Women's Shoes: How to Select the Best Golf Shoes

Although it's not absolutely imperative that you're going to need golf shoes to start playing golf, unless you possess the balance of a Freddie Couples, I recommended that you get a decent pair. The golf shoes are the connection between your body and the ground just as the golf club is your connection between your body and the golf ball.

The most important feature when selecting any type of shoe should be comfort, sorry ladies. Don't worry with the vast selection of golf shoes on the market today; I'm sure you can find some that are not only fashionable but comfortable as well. Remember, the typical 18 hole round of golf will take about 4 - 4 ½ hours, so you're going to be spending a lot of time in these shoes, especially if you're playing more than a couple of rounds per week.

The next thing to consider when searching for the best golf shoes for you is; How much walking are you going to do? Even if the majority of your golfing will be done from out of a golf cart, there's still a lot of ground to cover on a golf course. Shoe manufacturers make shoes tailored to golfers who choose to walk and they tend to more closely resemble a tennis shoe with spikes.

An important consideration, and one that I don't think many golfers think about, is that once you've settled on a certain type / style of golf shoe you need to stick with it. Notice I didn't mention anything about brand so you're probably scratching your head thinking; What is this guy talking about?

Consider this, I bought a pair of golf shoes a few years back from one of the major manufacturers and absolutely loved those shoes. I used to walk 36 holes a day and these were the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned. Not only that, during this particular period of time, my game had started to improve dramatically. No Kidding! Well, when it was time to replace those shoes I was shocked to find that they had been discontinued / morphed into a new line of shoes that I decided I didn't like. So, without giving it much thought, I switched manufacturers. What I didn't take into consideration was that the sole of the new golf shoes were significantly thicker than my previous shoes. I'm still trying to recover from that faux pas as the new shoes had me feeling like I was wearing high heels and my game suffered from it. In fact, I may has well of started wearing a skirt to the 19th hole. So be careful when changing different golf shoe types / styles as it may have a direct effect on your performance.

Some other golf shoe features to consider are:

Water Resistant / Proof (Mandatory unless it doesn't rain where you live.)
Spikes / Without Spikes (Again unless you have Freddies' balance you might want to forgo the type of shoe he wore at The Masters this year and get ones with spikes. Soft Spikes Mandatory.)
Leather / Synthetic (Leather is more expensive but Synthetic doesn't breath as well - "the Stinky factor.")

As we discussed, golf shoes will have a direct effect on performance on the golf course. I would bet you that they're have been studies / tests that are a lot more scientific than my little foray into the science of golf shoes. Also, consider the time you spent selecting your set of golf clubs and apply some of that research towards the selection of your golf shoes.