Stability and performance. This is what I look for in a golf shoe. I am personally not big on the next trend in footwear as far as aesthetics. What I want is my shoe to be able to take the beating it's going to take and still perform the way I need it to. As a long driver, I need everything from the ground up to be working as best it can. I train hard, I use the ground a lot, and honestly, I don't want to be wasting energy that should end up in my club head on other things (like a soft, squishy shoe). I want that force I produced into the ground to be driven back up the kinetic chain and out to the club head to maximize its speed and, thus, my ball speed and hit the ball as far as I can.
But that's not the only thing. Comfort obviously plays a factor, as durability is important since we all can't buy new shoes monthly and we shouldn't have to. I will give examples of why the proper footwear matters in your quest for speed.
Every millimeter matters. If you're going to use the ground to help you gain speed, why would you ever want to waste that energy or have it cause shots that are not hit in the center? An easy example of this is a shoe that is too squishy or a footbed that is too soft. If you are producing a considerable amount of ground force and you push into the ball of the foot on the lead leg trying to get as much vertical force production as possible, and that shoe is very soft, what will happen is some of the pressure you are creating will be leaked into and out of the footbed of the shoe. So, if the force is leaked but the rest of your body is moving, you have a chance, likely somewhat high, of a disturbance in the kinetic chain that you will have to try and make up somewhere down the line, which is what we could define as a power leak. And if you happen to miss the face by at best a few millimeters high, low, left, or right, you are likely losing yards or missing fairways more than you need to be.
So what do we look for in a shoe? We can start with a cleated bottom. Obviously, when you look at the classics, like the FootJoy Premiere series, for example, you see them on tour everywhere and for good reason. They are not only a very firm sole shoe, they go the classic route with the looks, but some of the best in the world also know a soft spike shoe holds you to the ground. Is it a big soft comfy shoe? NO, but it has the classic golf look and is built on a solid foundation with soft cleats on the bottom. Now, if we look at some other shoes we see on tour regularly, Nike has various models, some more solid than others and some more cleated than others. The TW line has always had a cleated version for obvious reasons. I don't think the greatest of this modern era and arguably the best of all time would not wear a spikeless shoe. Even the Nike One "street" model shoe has a really hard rubber. As much as it may be more comfortable, it still has a solid base foundation used by someone on tour who actually slows his swing down to be able to play on tour. What you don't generally see being used by the best in the world are soft spongy spikeless shoes.
I will say that the less you use the ground, the less this matters. The less you weigh, the less this matters. But if you are an individual of any size and stature trying to gain as much clubhead speed as possible, your goal should be to get your footwear right.
Here is one simple example, and it starts from the feet which in turn flows up the chain into the legs and hips. If you are flat-footed with little to no arch and you don't have access to a Podiatrist to be fitted with custom orthotics, your other, albeit not as great but possibly feasible option, would be looking for a shoe that has more drop from heel to toe. This will cause a bit more forward lean and get you off your heels. Generally speaking, if you have overly flat feet without much of an arch, the likelihood of your glutes firing or being really strong is actually lower. But to make up for it a bit, the pitch of the shoe can leverage you into your stronger quads and help engage those muscles and take pressure off the weaker ones until you have the training and/or support to balance things out. It could be somewhat looked at in an opposite fashion: someone who has a large arch and is too far onto their toes could use a shoe with no pitch or drop in order to activate their glutes more.
Now, that was the simple version, as we could go much deeper into the topic. But let's keep it simple for now, as it should always be about being balanced. That's where a truly stable shoe comes into play, not only from a vertical perspective but also from horizontal and torque perspectives.
We have heard about "sway". A good, solid shoe can limit sway and pressure to the outside of the foot, keeping the pressure where it needs to be in order to send power up the kinetic chain in the best way possible. On the other hand, if you have too much sway and wear a type of softer sole shoe, you could be exacerbating your issue. Of course, working on this issue itself could help solve the problem, but for some, doing both could just make it a heck of a lot easier.
As you can see, I am a firm believer in taking advantage of what we can with our equipment in order to create as much club head speed as possible to hit the ball as far as I can. If I wasn't taking advantage of something as simple as my footwear, how seriously could I be taken? Ground force production is also of great interest to me, as well as club building, as seen in my previous blogs about club fitting and how a simple shaft switch allowed me to break a world record. So before you go out and buy your next fancy pair of expensive golf shoes, ask yourself, "Do I want to perform or just look like I do?" Well, I will say this: with the Phantom Phorm 1 pictured above, you could do BOTH.
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