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Yesterday, Rory McIlroy became only the third golfer in history to win a third major championship before turning 26 years old by winning the 2014 British Open. The two previous times it happened, we were witness to a historic change in the game, as Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods went on to become the two greatest and most influential golfers ever. McIlroy has a long road to go before he can even be part of the Jack-Tiger conversation, but he certainly has the game, not to mention a style, that could certainly get him there.
During Friday’s round at The Open, McIlroy wore an outfit that made him look more like a modern day Nike athlete than a traditional golfer. Granted, it wasn’t as loud as Rickie Fowler’s orange uh… thing, but it made noise. With black and grey being the base colors coupled with Volt accents, you would think McIlroy was an alumnus at the University of Oregon. Not even Tiger Woods at the peak of his powers was wearing something as audacious as a Volt belt, but there was Rory building on his lead at The Open with a Volt belt and a Volt pair of the Nike Lunar Control II. Not that that was a bad thing…
Yup, works (Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
Golf has long been known for having some of the most colorful athletes in any sport when it comes to style, from knee-high socks that was popular during the first half of the 20th century to the funky attire of players like Jesper Parnevik, Ian Poulter and John Daly to the red and black Sunday best that Tiger wears on winning day. But what golf has never really been known for are their shoes. While companies like FootJoy, adidas Golf and Nike Golf have tried to stray away from the tradition formula, people tend to still imagine golf shoes looking like wingtips or something you would wear to a board meeting and less what you would wear on a night out. And when there have been attempts by brands to engage a younger audience by bringing in classic silhouettes likes the Dunk or the Samba, they were mostly met with apathy and a short trip to the outlet store.
Golf is not an easy sport to get involved in large part to the price barrier that exists in order to be even a terrible golfer. Not only do you have to spend money on a good pair of shoes, you have to account for the cost of a set of clubs, the thousands of practice balls you have to hit on the driving range, the lessons from club pros if you’re not lucky enough to have a friend who can teach you and the green fees for playing a round or two on the weekends. You can burn through thousands of dollars and still be horrible at the game. It’s not a sport for the impulsive, that’s for sure. And if a sneakerhead is going to choose a sport, they might skip over golf because kicks are already expensive as they are.
But what if the sneakers that people loved made their way to the links? Recently, Keegan Bradley has been seen wearing Jordan Brand golf shoes (note: Jordan did make golf shoes during the early 2000s but they bombed because they looked bad and played worse) ranging from hybrids of recent models like the Air Jordan 2012 and Jordan RCVR to just straight retros with spikes on them like the Air Jordan 11. Any time Bradley posts a picture of his new swag from Jordan Brand, he gets introduced to a whole new audience that might have never thought about golf before. While it might sound a little jarring at first, the Air Jordan 11 fits in line with what makes a good-looking golf shoe. And therein lies what the brands were missing. It’s not that people didn’t want to sneaker-styled golf shoes; it’s that they weren’t making the right ones.
Not bad, but sneakerheads want more… (Nike)
After years of going in a more traditional route, Tiger’s signature Nike TW ’13 and ’14 and Rory’s Nike Lunar Controls look less like wingtips and more like trainers that could benefit from a few loud colorways to really make them stand out. Those are great examples of what sneakerheads are looking for because they might want to play golf, but they don’t want to look the part of a traditional golfer.
Naturally, not every pair in Nike’s library is golf-worthy. For example, there’s no way in hell a Nike LeBron 11 would ever play at Augusta National and the idea of putting a pair of the new Nike Zoom Field General makes me cringe. So for our list 10 Nike And Jordan Sneakers That Would Look Great As Golf Shoes, we are taking into account kicks that we could conceivably see the game’s best players wear on a Sunday afternoon with a nice pair of pants. Although some of you will probably wear these golf shoes with joggers, but whatever…
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Read the rest of 10 Nike And Jordan Sneakers That Would Look Great As Golf Shoes (934 words)
© jmartinez for KicksOnFire.com, 2014. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Air Jordan 1, Air Jordan 11, Air Jordan 12, Air Jordan 3, Nike Air Zoom Flight The Glove, Nike Free Innova Woven, Nike Free Mercurial Superfly HTM, Nike Golf, Nike KD 6, Nike Kobe 9 Elite, Nike SB P-Rod 8
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