From Brent Kelley,
Your Guide to Golf.
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Jul 10 2004

(Note: This article first appeared in Colorado Golf magazine.)

Imagine a company entering the golf footwear market today with the brand name "HappyFeet."

Might as well try to call your shoe brand "ToeJam." The name wouldn't inspire confidence, it would inspire chuckles.

But if anyone got a kick out of that silly "FootJoy" name way back when, then the laughter has long since subsided. There's nothing funny to the competition about a company's longstanding and continuing dominance of a market.

According to Golf DataTech, FootJoy's share of the golf footwear market is going strong in the mid-50-percent range.

But while other companies have struggled to get a foothold in the golf footwear market, some of FootJoy's competitors have managed to grab a toehold.

Bite, ECCO, Dexter, Callaway and Nike are a few of the companies attempting to shoehorn their way into the picture. And helping them put their footprints on the market is the explosion in new styles, led by golf moccasins and golf sandals.

Bite began to take a bite out of the footwear market by leading the way with its Original Golf Sandal. Since then, the company has introduced golf footwear that sometimes looks (and acts) like hiking shoes or hiking boots; shoes that help with your alignment; and footwear designed with orthopedics in mind.

The Golf Boot provides more ankle support for hilly courses or wet days, and is very similar in appearance to hiking boots. The Power Moc features a Velcro strap in place of laces. And Bite offers seven different styles of sandals - plus two more designed to accomodate orthopedic inserts.

There's also a new entry, the Guidance, that is designed to help you align your feet properly. Toe the line, in other words.

At Callaway, the company's foray into the shoe market is proof that a good brand should never go unextended. But how can the company extend its Big Bertha brand into shoes? By concentrating on the sole.

Big Bertha Spikes are oversized and asymetrical (multicolored, too), yet lighter. The combination, the company says, should produce better traction - whether you're swinging Big Bertha clubs or not.

"We expect the Callaway Golf footwear collection to provide all golfers with innovative, performance-oriented products that will help them enjoy the game," said Ron Drapeau, President, CEO and Chairman of Callaway Golf.

Callaway's shoes are made by Tour Golf Group through a licensing agreement.

One thing golfers can count on from Nike Golf are products that are easy on the eyes. And "stylish" translates very well to golf footwear, where Nike offers a series of classic golf shoes in the Dri-Fit, Gore-Tex and Duracomfort lines.

But if classic isn't your style, the shoes in the Sport collection look more like crosstrainers than golf shoes. The Sport collection also includes Nike's only golf sandal.

At Dexter, there are five different series of shoes for both men and women, but the feature is a large variety of styles in the golf moccasins category. Most are slip-ons (as opposed to shoes that use Velcro rather than laces), and some even feature topstitching with patterns that resemble the look of laces. For those who want to wear golf mocs - but don't want to admit it to their friends.

Dexter also offers the SandalMoc, a combination of the newer styles that uses Velcro.

The Dutch company ECCO is a rising star in the footwear market, based on it wide variety of classic and casual styles and its performance in testing conducted by Rankmark. According to Rankmark's testing of golf shoes earlier this year, ECCO was the choice of 90-percent of participants over other brands tested.

Styles include Casual Swing, Classic Sneaker and Classic Saddle.

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