Whilst I'm sure there's an element of being worried about being underscored by judges , the pro's themselves are also very conservative with their equipment choices (something that's repeated across many equipment heavy sports, like downhill mountain biking, etc).
The thing they value most is reliability & repeatability. They want to know that the board/bike/bat is going to do the same thing EVERY time. A small increase in performance in not worth chasing if it is only going to work properly 8 out of 10 times....