Mike Whan on golf ball rollback, Odyssey Giraffe Beam putters, Superstroke grips and more
The longest putt made last week at Oakmont was holed on the 18th green by J.J. Spaun, a 64-footer that won him the 2025 U.S. Open and earned him immortality in the world of golf. It was a life-changing shot, and it was struck using a L.A.B. DF3 putter, a club that until recently, most pros would never even consider putting in their bag.
The L.A.B. DF3 is designed to be lie angle balanced, which means until the player does something to manipulate it, the club's weighting and balance encourage the face to stay square to a player's stroke path, and that translates to enhanced consistency and starting your putts on your intended target line more often.
L.A.B. Golf has been making putters like this for years, but over the last 12 to 18 months, other manufacturers have taken notice and started to offer their own "zero torque" putters that are also designed to greatly reduce or eliminate face rotation during the stroke. I have written extensively about this trend and putters like the Evnroll Zero Series, Odyssey Ai-One Square-2-Square putters, the PXG Allan and TaylorMade Spider ZT putters.
Spaun's win marks the first time a men's professional major has been won using a zero-torque putter, so while the trend in these types of clubs has been building for a while, his victory at Oakmont might be a tipping point and create a bigger surge in demand for putters like the DF3. Time will tell, but we've now officially got three categories in the putter world: blades, mallets and zero-torque.
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