Many of today's pro golfers are almost as finicky about their shoes as they are about their clubs — perhaps none more so than the Bridgestone Invitational's defending champion, superstar Dustin Johnson.
"He is very particular visually," says Mason Denison, global director of Adidas Golf Footwear. "He likes to look really clean.
"D.J. says, 'I don't care how good a shoe performs, if it doesn't look the right way on my foot, then I don't want to wear it."
Johnson, No. 1 in the World Golf Ranking, has been with Adidas for 10 years and late last year signed a new multiyear contract.
Dip a toe into the golf-shoe biz and you encounter a new language. Denison talks about "tunnel torsion" and "S-curve heels" and "expansion zones" and "full-length boost" and "boa cables" and some other stuff I can't even spell.
His top client doesn't know much more about those terms than you or I do, but he has plenty of input into the look and feel of his favorite shoe, the Tour 360 Boost.
Johnson told Denison a couple of years ago that he thought the style looked "too athletic," and the company toned it down. The South Carolina native also has plenty of input on color, favoring blues and grays.
Johnson and another Adidas-wearer, Justin Rose, are choosy about the height of the shoes off the ground, as well as their flexibility, Denison says.
Johnson is a big dude — 6-foot-4 — and a good athlete. He loves to play hoops and can easily dunk. And, yes, he wears Adidas basketball shoes, too.
Adidas says its shoes are the second-most worn on the tour. FootJoy is the longtime leader. Nike, Puma, Ecco and Under Armor also adorn some of the pros' feet.
For years, the pros wore what resembled saddle shoes with metal spikes.
The move to a much more laid-back look was triggered by Fred Couples, who during the 2010 Masters made a run at the championship wearing Ecco Street, a casual-looking, spikeless shoe. He made the switch to try to put less pressure on his perpetually aching back.
Seven years later, hardly any of the pros — perhaps 1 or 2 percent — are still wearing metal spikes. Most wear rubber spikes of various sizes and configurations.
Today's PGA Tour golfers are walking around in footwear that would have gotten them thrown out of a country club 20 years ago, including shoes that look exactly like track or running shoes, and in every color in the spectrum. Some golfers have even worn high-tops.
The shoes are considerably lighter than in years past and more flexible. But the biggest change during the past decade, Denison says, is "the look of the product, what's acceptable now on the golf course."
When Adidas launched the Tour 360 in 2005, people thought it was crazy looking. But "when you look at that shoe today, it looks sort of classic and kind of plain."
Denison hits the road every couple of months to check in with his clients at a tournament.
"My goal is to make sure they're comfortable in their product, look at the durability of it, get any updates they have — 'Hey, I love the shoe, but recently I got a slight blister here.'
"And I show them sketches or prototypes of a shoe we may be launching six to 12 months down the road. We not only get visual input but we also have somebody hit balls and get performance input. So we leverage our tour players to make the shoe better."
The shoes certainly haven't hampered Johnson. He has won three tournaments this year and is the tour's leading money-winner, having pocketed a nifty $6,561,568.
If he hits the ball fewer times than anyone else this week, he will raise that total by $1.66 million.
Which would buy a lot of shoes.
Not that Johnson has to buy any.
