L.A.B. DF3 vs OZ.1i HS: Which putter is right for you?

Wondering if the L.A.B. DF3 or OZ.1i HS putter is right for you? In this video, I compare the L.A.B. Golf DF3 and the new L.A.B. Golf OZ.1i HS, the company’s first heel-shafted putter. They are two of the most talked-about zero-torque putters on the market. Both feature Lie Angle Balance technology designed to keep the face square to your stroke path and help you roll more consistent putts, but they offer very different looks, feels, and performance benefits.

You’ll learn:
• What DF3 and OZ.1i HS have in common
• How their designs and shaft setups differ
• Which putter is best for stability, forgiveness, and confidence on the greens

If you’re curious about zero torque putters or considering the L.A.B. DF3 and OZ.1i HS, this breakdown will help you decide which one fits your game.

00:00 Introduction
00:38 What is Lie Angle Balance?
02:40 L.A.B. DF3 Breakdown
04:08 L.A.B. OZ.1i HS Breakdown
06:09 Can They Pick Up a Ball?
06:29 LAB DF3 or LAB OZ.1i HS – Which is Best?
08:47 LAB DF3 or LAB OZ.1i HS – Price
09:02 GET FIT!!
09:53 Questions or Comments?

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📌 Related videos you might like:
• L.A.B. OZ.1i HS Review – https://youtu.be/0NT6DrqLudQ?si=6ZAnZ9VFO-qgPdAG
• L.A.B. DF3 Review – https://youtu.be/ATa1NU6m3NA?si=g9bqynP5uRS8nvl6

Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. This is the newest putter from Lab Golf. This is a Lab OswaniHS and this is the putter that JJ Spawn used to win the 2025 US Open at Oakmont. This is a Lab DF3. Now, both of these putters, I think, are going to be extremely popular in 2026. And if you’re someone who’s thinking about jumping in and taking the zero torque leap, if you think that lie angle balance might be something that’s going to help you hold more putts, then you might be wondering which one of these two putters should you be playing. Well, then you’re in the right place because in this video, I’m going to explain to you the similarities and the differences between the Oswan IHS and the DF3 and help you learn which one of these putters is right for your game. The key element that you’re going to find in both of these putters is lie angle balance. Lab, the company lab stands for lie angle balance. And essentially what this is about is lab adding different weights and doing different things from a balance standpoint to help golfers greatly reduce or completely eliminate the torque, the twisting that’s going to happen when they naturally make a putting stroke. And by doing that, Lab claims that you’re going to be able to keep the face of your putter square to your putting path a lot more easily. What happens when you do that is you’re going to be able to return the face back to the square position you establish at address more often and start putts rolling on your intended target line much more easily. Now, there’s a lot of confusion still, I think, out there about exactly what lie angle balance looks like. People, for whatever reason, still think often times that what lab putters are designed to do is keep the face of your putter square to your target line, which in this case I’ve got represented by this yellow raised string. That’s not really true. Everybody’s putting stroke is going to have some level of arc to it because your putter is not allowed to have a lie angle of 90 degrees. If you had a putter that was perpendicular to the ground and you were allowed to make a pure pendulum stroke like this, then your putting stroke wouldn’t have any arc. But you’re not allowed to do that. Your putter can have no more than 80° of lie angle, which means that it has to be at least 10° away from vertical. If that’s the case, everybody’s putting stroke is going to have some measure of arc to it unless you really manipulate your hands and wrists. And that is definitely not a recipe for consistency on the green. What lab is doing is basically saying that whether you have a relatively slight arc or whether you have a pretty pronounced arc, as long as you don’t do anything to manipulate your hands and wrists, you’re going to be able to bring the putter face back to the square position a lot more easily. And that can help you hold more putts. Okay, so now you know that both the Lab Oswan IHS and the DF3 have lie angle balance. You understand how lie angle balance works. How are you supposed to decide which one of these two putters is going to be ideal for you? You know how they’re similar. Well, how are they different? Okay, so I’ll start from a construction standpoint. The Lab DF3, which was originally released in early 2024, is 100% aluminum. All the head design that you see right here is aluminum. It’s all been milled out and there’s a series of weights that are then added to the bottom of each one of these putters that help to achie help it to achieve the lie angle balance part. Now, one of the interesting things I learned when I visited the Creswell, Oregon lab world headquarters is that every one of their putters, the DF3s as well as the Oswani IHS’s, all of them are hand tested by real people to make sure that that lie angle balance property in the company’s revealer mechanism, all of it actually works for every single putter. They test all these by hand. You wonder why some of these get expensive? That’s part of the reason why. There’s a series of grooves that’s been milled into the face to help you achieve a little bit better roll. Now, the Lab DF3 has a shaft that goes directly into the head itself. There is no huzzle mechanism on this. This is a center shaft of putter and the shaft goes right into the head almost directly on top of the center of gravity location. So, if you were to balance your putter on your hands like I’m doing now, you’ll notice that the toe goes up. So rather than being a toe down um situation or a face balance situation, the toe goes up. What’s really happening here is that the face is pointing towards the direction of the target based on the lie angle that’s been designed into this putter. Don’t think of this as much as toe up, which obviously it is. Think of it as the face pointing towards your target. That is how this putter is balanced. The Oswani HS is a little bit different animal. Again, all of the black section that you see right here is milled aluminum. Very, very lightweight material. And again, you’ve got a series of weights on the bottom that have been installed by hand. And this thing has been measured out by hand and put on a revealer to make sure that the line angle balance properties are going to be present. The biggest difference you’re going to see, there are actually two of them. Obviously, number one, the shape. This for the DF3 is going to be a very unorthodox shape. It’s going to be very unique. For some people, it’s relatively off-putting. For a lot of people, they’ve gotten used to looking at this shape. The Oz1i HS is going to be a much more traditional mallet shape and that is by design. The original O1i putter was designed in conjunction with Adam Scott. He gave a lot of feedback and gave a lot of um notes about that. So they came up with this shape. So a much more traditional shape and obviously the HS stands for heel shafted. This is the first lab putter that’s been designed not with a center shafted design but a heel shafted design. Now, to have a putter that has a plumber’s neck and is heel shafted, but also has lie angle balance, Glab had to get pretty tricky with its geometry. The putters that have a more vertical lie angle, a higher numbered lie angle, have a longer huzzle mechanism. Uh, Lab refers to it as a riser. Putters that are flatter in their lie angle have a shorter one. This putter has a 68°ree lie angle. So, the riser is relatively short. If you go up to 73 or 74, something like that, the riser on those putters gets higher in order to help it maintain the lie angle balance. The other thing that’s obviously very different about the Lab Oswani HS is the fact that you’ll notice that there is an insert here. This is a mil stainless steel insert. The face, as I pointed out before on the DF3, this is just a grooved piece of aluminum. So, if you’re a person who’s coming from a using a putter that has a milled face or a metallic face, a non-insert face, this insert right here is going to actually feel very familiar because this is going to be stainless steel. Now, one of the funny things that people ask me about when I first put out my video about the Oswani HS is that can you pick up a golf ball with this back section here? Are you able to just sort of scoop it up? And the answer is yes, but you have to be relatively careful. Now, the DF3, of course, having a hole cut out right here makes it super easy to just walk by and grab a golf ball without even bending over. Okay, so with all of that in mind, how do you decide which one is right for you? How do you know whether the DF3 or the Oswan IHS belongs in your bag? Well, here’s the sort of thought process I would have to help you make the right decision. If you’re someone who’s looking for the most profound feeling of lying balance, the most the sensation really of the putter wanting to swing itself, the most self-correction, if you will, I would probably go with a DF3. I think that this putter really feels like it is when you swing it, it’s as if the putter is on rails. You have to really do something to knock this thing out of whack. I think on short putts from five or six feet and in, this is as automatic as putting is going to get at this point. It really feels like it’s super forgiving and you just have to point and shoot. I think it takes a little bit of practice on longer putts to get that same sensation, but it is really confidence inspiring on shorter putts. And I think for a lot of people who struggle with three putting and really struggle in all around on the greens, having confidence is a huge plus when it comes to putting. And I think the DF3 will probably instill more confidence in your putting and in your game than the Oswan IHF. Now, if you’re a person who really likes the look of a traditional putter, you just can’t get over the look of the DF3, you’re certainly going to be able to get nearly all of the performance benefits, I think, from the DF3 in the Oswani HS in a much more traditional look. If you look down in the address position with this putter behind the ball, it will look very familiar. You have probably puttered with something like this or similar to this in the past. And the huzzle mechanism here, the riser, makes it look that way. Also, if you’re somebody who has puttered with a milled putter, and most players at this point have puttered with at least one or two milled putters in the past, having a face insert here that comes off and sounds like a milled putter because it is milled stainless steel will be very, very familiar. I think transitioning from a traditional mallet putter into a lab putter is made most easily if you’re going with something like the Oswani HS. It’s going to look familiar. It’s going to feel familiar right there. It’s basically going to hold your hand as you get into the world of lie angle balance putters. Going with something like the DF3 is going to be a much more jarring experience. I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, but you’re taking a bigger leap when you go in with the DF3 than you do with the Oswan IHS. Now, the one thing I think that really won’t come into consideration ends up being the price. They’re both going to be probably something that’s going to cost you about $500 or more to get into your golf bag. So, they’re going to be both a hefty investment in your short game and in your putting, which is one of the big reasons why I would highly recommend if you’ve never used a line angle balance putter before that you go to a good pro shop and have somebody a good custom fitter work with you to make sure that you’re going to get into one that fits you properly. I would hate to hear about anybody going ahead purchasing a lab putter only to find out later that they actually got the wrong length or the wrong line angle so they didn’t get the benefit of the whole effect after of course they laid out5 6 $700 or more to get the putter that they really wanted. So I think the bottom line is if you’re somebody who’s looking for the greatest lie angle balance effect, if you want the most help, the most forgiveness, you probably go with a DF3. If you’re somebody who’s looking to make the transition a little bit more gingerly, a little bit more easily into lie angle balance putting from traditional putters, the Lab O1 IHS is going to look really familiar. It’s going to probably feel very familiar and yet it’s still going to give you the benefit of lie angle balance. Look, so those are my thoughts about both of these putters. But if you have any questions about either one of them, please feel free to drop them in the comment area below. I do try and monitor my comment area as well as I can and to answer all the questions that I possibly can. I want to be a resource for you to answer all of your golf equipment questions and to help you make smarter purchasing decisions. What would help me out a lot is if you would smash that like button and subscribe to my channel if you got some good information out of this video. Thanks very much and I look forward to seeing you again really