stuff. It's a bit of a grind and sometimes I forget to stop and take a look around and see how cool all this shit is. And sometimes I forget to stop and take a look around and see how cool all this shit is. And anytime Phil calls or texts or anything, it's very easy to remember how amazing this is, because if you'd have told me, you know, seven years ago, I'd have Phil Mickelson's you know cell phone and him texting me randomly about stupid stuff right now or whatever, it's the coolest and he's the coolest and he's um.
Speaker 2:He has the highest golf iq of any person on the planet, period, and he it's not, it's not hype, it's not talk like the dude, just sees and knows that nobody on the planet sees or knows that one video of him talking with with bones, about the grass.
Speaker 1:It's wet, it's at this angle. The sun's over here. That was a parody yeah and, and and like
Speaker 2:so so so I was out, um, I was in san diego and um, uh, we were supposed to play but he got tied up with something. So I went out with a couple of his buddies and then he came out. Um, we were at the farms and, um, and he came out, you know, just drove out there just to hang out for a little while and say hi, and I'm like I have like a I don't know 85 yard wedge, shot over some water to a, um, a pin that had a little slope over here and then a fall off over here or whatever. And he did, he did that, he did the ferrity thing like he just went through it and he's like well, here's what you can do with this shot. You know, followed a three-minute soliloquy on the options here. I'm like, bro, I'm hoping I don't fucking lay the sod over this thing and hit it in the water. Sure enough, I laid the sod over it and hit it in the water after he told me the other options that did not end up hitting it in the water.
Speaker 2:He's as nice as yeah, just a great dude that's a great comeback you have.
Speaker 1:Now. If you get into one of these you know little uh social media spats, you can just go. Do you have phil mickelson's phone number in your shit?
Speaker 5:shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could have told matt that he would have shut the fuck up right there yeah, I have there's been, there's been times where, like I've, I've absolutely wanted to leverage, you know, some of the relationships with some of the tour guys, where I've just like been like this close to texting adam, being like, can you fucking text this motherfucker? And just yeah, you don't know who you're talking to that's so funny, awesome I had.
Speaker 1:I could completely off story, but I I used to work at a car dealership and, uh, floyd mayweather came in to pick up his girlfriend and it was. It was like four months out of the pacquiao fight, the first pacquiao fight, and a good friend of mine, huge pacquiao fan, and I'm vegas big floyd mayweather fan, and so I I went out. He's standing out there and I go out. I go hey, my buddy's a huge pacquiao fan. If I call him right now, will you talk shit? He's like, get him on the phone and I was like yes, and he didn't answer.
Speaker 2:He didn't answer his phone, so I was like ah, so the the only, the only story this is. I love this story so much, that's, that's kind of similar. So, um, there's a guy in my club named wes st claire and wes um is such a special dude, he's a trucker. Um, I think he's three or four time club champion at emerald valley and you know, you guys have played the course. It's a strong golf course and in addition to being a strong golf course, it has the most random, you know, like deep membership. As far as skill is concerned, I mean, we got the Oregon Ducks play out there. At any moment you can pick up a scratch game with you know a dozen guys. There's really really good players.
Speaker 2:And Wes has a super fucked up golf swing and the weirdest short game and the strange technique and this putting stroke where, like it's, they call it the reverse cigar. So it's like, uh, so, uh, you know, trail hand on top and then lead hand on the bottom. I do this, uh, like that, and that's how he putts. Oh and, and the stroke is like it's not graceful, I mean it's, it's yippy as fuck and um, and the dude makes a lot of putts and he chips it close and does all the things. So he'd been asking me for a long time will you make me a maximum upright putter, you know, for a conventional length? I'm like you're gonna fucking hate it.
