This week at the 2022 Waste Management Phoenix Open, 42-year-old Charles Howell III is making his 600th career PGA Tour start. Chucky Three Sticks, as he’s called, has been one of the most consistent golfers on Tour for the last two decades, amassing over $40 million in on-course earnings.

He’s also a massive gearhead who loves to test and switch equipment. While the full-time Titleist staffer is currently set with 13-of-14 of his clubs, he still enjoys testing putters – everything from Scotty Cameron’s to putters made from other manufacturers. As he discusses below, he just likes to keep things interesting.

A look at Howell III’s Titleist setup at the Phoenix Open.

On Tuesday ahead of the WM Phoenix Open, I caught up Howell III following a putter testing session on the TPC Scottsdale practice green. I noticed he was testing a bunch of different putters, and the session lasted for hours. I couldn’t help but talk to Howell III for a few minutes following the session to pick his brain.

Happy 600 to Chucky Three Sticks, and enjoy the quick interview below!

Tursky: So I just saw you grinding for hours, doing a little putter testing. What are you looking at? What are you seeing?

Howell III: So, for some reason I’ve putted my best historically with more of a Newport style putter with some amount of toe hang, but my eye always wants to go to a mallet putter. So I’m always in that… it’s why we’re golfers I guess. We’re strange creatures. But I’ll end up with a Newport style putter. I love the way the others look when they sit down. And then Tim Suzor, who helps me with my putting and I’ve known forever, he’s…none of it’s rocket science but we play so much we fall into these bad habits and weird stuff, it’s nice to have another set of eyes there to get your attention to go in [the right direction].

I feel like you had the same putter for a few months in a row there and ended up switching it out.

Three months is just way too long. It’s just way too long.

Is that a thing where you just can’t help yourself? Like you just have to look at something different?

I don’t switch anything else…I’ve played the same driver and driver shaft forever now. I’ve played the same 3 wood, etc., so you have to switch something. There’s also part of it, too, that it keeps it interesting and exciting. When you’ve played golf as long as I have, sometimes it’s just part of the fun of it to look at something else. It’s why we’re all gearheads, right? You don’t need any more reason to it than that.

I’m not a guy that can look at the same putter forever. I’m just not.

What are you working on technique wise?

A lot of posture and balance stuff. We’ve actually introduced quite a bit of games to make it more of a competitive environment on the practice green, similar to how you feel and what you do on the golf course.

It’ll be a certain amount of block practice, some setup and posture stuff, and then some games for the competitive side of it.

What are some of the games?

Well, we do a lot of holing a certain amount of putts before you can leave the green. We’ll do a lot of speed drills where you have to get a certain amount of balls between the front edge of the hole and a rod, let’s say 3 feet behind it. All different things like that just to make it a little bit competitive.

So how many putts in a row will you need to hit?

We’ll go from 8 feet and you have to make 5 in a row from both sides of the hole, so that would be 10 in a row. That game at times can take for-absolute-ever, and then you just give up and say, ‘The hell with it, I’m going to the driving range.”

But as long as there’s a balance between a certain amount of block practice for what we’re trying to do, and a certain amount of practice of like, let’s get out of that and into results and a little bit of competitiveness. So it doesn’t really matter what the game is, it just matter that it’s more a performance game as opposed to like a block game.

And you’re only doing putter testing, you’re not testing anything else?

No, it’s just putters. See it’s boring. See, it’s all boring. Just putters, because everything else is fine.