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On Sunday, J.J. Spaun sank a 64-foot putt to win the U.S. Open, one of the PGA Tours four major tournaments. Over the final seven holes, he made more than 136 feet of putts, including that curling 64-footer on 18. He was the only player to finish the U.S. Open under par, and it was his first career major win. It was also the first major win for L.A.B. Golf, the boutique manufacturer that outfitted Spaun with his DF3 custom putter. L.A.B. Golf is the new company shaking up the putter circuit, and its innovation is simple. Traditional putters have shafts that attach in front of the clubface or at the heel, creating twisting forces during the stroke. L.A.B. putters position the shaft directly through the putter’s center of gravity, behind the face, the shaft stabbing the putter head like a toothpick spearing a square of cheese. This creates a nontraditional forward shaft lean that eliminates torque and helps the face naturally stay square throughout the putting motion. J.J. Spaun reacts to making the winning putt on the 18th green during the final round of 125th U.S. Open Championship at Oakmont Country Club on June 15, 2025 in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. [Photo: Ben Jared/PGA TOUR/Getty Images] “Every other putter you’ve used, you’re trying to keep it square, Sam Hahn, L.A.B. Golf cofounder and CEO, says. With L.A.B., you’re trying to let it stay square. So it becomes more like so many other stroke sports out therethrowing darts, shooting a free throw, throwing a ballwhere you’re not thinking about managing the instrument, youre thinking about the target. The company has been built on one simple philosophy: Putting doesnt have to suck. [Photo: L.A.B. Golf] An accidental garage innovation In 2014, a Reno-based club builder named Bill Presse made an accidental discovery in his garage. While testing new designs, he stripped the grip from a putter, and when he grabbed the slick, ungripped shaft, his hand slipped and the putter face flopped open, almost instinctively. The putter head wanted to twist and turn on its own. This sparked Presse’s curiosity. Using a makeshift device crafted from a crutch and fishing wire, he tested every putter in his collection to see if any would remain square when properly suspended. None did. So he drilled holes in dozens of putter heads to find the precise shaft placement that would eliminate the unwanted rotation. This led him to design (and patent) the first lie angle balance putter, the Directed Force. He sold his L.A.B. putter directly out of his garage and at golf events and showcases. View this post on Instagram A post shared by L.A.B. Golf (@labgolfputters) A key early adopter In 2017, Hahn acquired one of Presse’s putters from a golf instructor and experienced dramatic improvement on the greens. (For you golf nerds, he went from a 1 handicap to plus 3.5 in six weeks.) Then, the club’s head fell off. When Hahn called customer service and sent in his broken L.A.B. putter, Presse personally called to apologize. Sam Hahn [Photo: L.A.B. Golf] “We hit it off instantly,” Hahn says. “We talked for hours on the phone and learned that were kindred golf spirits.” A few months later, Bill’s club-making company was struggling and was about to close its doors. Hahn, a music venue owner in Eugene, Oregon, and a closet golf addict, saw an opportunity and partnered with Bill in 2018 to form L.A.B. Golf. “The lie angle balancing concept was there, but nothing else really was, Hahn says. The marketing wasn’t there, the manufacturing wasn’t there, the infrastructure, the branding, the general vibethere simply wasn’t a company there. But there was a concept.” The L.A.B. Rats With no marketing budget, L.A.B.’s growth had to happen organically. Hahn spent time jumping between golf forums and online groups, explaining the physics behind lie angle balance and taking a humble approach when skeptical golfers said their putters looked like branding irons. “We knew we had to be a little self-deprecating and a little humble at first when we were out there making some pretty bold claims,” Hahn says. [Photo: L.A.B. Golf] Then, in 2021, Hahn discovered something unexpected: Two L.A.B. customers had created a Facebook group for L.A.B. fans. The group exploded into a thriving community where golfers share putting tips and success stories, many singing L.A.B.s praises. Hahn and his team began engaging with members, answering questions, and gathering feedback to inform their product design. Its a real-time focus group that Hahn and his team have leveraged to not only contiue to iterate and innovate, but to build putters that golfers actually want to use. “I log on to Facebook at night and see what’s going on,” Hahn says. “So when we sit in a product meeting and try to figure out what we should do next, it’s easy, because the customers