The Metalwood Studio x FootJoy Golf Sneaker Is Built for Shooting 80s and Mowing Lawns
“We were so interested in this normcore, ironically dad looking silhouette,” said Metalwood’s Cole Young.
The FootJoy Golf Sneaker was never supposed to be cool, it just needed to be comfortable, and therein lies the appeal of the “dad shoe.” It’s the most affordable entry in the FootJoy lineup, typically coming in at $100 USD, with a design that brings to mind trainers of the early 2000s. And the man responsible for breathing new life into it is Cole Young, whose LA-based brand Metalwood Studio thrives on turn of the century, tongue-in-cheek references. “We were so interested in this normcore, ironically dad looking silhouette,” says Young. “And it really didn’t take much to come up with the idea. I feel like it was just there for the taking.”
The Metalwood Studio x FootJoy Golf Sneaker is the third project that the two brands have worked on together. But while the first two focused on the FootJoy Premiere Series, a classic and premium player’s shoe, this time Metalwood was tasked with highlighting FJ’s more approachable Golf Specialty line. “It’s a part of their website that was often overlooked, so it was really cool to work on it and get to put our spin on it,” says Young.
The result was a golf shoe that looks like it was picked straight off the rack at Goodwill, complete with teal accents and a yellowed midsole. But the $180 USD price tag suggests a few upgrades. While the standard black and white version uses a PVC synthetic leather upper, Metalwood’s is made of hand-selected, imported premium waterproof leather. And a soft terry cloth lining, a trademark of Metalwood’s collaborations with FootJoy, elevates the shoe even further.
“You have to wonder, are we being too avant garde? Are we being too esoteric for the greater FootJoy consumer to get it? But if you look at Metalwood, it’s pretty forward thinking, it’s pretty against the grain.”
Despite the fact that what Young calls “ironically bad looking” running shoes have a proven recent track record of success in mainstream fashion, the trend cycle in golf fashion tends to lag behind, and getting the higher ups at FootJoy to buy into his creative vision took some convincing.
“I get all of their hesitation, all of their skepticism. I think that you have to wonder, are we being too avant garde? Are we being too esoteric for the greater FootJoy consumer to get it? But if you look at Metalwood, it’s pretty forward thinking, it’s pretty against the grain. And so I never had any doubt that this product would resonate with our consumer.”
Ultimately, the true irony may lie in the fact that once you remove all of the narrative and storytelling (the lookbook features Young’s own father styling the shoe as he mows his front lawn), the Golf Sneaker has a proven track record of success at the highest level thanks to another guy with Cole in his name: PGA TOUR winner Eric Cole.
“I think there are people out there that appreciate it and are interested in seeing what we have to say about golf. It was a very fun opportunity to make a product that we would never make otherwise. And the same goes for FootJoy, at the end of the day we are providing an extremely high performance shoe that’s worn by people on the PGA TOUR.”
The Metalwood Studio x FootJoy Golf Sneaker, complete with a Duramax Outsole with Pulsar LP spikes, releases today exclusively on Metalwood’s website at 2PM EST.