Speaker 2:Like we can make him. We can make you a 74, 75, we'll make it. But I promise you're you're not gonna like a full max. You know upright putter and give him the 74, he doesn't quite like it. And give him 76 he doesn't quite like it, back to some other putter he was using, and on and on. Then one day I show up on a saturday um just looking game. The putting green in Emerald Valley is pretty big. I'm on one end of it and he's all the way on the other end. There's like 20 people on the green. He's like, hey, sam, you looking for a game. I'm like, yeah, he's like I'm going to show you why you're a shitty fitter. I'm like, okay, he had gone back and asked one of the other guys, if he you know, to make him a max upright df 2.1. So he had a 79. So 30, 33 and a half inch, 79.5 degree df 2.1.
Speaker 2:It's like goofy ass. You know cigar grip and the dude went around in 18 putts. I've never seen it before. I'm sure I've never even actually heard of it. He chipped in once, um, and he two putted once, and the two putt was from easily 50 feet and he caught a piece of the hole. It was the most ridiculous round of putting I've ever seen in my entire life by far. And um, and then later that evening, um, I was texting, uh, I was texting with brad faxon about something else, and um, and I said you know I texted fax. I'm just like, by the way, I played with a dude that you know I had 18 putts today. You ever had 18 putts. He's like, I've had 19 a few times, but never 18. What's his name? You know nobody you'd ever heard of and he's like what's his name? Shoot me his number. I'm like his name is west st cla. Here's his number. So Brad puts us on a group thread text Wes.
Speaker 2:And Wes is, you know, just this curmudgeonly old fuck Like he's just a bitter, you know, just squatty little trucker guy that's always just talking shit. It's like you know, hi, Wes, my name's Brad Faxon, generally pretty, you know, regarded as a pretty good putter over my career. You know, I've never, uh, I've never had 18 putts before. I heard you had 18 putts today. Congratulations, and uh, he's like well, I missed a lot of greens, thanks so he's like the greatest putter in the history of the world did he have any idea?
Speaker 5:did he have any idea at all? 100 he just doesn't give a shit like, he's just like wow, wow he's the greatest dude.
Speaker 2:I've learned so much from wes, and I mean the dude's. I think he's 65 at this point. He kicks my ass half the time from the same tees and I'm out. You know he's 65 at this point. He kicks my ass half the time from the same teas and I'm out. You know she's giving me 50 yards off the tee and he still mops the floor with me. He's a player, yeah, shout out it was fucking a all right, we're.
Speaker 1:We're like an hour 40. So, uh, people are already commenting like hey, can we do the giveaway?
Speaker 2:please Suckers you have to listen to all this garbage. Yeah, we're going to make you wait.
Speaker 5:Learn something today. Learn something today Get yourself educated.
Speaker 1:So Sam has been gracious enough to offer up a lab putter of your choice.
Speaker 2:Oh wait, what I thought you were buying it.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, no, no it'll get to you.
Speaker 5:Somehow.
Speaker 1:We'll figure it out when jordan spears jordan spears roll in a lab. Jeremy will buy it and then we'll send you to you. Sam's gonna do the virtual fitting for you. Um so, sam, uh, to make sure everybody knows that this isn't rigged, we asked somebody, somebody to say how many times they would like me to shuffle this. So if you could give me a number, and I will shuffle these up that many times Me, give you a number. Yep, give me a number between 1 and 10.
Speaker 2:Usually 13 is my go-to, but let's go with 7.
Speaker 1:7, okay, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Seven, all right, here we go. Uh, we're gonna spin three times. The first one is the winner. As long as they meet all the requirements, they will be chosen. If they don't, then we'll go to two and blah blah. So here we go. This is so exciting, so exciting did I win luke fuck at luke underscore t-o-n-g-o-c-o. All right, that is first, so let me remove that name and then then this real quick, we'll do two more, just to like I said just in case it's happened.
Speaker 2:It's happened. What are the requirements?
Speaker 1:They had to follow the podcast. How to follow you and leave a comment? Got it.
Speaker 2:S-H-A-U-N-I-N-N-E-S. John Innes 94. Was he born in 94?
