Gulf notes · January 2026

Why a Gulf plumber’s neck starts ticking

Putter failures on the Alabama Gulf are quiet. No click you can hear from the next tee. A tick in the fingers when you walk off a wet green at Azalea City, or a neck that feels like it nodded after the bag sat in a salt trunk.

A plumber’s neck hides weather in the crook. Water from a green, chloride from a trunk, and a film that was poured on a dry Tuesday in another state all meet in a bend you cannot inspect without looking like you are sniffing your putter. People ignore the tick for a season because the ball still falls often enough. Then the tick becomes a wander and they want the neck turned into a slant because a video said slants start the ball on a truer line. That is two requests. We will take one of them.

The restem we will do

Rhea pulls the shaft, cleans the crook, and looks at remaining wall. If there is meat, we restem at $210, recollar if the little ring has hovered, and we leave it a plumber. Morning torque is less of a ritual here than on an adapter sleeve, but the epoxy window is the same Gulf window. A wet January can still be a fat cabinet. Overnight still happens. We will not pour a putter neck at 11:40 on Saturday.

Bring the putter. A photo of a tick is a blur. A photo of rust in the crook is more useful as an email to sleeve@hoselbay.website, and still not a substitute for the head on the bench. If you already hot-pulled it in a garage, say so. Bellied walls from too much heat are how restems become nos.

The conversion we will not do

Flattening a plumber into a slant is a different craft than Suite 4. It is not a recollar. It is not a restem. It is a geometry change people request after a week of putting videos, usually in the same breath as the tick. We separate those sentences. The tick is corrosion and film. The slant is a different putter. If your neck is cracked, that is also a different craftsman. We will say no rather than invent a weld.

Flow-necks and slants that already exist can be restemmed when the bore still has wall. They fail for similar Gulf reasons — short tips, oval mouths, bags that never dried — without the crook that makes plumbers special. Same rule: we reseat what you play. We do not fashion a new neck because the old one embarrassed you on a wet green.

Salt trunk, not just the green

Azalea City in January can be wet enough to feed a crook by itself. The trunk on the way home often finishes the job. A putter left in a headcover that never dried is a chloride locker. Take the cover off in the kitchen when you get back from the course. That sentence has saved more plumber’s necks than any product we sell. It will not unscrew a tick that is already there. It will slow the next one.

If the tick is already in your fingers, hold a Putter Neck morning on Dauphin. Do not convert it in the same appointment as the complaint. Let the joint sit. Play the plumber you already know, quietly, after the film has a spine.