Phyllis Barone, aka the Queen on the Green stops by the Under Armour booth at the PGA Show Demo Day to get the inside story on the companies latest golf footwear. With spike (Drive Pro) and spikeless (Drive Pro SL) options, the Drive Pro Series is engineered to provide the traction diagonal and lateral support golfers need to unlock the power of their natural swing, adding both distance and control for the wearer.
Bis spone golf 360 TV we’re here at the 2024 PGA show and we decided to stop in on demon day which is held every Tuesday before the show and we had a check out Under Armour we’re with Dan Whitaker Dan tell us what do you do for Under Armour
I do some independent testing for them over in the UK uh so back in the UK I’ve got the under ARA performance center for the UK and when they bring out the new shoes they generally send them over to me and then I’ll come up with some
Performance metrics uh how the Sho is going to perform is it going to sort of improve performance for a player what areas are we looking at I’ll do quite robust testing through men women Juniors and uh different handicap types and then we’ll put that all together and then
Send that back to the uh main team over here in America how do you do this what do you do tell us about this yes so um to start off with when they’ve brought out the latest version of the shoe they’ll turn it over to me telling me
What all the sort of benefits are going to be in terms of what advancements they’ve made into the shoe so they say you obviously got a spiked to a spike spess version here so in the um spikeless version here they’ve got a TPU section running through the bottom of
The sh sole this is to act like a spike sh they’ve got these these lugs that are going to be able to grip the turf and as we can actually see here it’s actually got some grass actually attached to it so that’s showing that when somebody’s pushing against the ground the grounds
Are able to provide some energy back up through their legs through the body and out into the club so how you use the ground is you know quite a big thing in terms of being able to develop power and at home um I’ve got Force plates in the
Floor so they’ll measure where your weight’s moving I’ll be able to then start to see how the shoe is going to influence that weight movement in certain ways relative to your golf swing and then we’ll have a look at them most importantly of all how that’s going to
Relate to the ball flight and what that’s going to then uh give you completely redesigned this shoe um it’s brand new everything from scratch so what they’ve got is they’ve got two different types of Foams that they put in and um if you imagine the your foot moves in three directions obviously it
Can move left and right you know forwards and backwards and up and down trying to harness all of those in is shoes quite difficult because you can get something that’s exceptionally stable but having something that’s got a lot of stability and Mobility built into a shoe is very difficult but what
They’ve managed to do is that with the way that they’ve constructed it is that you know you’ve got a band that’s running across the shoe here so that’s pulling your for foot into into the ground um you’re providing your stability through the ball of the foot and then but it’s also locking the
Heeling so you don’t want the heel to be able to move about and then that’s then pulling you into the ground and obviously you’ve got the two Foams but what that’s going to do is um it’s two Foams allows you to have really good motion but also with the where the
Stability is built in also be able to use all of the forces so what we tended to seas in other shoes um they’ll be very good in one in in two of the three dimensions but they won’t be quite difficult to get all three and what
We’ve found is since um since doing it out of all the people I’ve put through the shoes and what we’ve seen here on the demo day is that people are getting um more clubbed speed uh they’re getting more distance you know we’ve seen anywhere up to 16 yards of gain but is
That because you’re getting like you mentioned more stability so you’re kind of grounded so to speak right yeah um it’s it’s it’s both you’re getting a lot more stability but you’ve also got motion so you know if if you imagine if you just had a normal tennis shoe on um
You’d have lots of motion but not very much stability so you want to have getting the the two to work together is where the key is and that’s what what’s what’s been coming out of this ship
