Why a Skate Brand Started Making Golf Shoes

I've skated my whole life. I've also golfed my whole life. Nobody ever made me choose, and nobody ever kept me out.

That's worth saying up front, because there's a popular story right now about golf finally "opening up" to people like me. It was never closed. If you don't want to dress nice, go to a muni. Easy as that. I play munis weekly, and the muni has always been the most democratic piece of ground in sports — show up, pay your green fee, play. Golf's supposed gates were a choice of venue, not a wall.

What did change is who's visible on the course. Brands like Malbon and Metalwood made golf magnetic to skate culture and started collaborating with skate brands outright, and a wave of pro skaters followed — Eric Koston, Alex Midler, Riley Hawk, Ryan Sheckler, Sean Malto, just to name a few. Some of the best skateboarders alive are grinding out rounds now, posting handicaps, treating a Sunday tee time like they used to treat a Sunday session. I watched that wave arrive and recognized my whole life in it.

Here's what I've learned about being the skater casual guy at a golf course: it throws people off. You show up in a fit that reads skatepark, and the traditional crowd makes an assumption in the first three seconds. Then you fix your pitch marks. You play ready golf. You know the etiquette better than half the club, because you actually love this game and its traditions. The assumption falls apart, and that moment is genuinely fun. I never get tired of it.

That's the brand. Not a costume, not an outsider story. A person who respects the game and plays it in his own clothes.

The shoes came from noticing that skating and golf ask for almost the same thing. A skate shoe has to give you board feel, hold your foot through lateral moves, and survive being on your feet all day. A walking golfer needs ground feel, a stable base to pivot against through a swing, and a shoe that's still comfortable on the eighteenth hole. Nobody was building one shoe for that person, so we did.

The MACAW is that shoe. A cupsole with the feel of a vulc, no break-in from the first wear, and a midsole and insole made from recycled performance foam — the scrap other shoe production leaves behind. The golf version takes it to the course with a Vibram Ecostep outsole. The skate version takes the same construction back to the street.

If you live in both worlds, you already know why this exists.

Golf is a place where we are out in nature, feet on the ground, and hopefully not working too hard. It's a place where people of all backgrounds can come together over the struggle of getting a little golf ball into a hole, like the struggle of landing a new trick skating. We have our ups and downs, but in the end we all keep coming back, which is why we are here. Nature needs products like SUBTXT so we can keep building beautiful golf courses around the world.

Designed in Costa Mesa, California. Assembled at DMG International in the Dominican Republic. Natural leather from Bojos, a gold-rated tannery. Blumaka midsole and insole, up to 85% recycled foam.

— Hex, founder