Speaker 5:Or did he graduate in 94? That's what I want. Yeah, those are the two things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's I graduated in 91 and julian's handle is 1990 for for our blog and stuff, and I'm like, dude, that's when you were born, huh. He's like, yeah, oh, my goodness, all right, that's that's if the first person does not fulfill. And then, lastly, we have Steven Jackson. Steven Jackson. Tyler DeMews. So thank you everybody for that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, sam, for doing that that yeah it is truly my pleasure, awesome, absolutely my pleasure guys I'm gonna bring up on here as I mentioned when I uh before we actually started the broadcast, it's been a pretty fucking rough couple of days, with uh tariff madness and everything else that has ensued since A little stressful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how's that going to affect you?
Speaker 2:guys, less so than virtually every other manufacturer out there, because we're already, you know, major components in the United States, but it's still just affecting just a chain reaction of everything. It's just a chain reaction of everything. It's just a mess. And but anyway, I was going to say I was in a pretty sour mood when I showed up tonight and a couple of glasses of wine and some lovely conversation and kind gents like yourself, I'm in a much better mood. So thank you guys so much for having me on.
Speaker 1:I love hearing that I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thanks for being a good supporter about the video.
Speaker 1:I've told these guys it blew me away that you reached out, wasn't expecting it and I'm so glad that we got to have those talks and that I know a little bit more about you guys, you know a little bit more about me, you know about us, had you on the show. You know, not everything is is bad. Not everything is bad, even though I wrote down some of the comments I was going to ask you about, but I don't even know if I want to get into them because you're going to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do it, do it, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, he's an angry old man. Like the the biggest, and this is why I made that t-shirt like the most common comment is just say you can't afford one and move on.
Speaker 3:It's like yeah, you know this is what I.
Speaker 1:This is what I don't understand. Okay, so the the putter that I'm using in the video, along with the shaft combination, is not a cheap putter and I'm putting on my entire backyard. That is a custom putting green. That's not, you know, a $25 roll at Lowe's.
Speaker 3:I can afford a lab putter, you fucks Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:And then then one guy said bro, opens and closes the putter face. Please let people know that even with a lab putter, your face is going to open and close.
Speaker 2:Nope, Stay square to the arc perfectly the whole time. It's like a gyroscope man. It's like a fucking heat-seeking missile With any putter you know, I appreciate a lot of the blatantly blind support that uh people give us man, and then this.
Speaker 1:This last one was kind of along the same regards. Uh, he goes, look your face opens up on the backswing.
Speaker 4:The lab stays in the same position stays in the same position, if you let it, if you let it.
Speaker 2:That's the thing, Whereas your putter, if you let it do its own thing it will act like a drunken snake, like you imitated in that video. But if you let the lab do its thing, yes, in my opinion, the best chance of returning the putter face to square impact than you do with any kind of jail or Callaway nonsense.
Speaker 1:Sam, thank you so much for coming on the show. We're looking forward to the next time we're up in the PNW so we can stop by and check out the facility. I get these fools on Emerald Valley so they can finally understand what an amazing golf course it is. And yeah, much success to you guys. Congrats on all your success and we can't wait to see what comes next from you.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me and thanks for having an open mind for having the conversation. And just a out to everybody who's was on that thread and is listening to this podcast. Folks, the internet, like we got to learn how to behave ourselves here. It gets out of hand so quickly like look at this conversation, look at how lovely this was. We are the same people that at a glance on a internet thread, you would have thought that we were sworn enemies. But let's's try to remember. It's just golf. It's just golf.
Speaker 5:Greatest game ever.
Speaker 2:I need to remind myself the same thing. It's just golf.
Speaker 1:It's just golf. All right, Joe, wrap it up and let's get out of here.
Speaker 5:Hey, shout out to everybody that tuned in this evening Chase and Dale at Podcast. We're here every single Tuesdayuesday night at 8 30 pm, pacific standard time. Live on youtube and instagram. Shout out, sam. I have so much more love for lab and sam as an individual. Uh, hopefully we get to get out and play some golf one day. Um, that was awesome, man. That was awesome. We are golf lovers and we continue to love golf and you should too, and play what works for you and we'll see you on the greens. Keep hitting them Later, thank you.
