TIger Woods’ apparel brand, Sun Day Red, launched its first retail shoe in December with a classic design made specifically for Woods to compete in.
The shoes, the Pioneer Cypress and, later, Pioneer Magnolia, had all the classic styling Woods preferred, including not only spikes but also places to insert metal spikes. (Woods is one of the last PGA Tour players to wear nails.)
But now the company is venturing into a style of golf shoes Woods wears in more causal settings: the spikeless kind.
The latest release from Sun Day Red is the Osprey spikeless golf shoe, which had as much of a meticulous development process as the Pioneer line.
“It’s really become my everyday shoe,” Woods said in a press release. “It’s comfortable but still looks polished, and I love that I can wear it straight from the golf course to a meeting or a dinner.”
Here are three things to know about the new Sun Day Red Osprey, as well as my thoughts on the new shoe.
It piqued my attention when Sun Day Red announced the addition of a spikeless shoe to its lineup. While it makes a lot of sense to cover that part of the market, as spikeless shoes are uber-popular, it also would be surprising to see Woods wearing them.
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Charley Hudak, Sun Day Red’s head of footwear, said the original goal with the Pioneer Cypress was to get a shoe that Woods could compete in and ready for launch, but then Woods also needed something he could wear to the launch itself.
“He couldn’t wear metal spikes or nails there,” Hudak told GOLF. “So, we just reacted quickly and got him into what we called like an on-course, off-course model. And he referred to it as the coach’s shoe.”
Woods said he prefers to wear sneakers, as opposed to more dressy shoes, to social functions, so Hudak and his team got to work turning that “coach’s shoe” into something Woods could wear both to practice and off the course.
Hudak, a nearly 20-year shoe industry veteran, says the Osprey is one of the most comfortable shoes he’s ever worn and that he himself uses it as his day-to-day travel sneaker.
There are two primary types of spikeless shoes on the market: a golf shoe that you can wear off the course, or a sneaker that you can wear on the course. The Osprey, Hudak says, is the former.
“We wanted to land golf performance, first and foremost,” he said. “And then the ability to be off the golf course as well.”
To make the shoe more durable, Hudak said they went with a cupsole of rubber, which increases stability. Woods’ input directly resulted in the variable height lugs on the bottom to provide traction in the way that traditional spikes do. A 6 mm drop in the EVA midsole from heel to toe also further helps a player utilize ground forces during the swing.
To aid comfort, Hudak said, the designers went with a 3/4 bootie construction and extra foam around the heel.
Woods even wears the shoe in the gym, which isn’t something Hudak expected, but underscores the shoe’s comfort.
As in previous SDR shoe releases, the shoe has a clean look with simple branding, though Hudak and Woods plan to add more prominent branding in future models.
“There will be other opportunities kind of have more aggressive branding,” Hudak said. “And that’s one of the inputs that I had with Tiger last time I was down in the Bahamas. [The current clean styling] will allow for some cool things.”
But for now, the absence of branding invites people to ask a wearer about the shoes, which is Hudak’s goal.
“When you’re ever on the subway or if you’re traveling in the airport and people lean in [and ask],” he said. “So our idea was the aesthetic, the overall design language draws people in.”
This is the Sun Day Red shoe I have been waiting for. I haven’t worn spiked shoes much since before high school and really would never consider the more traditional style of SDR’s first releases.
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But now that the company is offering a spikeless option, I dig the versatility.
In wearing the shoe around my house and town, I found the comfort (with a half size larger than what I typically wear) ranks up there with any spikeless shoe I have worn.
I’m intrigued by the variable height lugs on the outsole for traction, as they are much smaller than the spikeless shoes I typically wear. While I have yet to do significant testing on the golf course, I would find it hard to believe a shoe designed for Tiger Woods doesn’t provide excellent traction.
But perhaps most important, I think the price point here ($160) is really going to open up SDR to more people who didn’t want to spend the $250 for the original spiked models.
The Sun Day Red Osprey is available starting on Tuesday, July 22 on sundayred.com, select green-grass golf shops and retailers, including PGA Tour Superstore.
It will come in four colorways (white/white, grey/grey, black/white, white/blue) and will cost $160.
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