This under-appreciated piece of gear may have helped Rory McIlroy win the Masters

So far this season, there has been one piece of gear with a perfect record — replaceable traction. Otherwise known as spikes (as oppose to spikeless golf shoes). All 14 winners this year through the first major at Augusta have trusted spiked footwear.

And today? Those spikes might have played a big part in McIlroy’s second straight green jacket.

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Seventy-eight of the 91 players (86%) in the Masters field wore spikes. By the time Friday evening rolled around, 54 players were left, and 48 of those players were ready to battle the weekend in spiked footwear.

Late Sunday, McIlroy had a two-stroke lead while standing on the 18th tee, but he blocked his drive, with a touch of a slice, into the trees between the 18th and 10th fairways. His ball came to rest on the pine straw, which can be very unforgiving ground for stability. Having to hit a high rope draw up and over the trees with the swing speed he creates would have been significantly more challenging in spikeless footwear, or even with another type of spike.

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McIlroy uses a combo set of Softspikes Tour Flex Pro and Silver Tornado golf spikes on his Nike Victory Tour 4 golf shoes. The Tour Flex Pro is specifically designed to create a solution for instability caused by debris or hazardous terrain such as pine straw.

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The unique design of the Tour Flex Pro combines rotational traction with a stinger post in the middle that acts like an old metal spike, or “nail” as some older golfers will call it. That stinger post is able to penetrate through debris down to the base of the ground the player is standing on, regardless of the conditions they face. Because McIlroy uses the ground so well, he’s taking advantage of the stinger post even more than others. By having them in the front of the spikes on the front side of his feet, they’re used to make sure he’s laterally locked into the ground, allowing him to use the ground and really get into his front side with no worry.

The Silver Tornado spikes on the rest of the shoe provide players with a slightly more connected feeling to the ground with a lower profile, while still maintaining the rotational traction benefits of the Tour Flex Pro. This feeling on the bottom of the feet can also act as sort of a trigger. As you rock in the golf swing, you can feel when the Silver Tornados have firmly connected, and that’s the time to unload into the Tour Flex Pros and utilize ground power to produce more club head speed.

I can’t tell you that’s what McIlroy feels, but it’s something I found out about a long time ago from Softspikes Tour rep Charles Woodward. (Fun fact: more than 50% of spiked footwear users on the PGA Tour use more than one type of spike in the bottom of their shoes.)

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Wearing other shoes, would McIlroy have slipped in the pine straw and lost his shot at back-to-back history? Would we have had a playoff for the ages with Scottie Scheffler? We’ll never know, because McIlroy hit the exact shot he needed from that pine straw.

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