Steve Flesch finding form with new putter, routine

Steve Flesch had as many top-10 finishes in his last 14 events during the 2020-21 PGA TOUR Champions super season as he had in all of 2019.

Simply put, the left-hander enjoyed the best stretch of his over-50 career after turning 54 on May 23. He posted seven top-10s, including five top-threes, and never finished worse than T27. He zoomed all the way up to a career-best 11th-place finish in the Charles Schwab Cup standings, and he was so in tune with his game that he was upset the season had come to a close when he posted a T7 at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in Phoenix.

“I had a good run at the end of the year and was really bummed in Phoenix,” Flesch said Tuesday from his home in Kentucky. “I wish we’d have just kept going.”

Of course he did. It feels good to be at the top of your game -- swinging freely, putting well, and contending week-in and week-out. So, how did Flesch find the zone? What code did he crack that heretofore had eluded him on PGA TOUR Champions?

It doesn’t boil down to any one thing. Or does it?

“In a nutshell, I’d say I putted better in the second half than the first half, but I don’t think I putted great,” Flesch said. “I just putted consistently enough that it freed up my ball-striking.

“Did I run the tables putting? No. Was I consistent? Yes. And I think it freed up my ball-striking because I didn’t feel like I had to hit it to 5 feet to make a birdie.”

The flat stick has been responsible for many a rise and fall of a TOUR player. Flesch has putted well since joining PGA TOUR Champions in 2017, including ranking No. 7 in putting average in 2019 and tying for 13th in putting average for the 2020-21 super season that just concluded.

But to know Flesch is to know he is a tinkerer. He is constantly toying with clubs and heads and shafts and grips. He’ll try anything he thinks might work. If it works for a while, then doesn’t, he moves along to whatever is next.

When PGA TOUR Champions reached the American Family Insurance Championship in May, just before Flesch’s 54th birthday, he put a new putter into play – an Odyssey Arm Lock 2-Ball Ten Putter.

“I was putting cruddy and I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll try this,’” Flesch said. “I shot 63 in the final round (the low round of the tournament by two strokes), but it was kind of crazy. All of a sudden the ball started finding the hole.

“Then I played pretty decent through the U.S. Senior Open with the Arm Lock, but I had a bad finish there – bogey, double to drop out of the top-10. Then I just switched models of Arm Lock to a newer version and just stuck with it.”

Flesch liked that the Odyssey didn’t have lines, just the two balls on the putter head. It looked and felt cleaner to him. He called it a “less mechanical way of putting.”

With the new putter and perhaps less clutter in his head, Flesch overhauled his putting routine, too. He felt the Arm Lock allowed him to set up to the ball the same way all the time, that all he had to worry about was ball position.

“It just frees me up. I changed my routine to where I literally don’t take a practice swing over the ball,” Flesch said. “I might take one behind my ball. Otherwise I take one look behind it and go. The less time I’m over it, the better I putt. It gives me less chance to think about it when I’m over the ball. I’m just playing by feel and that’s kind of as good as it gets.”

Flesch also experimented with lighter shafts in his irons last season, but he felt he lost too much feel. His thought process was to take some of the load off his neck and shoulders; he has had surgeries on both in recent years. He finally settled in the middle, using shafts weighted somewhere in between what he’d hoped to use and what he had been using.

For anyone hoping to optimize his time on PGA TOUR Champions, health is a priority. And having been under the knife makes Flesch extra cautious.

He never has been a grinder anyway, but he really is determined to protect his neck and shoulders from any further harm. He doesn’t hit balls after playing and he almost assuredly won’t in 2022, “unless I’m just mopping it all over the place.” He also doesn’t play on Mondays. He did play all 37 events in the 2020-21 season, though, and he says he’ll play in nearly every event this season.

“Throughout my career, when I’ve played well, I’ve never been a big practice guy,” Flesch said. “I hate hitting balls. I find nothing more boring than that. The guys who just pound balls … I have zero patience for that. I do my practicing by playing. I’d rather play nine than hit on the range for an hour. That’s how I grew up playing. That’s how I get my work done. Once in a while, have my caddie video what I did and look at it at night and sometimes I can make changes in my swing without even hitting a ball. That’s what I’ve been doing the past couple of years.

“I want to play till I’m 65. Hopefully I can and hopefully I can stay eligible for that long. Saving my shoulder and neck have to be a top priority.”

If it works in 2022 like it did at the end of last year, Flesch won’t need to tinker much.

But he probably still will.