So far this season, there has only been one gear with a perfect record – a variable transmission. Otherwise known as spikes (as opposed to spikeless golf shoes). All 14 winners of this year’s majors at Augusta have relied on spiked shoes.
And today? Those spikes likely played a big role in McIlroy’s second straight green jacket.
Seventy-eight of the 91 players (86%) in the Masters field wore spikes. By the time Friday evening was over, 54 players remained, and 48 of those players were ready to battle through the weekend in spiked shoes.
Late Sunday, McIlroy had a double lead while standing on the 18th, but blocked his drive, touching a piece, into the trees between the 18th and 10th fairways. His ball landed on pine straw, which can be an unforgiving ground for stability. Hitting the rope high up and over the trees with the swing speed it creates would have been very challenging in spikeless shoes, or even some other type of spike.
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McIlroy uses a combo set of Softspikes Tour Flex Pro and Silver Tornado golf spikes in his Nike Victory Tour 4 golf shoes. The Tour Flex Pro is specially designed to create a solution to instability caused by debris or rough terrain like pine grass.
The Tour Flex Pro’s unique design combines a twist with a strong center stick that acts like an old iron nail, or “claw” as some older golfers would call it. That stinger pole is able to penetrate debris down into the base of the ground the player is standing on, regardless of the conditions they are facing. Because McIlroy uses the ground very well, he uses the post more aggressively than others. By having them in front of the pegs on the front side of his feet, they are used to make sure that he is locked to the side, allowing him to use the ground and get on his front side without worry.
Silver Tornado spikes throughout the shoe give players a more connected feel on the ground with a low profile, while retaining the rotational benefits of the Tour Flex Pro. This feeling under the feet can also act as a kind of trigger. As you swing through the golf swing, you can feel when the Silver Tornados are firmly connected, and that’s the time to pull out the Tour Flex Pros and use lower power to generate more club head speed.
I can’t tell you what McIlroy feels, but it’s something I got a long time ago from Softspikes Tour representative Charles Woodward. (Fun fact: over 50% of spiked shoe users on the PGA Tour use more than one type of spike on the bottom of their shoes.)
Wearing other shoes, would McIlroy have slipped on pine straw and lost his shot at back-to-back history? Would we have had a playoff for years with Scottie Scheffler? We’ll never know, because McIlroy hit the shot he needed on that pine green.
Rory McIlroy plays the main approach shot on 18 after finding trouble in the pine straw.
