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In January of 2000, at the GCSAA annual conference in New Orleans, Dr. Thomas A. Nikolai stood in front of a crowd of superintendents and waved goodbye to the era of metal-studded golf shoes. The intrusive spikes, which were ruining greens and turf on courses across the country, had finally started to disappear from the market. Equipment companies announced new plastic-spiked shoes that would benefit golfers and superintendents alike, providing increased traction while respecting all the hard work that goes into maintaining courses. Nikolai, a professor of turfgrass science at Michigan State University, preached a more restrained sense of optimism.
“At the end of the presentation, I stated that the metal spike was gone,” he says, “but I reminded superintendents that new cleat designs were not created equal. Certainly, some of them would result in poor putting quality for golfers.”
Almost a decade later, Nikolai began to receive calls from superintendents who had questions and complaints about new releases on the market that were causing them trouble. These golf shoes boasted long-spiked outsoles that were tearing up greens and creating nightmares on courses. The trouble with these shoes is simple, says Josh Lewis, superintendent at Chambers Bay in University Place, WA: “All of the pressure is on the spikes that come out of the outsole and carry all of the pressure of the shoe. They make a deep, lasting impact on the greens.” Even worse, he says, some players are accidentally tearing turf off of the green surface: “Golfers are walking across the green and they are literally removing grass from the surface. With changing hole-locations and the resulting traffic concentration, it gets even worse.”
Nikolai decided to take action. During the 2012 season he conducted greens traffic studies at four different locations across the country to test different golf shoes. At all 4 sites the researchers set up individual 3’ x 3’ plots (12 shoe types, 3 tests per shoe, 36 plots.) In random order, each shoe was tested by a Michigan State employee on a designated plot. The traffic was applied by mimicking a golfer pulling a golf ball out from the bottom of the cup after making a putt. At least 20 rounds of simulated golf with a minimum of 2 individuals were applied to each plot. For the ratings, Nikolai used students from the Hancock Turfgrass Research Center in addition to superintendents, golfers, and grounds crew staff. They rated the impact plots on the following scale:
1 = Excellent, no visible traffic
2 = Very good
3 = Good, some traffic but I would not mind putting on the surface
4 = Fair
5 = Poor, terrible putting conditions, recommend banning this shoe from the golf course
Nikolai found that each individual shoe rated about the same across the four sites, evidence to the fact that some spikes are consistently worse for turf than others. But, Nikolai admits, the research isn’t flawless. “This data represents a worst case scenario in terms of wear from traffic on any of the treatments, considering that we apply at least 20 rounds of traffic in less than 20 minutes.” Still, he adds “all treatments receive traffic in an identical manner, so it’s a worst case scenario for every treatment,” meaning the study still allows golfers and superintendents to identify which shoes are affecting their courses the most. The worst case example is, after all, still an example.
Late last season, Nikolai began receiving feedback about one shoe in particular, Adidas’ adiZero Tour. GCI’s Pat Jones turned to Facebook and Twitter to gain insight from turf professionals, and he received an extraordinary amount of feedback. Some superintendents, he found, were even banning the shoes from their courses. At Chambers Bay, says Lewis, that’s not outside the realm of possibility. “There has been discussion of adjusting our policies on preferred shoes. We may eliminate some of these shoes altogether.”
The adiZero’s popularity with golfers, however, cannot be denied. Heather Spears, global communications manager for Adidas Golf, says that the shoe was “the best-selling model of golf footwear in all of Adidas Golf’s history.” The shoe is worn by PGA professionals such as Jason Day and Sergio Garcia in addition to countless amateurs around the world.
Nikolai decided to see just how intrusive the adiZero actually is. In October of last year he conducted a study, nearly identical to the 2012 example. It was conducted on a research putting green maintained at a 0.125 mowing height at the Hancock Turfgrass Research Center at Michigan State University. As in the previous study, all of the golf shoes were trafficked on 3 different 3’ x 3’ plots with turfgrass industry leaders (golf course superintendents, salesmen, etc.) rating each of the 24 total plots for a total of 288 observations. The results were in line with what superintendents had been saying all along: the adiZero rated a 4.3 on the 5 point scale, the worst of any of the shoes tested. But, says Lewis, what frustrates superintendents as much as the shoe itself is the fact that they weren’t consulted by manufacturing companies during research and development. “There’s no reason these companies can’t call us up and say, ‘Hey, we have a new shoe, we want to see how it affects the greens,’” he says. “There’s obviously zero consideration in the design of how they are impacting greens. All they have to do is ask us, and all of this stuff goes away, but they just don’t care. When we start returning shipments back to them, maybe then they’ll listen.”
Fortunately, Adidas is not blind to the fact that the adizero Tour was upsetting a lot of superintendents. “As a company that takes complaints seriously,” says Spears, “we did receive a few last year about the green friendliness of the adizero Tour shoe, and that’s what drove us to improve on this year’s model.” During the design stage, she says Adidas worked closely with the University of Calgary and Tour pros to determine needs of the golfer and “how to improve on the adizero franchise.” Launched in January, the new shoe, the adizero One, promises improvements for both golfers and turf managers. “We completely redesigned the shoe with a new outsole, secondary traction, and softer cleats that are more flexible and green friendly,” says Spears. “Thus far we have not received any comments regarding green friendliness.” As winter begins to fade and the playing season quickly approaches, superintendents can only hope for the best.
Going forward, it’s important that equipment companies take a more progressive approach to their research and development in order to protect golf courses and keep superintendents happy. “We better start speaking up as turf managers now, because this is an obvious trend in shoes,” says Lewis. “We need to be heard more than anything.”
