What are Golf Shoes?

Are you planning on getting into the fabulous sport of golf? It’s a whole lot of fun, you get to spend the day with your buddies, and you can engage in some friendly yet often heated competition. However, although you might have your golf clubs ready to go, you are still not 100% prepared.

Did you know that there is such a thing as the golf shoe? Yes, just like other sports have specially designed shoes, there are golf shoes too, and they can do a lot in terms of improving your game. Let’s talk about what golf shoes are and how they can help improve your score.

What are Golf Shoes?

Golf shoes are a special type of shoe used by pro and amateur golfers alike. Just like the soccer cleat is used for soccer, and rock climbing shoes are used for rock climbing, golfing shoes are used for golfing. Golf shoes are intended to keep your feet comfortable for however long you plan on golfing on any given day.

Many golf courses and country clubs require golf shoes to be worn on their course. In some cases, this may just be due to the fact that it is the style and it is what people are supposed to do. However, golf shoes do serve a purpose greater than just making you look like you know how to swing that nine iron.

Golf shoes come with a few different features and benefits which are intended to help improve your game, your level of comfort, safety, and yes, your stylish appearance too. Golf shoes are usually low cut, they have good interior support, and they often come with spikes to provide you with good traction. Let’s move on and talk about why you might want to consider wearing golf shoes for your next 18 holes.

Why Use Golf Shoes for Golfing?

As we mentioned, wearing golf shoes is more than about just looking the part and fitting in with the crowd, because golf shoes do come with some special features and benefits that will help improve your golf game quite a bit. Let’s talk about how golf shoes are built, the features they come with, and what benefits these features bring to your golf game.

Good Balance

One of the reasons why you should seriously consider wearing golf shoes no matter where you are golfing is because they help provide you with a stable base and increased balance. Golf shoes are usually built with a fairly wide and flat base. This gives you a larger and more stable platform to stand on. When it comes to having the right stance, winding up for your swing, hitting the ball, and traversing the course, a good golf shoe that offers you great balance and stability is what you should be looking for in a golf shoe. It helps you stay put, stay on your feet, and hit that little ball as well as possible.

Increased Range of Motion

The next reason why you want to wear a good pair of golf shoes is because they allow for a wider range of motion than most other types of shoe. Golf shoes are usually always made with a low-cut design. In other words, they do not cover your ankle. The ball of your ankle, that bone that sticks out to the right and left, when wearing golf shoes, is left free and uncovered.

Now, this might seem like a mistake because having good ankle support is important for many other sports. However, golfing does not involve running around or physicality of any kind, so ankle support is not necessary. If you know a thing or two about golfing, a good golf stance, and swinging the club the right way, you know that you need to be able to move and twist your feet, which, thanks to a low-cut design, golf shoes are perfect for.

Traction

Yet another benefit that comes with wearing the right pair of golf shoes is that they provide you with good traction on a slippery golf course. Not all golf shoes come with spikes, but many do. Golf shoes that come with spikes are perfect for that early morning game of golf when the grass is still moist from the night before.

It might not seem like it, but slipping and falling on wet grass, especially in the middle of a swing, happens far more often than you might think. This is why many golf shoes are designed with spikes for traction. Even those golf shoes which do not have spikes usually still have a good traction pattern on them. Whichever way you look at it, golf shoes provide you with traction so you can move quickly and stay upright on the green.

Breathability

Golfing on a warm summer day can get pretty hot, and when it gets hot, your feet are going to start to sweat. This is why most golfing shoes are built with special perforations or venting systems, or just made with breathable materials in general. A really good pair of golf shoes can help stop your feet from overheating, sweating, getting uncomfortable, and therefore this also helps prevent blisters from occurring.

Waterproofing

The right pair of golf shoes is also going to be either waterproof or at least water resistant. Going back to that early morning dew on the golf course, there’s nothing worse than being a few holes in and having soaked feet from the wet grass. The right pair of golf shoes can help your feet breathe and stay dry at the same time.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that most golf clubs will require you to wear golf shoes when you are on the course. However, either way, as you can see, there is really not a single good reason as to why you would want to wear any other kind of shoe for golfing regardless of dress codes.