So far this season, there has been one piece of gear with a perfect record – replaceable traction. Otherwise known as spikes (as opposed to spikeless golf shoes). All 14 of this year’s winners through the first competition at Augusta have trusted their spiked shoes.
And today? Those spikes may have played a big role in the McIlroy’s second straight green jacket.
Seventy-eight of the 91 players (86%) in the Masters field wore spikes. By the time Friday night rolled around, there were 54 players left and 48 of them were ready to tackle the weekend in spiked shoes.
Late Sunday, McIlroy had a two-shot lead as he stood on the 18th tee, but he jammed his drive, with a touch of a slice, into the trees between the 18th and 10th fairways. His ball came to rest on pine straw, which can be very unforgiving ground for stability. Hitting a rope high and over trees with the swing speed it creates would be much more challenging in shoes without spikes, or even a different type of rubber.
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McIlroy uses a combination set of Softspikes Tour Flex Pro and Silver Tornado golf spikes in his Nike Victory Tour 4 golf shoes. The Tour Flex Pro is specifically designed to create a solution to instability caused by debris or hazardous terrain such as pine straw.
The Tour Flex Pro’s unique design combines twisting traction with a center stinger that acts like an old metal nail, or “nail” as some old golfers will call it. This stinging pole is able to penetrate through debris to the base of the ground the player is standing on, regardless of the conditions they face. Because McIlroy uses the ground so well, he’s benefiting from the stinger even more than others. By placing them at the front of the spikes on the front side of his feet, they are used to make sure he is locked laterally to the ground, allowing him to use the ground and really get on the front side without any discomfort.
Silver Tornado studs on the rest of the shoe offer players a slightly more grounded feel with a lower profile, while still maintaining the rotational traction benefits of the Tour Flex Pro. This feeling in the lower part of the legs can also act as a kind of trigger. As you move through the golf swing, you can feel when the Silver Tornadoes are tight and it’s time to unload on the Tour Flex Pro and use the ground power to produce more clubhead speed.
I can’t tell you that’s what McIlroy feels, but it’s something I found out a long time ago from Softspikes Tour representative Charles Woodward. (Fun fact: more than 50% of spike users on the PGA Tour use more than one type of spike on the bottom of their shoes.)
Wearing different shoes, would McIlroy have slipped on the pine straw and missed his shot at back-to-back history? Would we have a playoff for the ages with him Scottie Scheffler? We’ll never know, because McIlroy hit exactly the putt he needed from that pine straw.
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