Alex Perry went to meet Jordan Spieth and the Under Armour experts to learn about the design and technology implemented in the new Spieth 3 shoes
The new Spieth 3 shoes from Under Armour are here – so we sent Alex Perry to Jordan Spieth’s home club of Dallas National to tell us all about them, with some help from Mike Forsey, the brand’s director of global golf footwear.
How much input did you have when designing the shoe?
With the Spieth 3, I had a lot. It was about two years of input from the initial renderings. It started out when I took a couple of my training shoes and asked, ‘Is there any way we can out the bottom of the shoes that I had on the Spieth 1 and 2s onto my training shoes?’
Given that’s what I train in and use in the gym, using moves that we use for the golf course, and therefore I thought that would be the most beneficial and the most comfortable.
The most notable differences between the 2s and 3s are they are significantly lighter, and there is a lot more technology that’s gone into them.
There is technology to make them more comfortable to walk in and also, using research in France, Power Plate technology to figure out how your feet work through the golf swing.
Utilising that with Under Armour’s technology that they put into a lot of their products, we’ve created a shoe that should be as stable and performance enhancing as any on the market.
How involved did you get with the biomechanics research with JJ Rivet in France?
I kind of left that to the experts. For me, it was like, I’d like to see what are essentially my trainers as far as the comfort level and suiting the way I walk goes.
I wanted to feel closer to the ground and feel like I was gripping the ground better. And I wanted to feel like I had some of the Smart Weave technology. It’s the technology that’s on the top of the shoe, it’s super light but I didn’t know whether it was possible to do whilst still making them weatherproof but they found a way to do it.
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So then we just left it up to the experts, Mike Forsey and JJ, to go over there and do all the research they needed with other golfers. The Hendricks Torsion Bar is the part for your foot responsible for the torque and movement of the foot; they needed to work out how to not detract from that movement but actually improve it and make it a little bit easier to do in a shoe.
Historically, golf shoes have just been dress-shoes with spikes on and we believe that these are athletic and use what everyone has figured out in the last few years; that all the force and stability in the golf swing comes through the ground.
This shoe should help me out, and this all selfish but, I wanted a shoe that gives me a competitive advantage over my peers and if it gives me an advantage then it should give the consumer one as well.
Why is it so important that you are lower to the ground in your golf shoes?
I wanted to feel like I was almost barefoot with a little extra stability. I wanted to feel onto the ground, it helps me with alignment, it helps me with the feel as I can feel the lies I’m on as I’m reading greens. It feels like I have better grip so when I have more feel to the ground, it helps in a lot of cases.
What is it about Rotational Resistant spikes technology that you believe in?
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You can see that they are on the outside of the foot and they are combined with a graphite plate which adds a tremendous amount of stability. These spikes on the outside actually have a little bit of extra grip to them, so as I load into my right side, it keeps me on the inside of my right legs, which is where you need to be when you’re loading you’re weight into the right.
The inside of the shoe has a lot of flexibility and that helps the torque off the right foot, so it’s really in the load and the weight transfer at transition into the left side.
And it works the same way in the left foot. Its flexible in the into the front of the left foot but then it lands nicely into the outside of the foot That spike placement is important in the transition movement and in the landing far on the left side.
And that’s the same no matter which club you’re hitting?
Sure. Obviously the harder you’re swinging, the more you’ll need that, you don’t really need that in your short irons or wedge play. But as you get in and you’re hitting a bunch of drivers or you get into some tricky elements like at an Open Championship.
Maybe the grass is a little wet but it’s still firm ground and slippery, when some guys are swinging up to 120mph, that’s a lot of torque into the ground, a lot of force and you need that weight transfer to be as clean as possible.
That’s what Spieth has to say about the shoe. So what are the expert’s views? Hear from Mike Forsey on the next page…
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Mike, tell us about the Spieth 3 shoe…
The Spieth 3 is the third generation of our signature model for Jordan Spieth and we feel it is the best yet.
Starting with the upper of the shoe, we’ve got a smartly woven jacquard in the forefoot. This is a textile combination of polyester and TPU thread that runs across the vamp and across the heel to give support but not add a lot of weight. The fact that it’s a textile makes it super flexible and light.
The rest of the upper is a microfibre that is water-resistant and breathable and it also has a Gore-Tex membrane for excellent waterproofness and breathability. It allows perspiration to pass through the membrane from inside to out.
One of the biggest details that we have improved upon for this year is our traction. When we introduced the Spieth 1, we talked about traction in the horizontal position or traction to prevent the golfer’s foot from rotating when they are loading up.
And even when they are coming back through impact, preventing the lateral forefoot and the medial heel from slipping out from under the golfer.
Our work with JJ Rivet at the European Tour Performance Institute allowed us to look at the action in the vertical position. So, the modern golf swing is based on using the ground as leverage.
JJ had us focus on was where the weight moves throughout the entire golf swing. So, what we want to offer the golfer is lateral stability, that’s why we’ve got a carbon plate in this TPU outsole. And then, we’ve medial flexibility.
Lateral stability so that when you load up, go through impact and in the finish position, you have good stability. Medial flexibility so that your foot stays down on the ground for as long as possible. So, instead of having a stiff outsole that levers off the ground, you’re actually staying down on the ground as long as possible and pushing that vertical force down into the ground and getting that back in return.
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The rotational resistance spike is proprietary, and we have improved upon that for this year in that it is lower in profile, it will do less damage to greens but there’s no sacrifice in traction.
So, the other thing that we looked at when developing lateral stability and medial flexibility is that we want to mirror everything that is going on outside of the shoe to the inside of the shoe. So, the material is actually a little softer on the medial side and harder on the lateral.
We then score the insole board to mirror what we are doing on the outsole as well, so, we talk about this being traction from the ground up and enhancing what the foot is doing naturally in that lateral stability, medial flexibility.
