More or less all sports shoes today are various versions of sneakers. It makes sense, they have been for a long time, and when it comes to function and performance it’s suitable. With golf shoes, it’s a different thing though, it’s essentially walking shoes. Yet almost all golf shoes today are made similarly to other sports shoes, instead of how they were made up until the 80’s or so with proper Goodyear welted constructions. There are exceptions though, luckily.
The shoes pictured here are from the brand Fiddler, founded in Sweden and made in Spain. They are Goodyear welted, made of good full grain leather and are fully leather lined, stacked leather heels, leather midsole, have replaceable studs and so on. Instead of leather soles they have rubber soles though, one thing that do makes sense given how wet golf courses often are, but other than that they have much more in common with the way golf shoes used to be made.
For example check out this great article on vintage FootJoy golf shoes, probably the biggest manufacturer of golf shoes still today, but they haven’t made welted shoes since 2009 when they closed their factory in Massachusetts, today all is cemented more sneaker like stuff even if they with some styles try to disguise this. Welted footwear like the Fiddler ones are very waterproof, have good breathability, are supportive, can be resoled and so on. Things that at least in my mind tick all the boxes of good golf shoes. Wish more of this type was available still today.
