Ask most golfers what they look for in a pair of golf shoes and they’ll probably mention comfort above all else. Very few are likely to mention traction at the top of their list. But it’s the most important factor, or is it?
Modern golf shoes are designed to pretty much deliver everything. They were once heavily spiked and were moulded by a traditional saddle-style design. The past few decades has seem them evolve into something that would look at home on the high-street just as much as the golf course.
But while their looks may have changed, the importance of properly fit golf shoe has not. After all, every movement in the golf swing starts from the ground up.
According to Chris Murtagh, Head of Footwear Optimisation at Under Armour, traction is the fundamental factor in aiding with this and a big reason golfers wear specialised footwear in the first place.
As golfers we often associate traction with simply stopping our feet from slipping mid swing, but its influence extends much further than that.
“We’ve done a lot of testing,” Murtagh explained. “Testing barefoot, testing in shoes, and I think you can get very high peak forces, you can get very high force numbers, even in barefoot. I think that’s a fact.
“We’ve seen it, a lot of other people have talked about it, but the one thing you can’t get in barefoot is traction. I think if you decipher, or you distill down why you put a shoe on your feet in any sport it’s generally for traction.”
Golf isn’t alone in this. For Murtagh, the importance of traction isn’t unique to golf.
“Why do you wear a spikes in running? For traction. Why do you wear a football boot? For traction.
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“In football, as an example, you’re talking about all sorts of different studs for different ground conditions.
However, unlike many athletic movements that occur primarily forwards and backwards, golf involves significant rotational forces when hitting through the golf ball.
Murtagh spoke about the work, and the importance of it, that has gone into creating golf shoes to provide support throughout the whole golf swing.
“I think traction is probably the most important factor if you were looking at it. I think traction, not just in a straight line but also in a rotational fashion, which is what we’ve designed with Under Armor, and we’ve looked at a lot, is it’s not just being stable and solid in a straight on frontal position.
“It’s actually as you move dynamically; how well do your shoes create your action in that in that motion.”
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