Craftsman Riding Lawn Tractor Review

Traction
The tractors are shipped with their tires in an over-inflated condition, to avoid shipping damage. See if your tires' pressure was ever reduced to 17 psi by the store's staff, before you accepted delivery of your tractor. That should give you more traction and damage your grass less than a rigid set of tires do.
You can also purchase bolt-on-able wheel weights for greater traction.

Some thoughts: How moist is the grass you're mowing? Have you used any anti-stick mower deck compounds? Do you take deep single-pass cuts or lower the deck down gradually on tall grass? They are offering a new feature on this year's tractor (and some mowers) called a deck wash feature. All you need to do is connect up a garden hose to the deck's upper fitting, with the mower running and allow the mower/tractor to dry itself off for a time, with the water turned off. Sorry, I don't believe this is a retrofittable option. But, Sears always tries to add value to all of their products.

I purchased one this last spring (Husky brand) with Craftsman name on it. 26.5 HP Kohler engine. Only problem is the tires do not give enough traction so I am purchasing tire chains since they do not offer tractor tread for this tractor. My previous one was a smaller Craftsman but it was built by another company and required the drive belt to be twisted and I generally went through a minimum of two drive belts per season and lets not go to the mower deck, very poor engineering. Yes, this company also builds Toro. and Cub Cadet and several others.