are telling us every day what they want next.” Today, the group has been rebranded as the “Lab Rats.” It has more than 32,000 members and has been a critical component of the companys organic growth in popularity among amateur golfers. Adam Scott holds a custom L.A.B. Mezz.1-style putter at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic at Emirates Golf Club on January 14, 2025 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. [Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images] L.A.B. cracks the PGA tour Pro golfers are notoriously traditional and skeptical toward innovation. Yes, there are outliers, like Bryson DeChambeau, a famous tinkerer who has even used 3D-printed irons. Then theres Adam Scott: 2013 Masters champion, former World No. 1, and son of a club manufacturer. Scott first saw L.A.B. design in action during the 2019 Pebble Beach Pro-Am, when surfing legend Kelly Slater used the Directed Force to dominate putting competitions. “Kelly rolled it better than anyone in our groupthe two pros, the other amateur,” Scott recalls. “You couldn’t help but take notice.” Scott began using the putter on the Tour in 2019, pivoting to the L.A.B. Golf Mezz.1 putter in 2022. The following year, Scotts curiosity evolved into collaboration when he and Hahn met at the L.A. Country Club for a couple of beers, talking putters and sketching designs on cocktail napkins. The result: the L.A.B. OZ.1. “The initial inspiration for the OZ.1 started far away from putters and was more about classic, timeless designs that I like, like a Porsche 911 or a Rolex Datejust watch,” Scott explains. “That was the starting point, and then the nice thing was that we got to include some of the real L.A.B. look in this more conventional design.” Scott became L.A.B.s first official brand ambassador, and its easy to see why. Since switching to L.A.B. putters full-time in 2022, Scott has achieved remarkable consistency, ranking 19th and 27th on tour in strokes gained putting the last two years, a significant improvement from his previous putting struggles that once saw him rank as low as 188th. And when one golfer tries something new and has success, others take note. [Photo: L.A.B. Golf] The Putter that won the U.S. Open Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler, and Lucas Glover are among roughly a dozen PGA Tour pros who have used L.A.B. putters. With them, of course, is Spaun, who wielded L.A.B.’s DF3 model on Sunday, a refined version of the company’s original Direct Force design. Spans specific setup includes a 34-inch length, 70-degree lie angle, TPT graphite shaft, and two-degree shaft lean customized with a blacked-out Scotty Cameron grip. The putter paid dividends throughout the tournament, where he gained over 10 strokes on the field with his puttingthe second-best performance in the tournament. His final-round heroics included not just the tournament-clinching bomb, but also crucial birdies from 40 and 22 feet on the back nine. Its been really good for me lately, Spaun said in a press conference earlier this year after The Players Championship, where he lost to Rory McIlroy in a playoff. Hopefully it keeps doing what its supposed to be doing. [Photo: L.A.B. Golf] Spaun’s win puts L.A.B. on the map L.A.B. placed two players in Sunday’s final groups with Spaun and Scott each starting the final round in the top four, demonstrating the technology’s growing acceptance among golf’s elite performers, despite resistance from both players and manufacturers. “The whole environment is wildly competitive, cutthroat even,” Hahn says. “The other reps actively work to keep their product in people’s hands, and they don’t like it when nobody from nowhere starts taking market share.” Still, performance trumps politics. In addition to the dozen players on the Tour who have used L.A.B. putters, the companys European tour repreports 16 putters in play on the DP World Tour, signaling the putters slow but steady adoption. Spauns U.S. Open win is yet another windfall for the young company looking to earn a larger share of golf’s massive equipment market, valued at $11.7 billion globally in 2025. The company itself has grown anywhere from 150 to 300% every year since inception, according to Hahn, quadrupling its employee headcount to 225 over the last two and a half years. Sales tripled in both 2023 and 2024, and the company is currently on pace to double sales in 2025, though Spauns win could accelerate that trajectory. And theyve done it all while maintaining complete financial independence, and by defying conventional industry wisdom about marketing and endorsementswhich Hahn says theyll continue doing, as long as it keeps working. “We don’t create product in the name of growth, Hahn says. We create product in the name of making a better product. The growth just kind of takes care of itself if you honor the consumer.
