Stricker, an equipment loyalist, tries to embrace some new gear

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – Some players want to change equipment every time the wind shifts, enamored with the newest clubs and technology. And then there are traditionalists such as battle-tested warhorse Steve Stricker. It’s only mildly surprising that he is not still swinging hickory shafts.

Stricker, splitting time between the PGA TOUR and PGA Tour Champions this season, is a creature of habit, a man loyal to his tools, who finds what he likes and resists change with every fiber of his being.

Stricker, 52, has carried the same trusty putter, an Odyssey White Hot 2, for 17 seasons. Last year, he noticed the shaft was slightly bent, the putter's grip area “all pitted out” from years of practice green work and residual wear and tear from a concoction of sweat and sunscreen.

When he brought the putter to technicians on the PGA TOUR to change out the shaft, they studied the white face insert and suggested that Stricker might want to run a credit card across it to check for flatness.

“And sure enough,” Stricker said Friday at the Valspar Championship, “there’s an indentation in the face.”

Too much use, and too many made putts. A backup was built for him that he temporarily put into play before he was informed by Brandt Snedeker that a new face insert actually could be installed on the original. So Stricker had one put in, and this week marked the first time he and his faithful 17-year-old flatstick were reunited.

So that was that with his putter, though he said he didn’t roll the ball particularly great (62 putts) over two days at Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course. Stricker shot 73-71 and missed the cut by a shot.

“It wasn’t the putter,” he said. “It was the puttee.”

But the putter wasn’t the last of his equipment challenges. He wanted to pull his old trusty KBS shafts out of his iron set (the heads are older model, Titleist 710 AP2s), but soon learned that all the tips of the shafts were bent from overuse and time. (He said the shafts dated to 2011 or 2012).

“They said, ‘We can’t use these shafts,’” Stricker said.

So at Valspar, he not only had new shafts in his irons (Project X, 6.5 flex) but even had different heads, too (Titleist 718 CBs).

Stricker’s wife, Nicki, who caddied for him this week at Valspar, rightly told her husband that he probably needs to start changing equipment more frequently.

“Yeah,” Stricker said somewhat reluctantly, “I guess that it shows that I should change out and pay attention a little bit more.”

Suffice to say, the old stuff still worked pretty good. Stricker won three of his seven starts on the PGA TOUR Champions last season. You don’t mess with success.