Some slumps end with a swing change, but for J.J. Spaun, it ended with a reunion. After putting his trusted “Old Faithful” on the bench, Spaun brought it back when he needed it most, and rode it to a share of the BMW Championship lead.
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Spaun carded a 6-under 64 at Bellerive on Thursday, jumping into a five-way tie for the BMW Championship lead with Rory McIlroy, Gary Woodland, Wyndham Clark and Chris Gotterup.
“I putted really nice. Put the old faithful back in, my old LAB putter.” Spaun said in the press conference. “So it was on timeout for about two months and, you know, kind of like kids, like, you know, when they’re not behaving, you put them in timeout for a little bit and then they start listening better and cooperating.”
Back in May, before the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, Spaun made a big change. He took the L.A.B. Golf DF3 putter out of his bag. It was the same putter he used to sink a huge 64-foot putt on the 18th hole at Oakmont and win the 2025 U.S. Open. Instead, he switched to L.A.B.’s heel-shafted OZ.1i HS putter.
“Just something I kind of wanted to change the way the putter was looking, just a completely different look than the DF3 that I’ve been using for the last year and a half,” Spaun told GolfWRX at the time.
He said the new alignment line made it “easier to aim.” He also changed to L.A.B.’s stainless steel insert because he wanted a firmer and faster roll. His putting speed had felt “pretty weak” during a difficult stretch.
The struggle was very real. Before making the change, Spaun ranked 155th on Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting. That was a big drop for a player who had one of the best putting seasons of his career with the DF3 in 2025. But Spaun never gave up on his old putter. He kept it close, waiting for the right moment.
The decline wasn’t really about the putter’s mechanics. L.A.B. co-founder Sam Hahn said the bigger issue was that the finish on the year-and-a-half-old DF3 had worn down from Spaun practicing in the Arizona sun, making the alignment aid harder to see. Spaun admitted the frustration had built to the point where he’d started resenting his putter, calling it the one soft spot in an otherwise solid season.
“I still have the gamer, the old faithful, sticking around,” he said at the time. “Hopefully she gets a little jealous and wants to start cooperating.” And now, it looks like “Old Faithful” finally got her chance to come back.
That little “jealousy” plan may have actually worked, though the road back wasn’t as direct as it looked. After Shinnecock, Spaun cycled through two more putters, another L.A.B. model and then a toe-swing design from a different brand, riding that one through a strong stretch at the Travelers Championship and his trip to Scotland. It wasn’t until after last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis that he finally brought the DF3 back into the bag for good.
And this wasn’t just a small change for the sake of it. Spaun put the putters he’d cycled through since May back on the shelf and returned to the exact DF3 that helped him win the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont. Yes, that putter. The same one that produced the biggest putt of his career was back in his bag for the first time since he made the switch. And judging by what happened next, “Old Faithful” may have been waiting for this moment.
“Sunday after Memphis was, I had, you know, needed a little bit of change. I think the things that I worked on on my stroke really helps with the technology of the LAB. So I think my stroke’s in a better place,” Spaun said Thursday at Bellerive.
“I kind of got wrapped up into other things, aspects of my putting,” he added. “So I put in a lot more work on short-range distances the last few days.”
Whatever Spaun worked on, it clicked right away. He made seven birdies in his first 17 holes on Thursday. The only bad moment came on the 18th, when he made a bogey. Still, it was a great day for Spaun.
The stakes here are real. The BMW Championship is the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, and only the top 50 players in the standings even made the trip to Bellerive. From here, only the top 30 advance to the Tour Championship in Atlanta, so every shot this week carries extra weight for players still fighting to keep their season alive.
“Old Faithful” was clearly doing its job again.
Spaun Left His Secret Weapon Behind. It Just Came Back Swinging
Spaun is definitely not the only one who trusts L.A.B. putters. Their zero-torque design helps stop the putter from twisting during the stroke, which can make it easier to keep the face steady, and Tour players carry them across seven different models. Adam Scott and Will Zalatoris are among them. So yeah, Spaun’s trust in L.A.B. is clearly about more than just that one big U.S. Open win.
But Spaun’s story is the part that really makes this fun. Before he became a U.S. Open champion at Oakmont, he was at a point where he even called his college coach to ask about becoming a golf instructor. Then, somehow, he went from being outside the world’s top 100 to lifting the U.S. Open trophy in 2025. He helped make the whole idea popular. His win became one of the big moments for low-torque putters, and he was one of only a handful of players to win on Tour with one that season.
And it didn’t stop with L.A.B. Soon, big names like TaylorMade, Scotty Cameron, and Odyssey started making their own zero-torque putters. They were all chasing the same thing: a putter face that stays more stable and square during the stroke.
It’s pretty crazy, right? The putter Spaun once took out of his bag became part of the reason the golf equipment world started moving in a whole new direction.
Thursday’s 64 wasn’t about finding something new. Spaun simply went back to something he already trusted. And when he needed it most, his old putter came through for him.