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We were supposed to be finished with files by now. For years, tech companies (well, certain tech companies) tooted their horns about a future in which files didnt matter. You dont even need a file manager of any sort, they told usand, in fact, we wont even let you see the file system on your devices at all. Just tap-a-tap-tap, dont worry, be happy. Right? Yeahnot so much. Here in the year o 2025, files absolutely still matter. Whether youre saving a PDF or document, wrangling an audio or video file, or trying to get that weird image format your iPhone-totin friend sent you into some reasonably standard state, files are an inevitable part of our digital lives. And dealing with em, suffice it to say, can be a real pain in the patootieespecially when it comes to the timeless act of converting something from one format to another. With the tool Ive found for you today, though, that tired tech task wont be a groan-worthy chore anymore. Get ready for the quality-of-life upgrade you never knew you needed. Unearth all sorts of little-known tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. A spiffy new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday! File conversion, minus the headache Ordinarily, when I find myself facing a daunting file conversion taskbe it moving an image file from one format to another, converting some awkward audio file into a more standard MP3 setup, or even freeing a document someone sent me from its silly DOCX shacklesI end up searching for a free online conversion tool. And the site I stumble onto is inevitably slow, overloaded with ads, and at least slightly questionable when it comes to security. Oh, and it also usually has some sort of arbitrary-seeming limit on the size or number of files I can process before it starts trying to charge me some exorbitant fee. No more. My fellow frustrated file wrangler, allow me to introduce you to a nifty new site called Vert. Vert is a completely free and open-source online file conversion tool. It processes most files locally in your browser, almost shockingly fast and efficientlyand without any limits or any ads. Itll take you 20 seconds to start using: Just pull up the Vert site in any browser, on any device youre using. Click the big Drop or click to convert box to select a file from your deviceor drag and drop a file from the device into that area of the page, if youd rather. One click or a drag-and-drop is all it takes to get going with Vert. Vert will then show you a confirmation screen where you can see your file, select your end format, and consider a few other simple options. Select your desired file type, and Vert will handle the rest. And thats pretty much it: Just click or tap the Convert all button, and within a split secondyes, really that fast!youll see the downward-arrow download button turn into a solid color. Your converted file will be ready to download in a matter of seconds. Thats your indication that the file conversion is finished. And all thats left is to click or tap that button to download the final result. Told ya it was easy, right?! Vert runs entirely in your browserno downloads or installations whatsoever. Its completely free to use, with optional donations to aid the development. And the app performs almost all of its processing locally on your own device, without any data ever being seen by anyone else. The one exception is a video file, which does get uploaded to a server. But Vert promises that video files always are deleted after exactly one hour. (And since the entire tool is open source, anyone with the right know-how can see exactly what it isand isntdoing to confirm.) Ready for more productivity-boosting goodness? Check out my free Cool Tools newsletter for an instant introduction to an exceptional audio appand another off-the-beaten-path gem every Wednesday!
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicatorsincluding home price changes, inventory levels, and days on marketto generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow: Score of 70 or above = strong seller’s market Score from 55 to 69 = seller’s market Score from 44 to 55 = neutral market Score from 28 to 44 = buyer’s market Score of 27 or below = strong buyer’s market Nationally, Zillow rates the U.S. housing market at 55 in its May 2025 reading, published this week. That said, Zillows reading varies significantly across the country. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Among the 250 largest metro area housing markets, these 10 are the HOTTEST markets, where sellers have the most power: Rochester, NY 145 Buffalo, NY 110 Syracuse, NY 100 Charleston, WV 99 Albany, NY 97 Hartford, CT 89 Lansing, MI 85 Anchorage, AK 83 Springfield, MA 82 Manchester, NH 81 Among the 250 largest metro area housing markets, these 10 are the COLDEST markets, where buyers have the most power: Macon, GA 23 Jackson, TN 24 Brownsville, TX 27 Gulfport, MS 27 Naples, FL 27 Longview, TX 27 Daphne, AL 29 Punta Gorda, FL 29 Beaumont, TX 30 Cape Coral, FL 31 Does ResiClub agree with Zillows assessment? Directionally, I believe Zillow has correctly identified many regional housing markets where buyers have gained the most powerparticularly around the Gulfas well as markets where sellers have maintained (relatively speaking) somewhat of a grip, including large portions of the Northeast and Midwest. Based on my personal housing analysis, I consider Southwest Florida the weakest/softest chunk of the U.S. housing market. Not too far behind are pockets of Texas, Colorado, and Arizona markets where theres built up unsold spec inventory. In my view, many West Coast markets are softer right now than Zillows analysis suggestsin particular, the areas that have recently seen big jumps in active inventory for sale. What did this Zillow analysis look like back in spring 2021 during the Pandemic Housing Boom? Below is Zillows May 2021 readingpublished in June 2021.
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