L.A.B. Golf putters have been making an impact in 2024.
Ryan Barath
Phil Mickelson has certainly used his fair share of putters over the years — everything from small blades to oversized mallets, and it doesn’t look like he has any plans of slowing down his tinkering while playing on LIV Golf.
The HyFlyers captain, who is playing this week in Saudi Arabia at Royal Greens Golf and Country Club alongside his team and recently announced returning star Anthony Kim, was spotted in a practice round with a L.A.B. Golf DF3, a putter model that just recently became available to consumers.
The L.A.B. Golf DF3 is a smaller, sleeker version of the original 2.1 that marks the first time L.A.B. has reimagined the putter from its logo.
Even with a noticeably smaller footprint, DF3 maintains low torque — thereby reducing unwanted twisting at impact — via eight individual sole weights positioned along the wings that stabilize the head throughout the stroke. Going smaller also made it possible to make improvements to how the ball sounded coming off the face.
“With DF3, we refined every aspect of the design,” L.A.B. Golf CEO Sam Hahn said. “DF3 is quite a bit smaller, but because of all we’ve learned about building Lie Angle Balanced putters over the years, we were able to maintain almost all of the forgiveness and stability [from DF 2.1].”
This testing at LIV Golf Jeddah marks the first time Phil Mickelson has officially been spotted using a L.A.B. golf putter, but we’ll have to wait until the start of the first round on Friday to see if the putter makes its way into play for the event.
Ryan Barath is GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com’s senior editor for equipment. He has an extensive club-fitting and -building background with more than 20 years of experience working with golfers of all skill levels, including PGA Tour players. Before joining the staff, he was the lead content strategist for Tour Experience Golf, in Toronto, Canada.
Jonathan Wall
Golf.com Editor
Jonathan Wall is GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com’s Managing Editor for Equipment. Prior to joining the staff at the end of 2018, he spent 6 years covering equipment for the PGA Tour. He can be reached at jonathan.wall@golf.com.