It’s funny how golf changes overnight.

One day a putter looks like a piece of alien technology, the kind of thing you’d roll once in a pro shop before laughing and putting it back on the rack. And then someone sinks a sixty-four-foot bomb on national television, and suddenly the weirdest thing in golf doesn’t look quite so weird anymore.

That’s what happened the day JJ Spaun stood over his ball on the 72nd green at Oakmont in the 2025 U.S. Open. He was tied for the lead, facing a putt longer than most people’s three-irons. And then he hit it. Perfect speed, perfect line, a snake across the ancient contours of one of America’s toughest greens. When it fell, he threw his arms in the air, and the gallery lost its mind.

Just like that, LAB Golf wasn’t a curiosity anymore.

...there were the skeptics—the traditionalists who hated everything about it. The looks. The hype. The idea that one putter could somehow solve a problem older than the game itself. I’ll admit it. I was in that camp.

For years, LAB had been the brand with the spaceship putters. Clubs that looked like props from a sci-fi movie. For golf’s traditionalists, they were an easy punchline. But after Spaun’s putt, those weird shapes didn’t look ugly anymore. They just looked… quintessentially LAB. Different, but different on purpose.

And the guy who deserves more credit than anyone for dragging LAB Golf out of obscurity and into the spotlight is a man who once spent his nights under stage lights instead of floodlights.

Sam Hahn never planned on any of this.

Before LAB Golf, Hahn was a musician—a real one. Not a hobbyist strumming chords in his garage, but a working professional grinding out a living in clubs across the Pacific Northwest. He spent more than a decade singing and playing guitar, five or six nights a week, bouncing from bar gigs to studio sessions.

It wasn’t glamorous. Hahn wasn’t touring the world in a bus wrapped with his face on the side. He wasn’t filling stadiums or hitting the Billboard charts. He was hustling. Playing original songs and cover sets, living the life of a working musician who measures success in gas money and tips.

Those years, he says, taught him more about business and life than any MBA program ever could. “Music teaches you rhythm. It teaches you timing. It teaches you how to keep going even when nobody’s listening.”

Eventually, he stepped off the stage. He launched a marketing agency, figuring if he couldn’t make his own name famous, he could help other people build theirs.

Then one day, on a photo shoot for a golf client, Hahn picked up a putter that looked like something out of a Star Wars set. It was called the Directed Force, invented by a guy named Bill Presse, a mini-tour player who’d nearly quit golf because he couldn’t make a putt to save his life.

The Directed Force wasn’t beautiful. It was big and weird and had wings sprouting out the back. But Hahn rolled a few putts and felt something different.

The face didn’t twist. The stroke felt automatic. Hahn’s marketing brain went into overdrive.

Most people would’ve shrugged and gone back to safe projects. But Hahn couldn’t stop thinking about that putter.

He tracked down Presse. Listened to the science. Learned about Lie Angle Balance—the idea that if you balance a putter’s center of gravity along its lie angle, the face stays square without torque. It was brilliant physics. But physics alone doesn’t sell golf clubs.

Hahn saw what LAB needed. A story. A brand. A way to make people stop laughing and start rolling putts.

He invested in the company. Took over as CEO. Changed the name to LAB Golf—a nod to the science and to the sense that the company was always experimenting, always searching for something better.

And then he went to work.

LAB’s first putter, the Directed Force, still looked like a UFO. Hahn knew they needed something that wouldn’t scare people off at first glance. So LAB developed the Mezz.1 and later the Mezz.1 Max, which kept the zero-torque magic but in shapes that looked more like actual golf clubs.

He obsessed over details most companies ignore. The feel of the grip. The way the shaft transitions into the head. The fitting process, so golfers could match a putter’s balance to their natural stroke instead of fighting it. He got LAB into pro shops. He convinced pros to test the putters quietly during practice rounds, even if they were too nervous to game them under the glare of TV cameras.

And slowly, word started to spread.

The Divided Years

The years during LAB’s rise were anything but quiet. You either loved them or you rolled your eyes so hard it hurt. There were golfers who became instant converts, preaching LAB’s gospel to anyone within earshot. Guys who’d talk your ear off about torque and face balance like they’d cracked golf’s hidden code. Sometimes they were a little much.

And then there were the skeptics—the traditionalists who hated everything about it. The looks. The hype. The idea that one putter could somehow solve a problem older than the game itself.

I’ll admit it. I was in that camp.

Because I’ve always believed there’s no magic wand in golf. And anything claiming to be one usually turns out to be a gimmick. But even through my skepticism, I couldn’t deny one thing: LAB’s technology made sense. It was solid. It was physics. It was just waiting for someone—or some moment—to prove it belonged.

Then came Spaun’s putt at Oakmont.

A single stroke that flipped the script. LAB went from a punchline to a headline. Pro shops started getting calls. Golfers who’d scoffed at the spaceship shapes were suddenly curious.

People still talk about LAB’s looks. They always will. But now when you see one, it’s not ugly—it’s just unmistakably LAB.

Different, yes. But different with a reason.

Sam Hahn would probably be the first to tell you he’s not the star of this show. He talks about the team, the engineers, the golfers who took a chance on something weird. But don’t let the humility fool you. Without Hahn, LAB Golf might still be a secret club for gear nerds and tinkerers.

He’s the guy who turned the weird kid in the back of the room into the one everyone’s listening to. The guy who understands that sometimes it’s not enough to build something brilliant—you’ve got to make people care.

It’s the same lesson he learned under the stage lights all those years ago.

In music. In golf. It’s always about finding your rhythm—and making sure someone’s listening.