Don’t worry – it’s a platonic love.
Ecco makes great shoes. I have always believed that, so when I took up golf and purchased my first pair of golf shoes, naturally I went with Ecco.
For me, comfort is paramount, but with Ecco I also get great performance and style. Over the summer I added another pair of Ecco’s to my golf shoe collection and they are easily my current favorite. I went with the Casual Ribbon series in orange and white. My first time out with them was at an SCGA affiliate club tournament. It was a team event and I played with the president of my club. It’s a competitive event and most players are men (including my partner). I usually play better under pressure but any added confidence is always a bonus.
I laced up my shiny new Ecco shoes and immediately felt that boost of confidence. Seriously. Each step I took – starting right there in the parking lot – felt deliberate and confident. I had to glance down a few times just to admire them but then needed to put them out of my mind. They were so comfortable it was easy to forget about my feet and just play. But I felt so stable and powerful in those shoes that they kept creeping into my thoughts. That must have helped, too, taking my mind off the unproductive swing thoughts that can mess with my game.
We played well as a team and I wore those shoes for both days of the event. I told the story of the tournament here, but the bottom line is that we would have tied for first place if not for a scoring error that put us in second. While I don’t attribute my performance and our team success entirely to Ecco, they certainly played a big part.
On the second day of the event, the twosome we were paired with were also sporting some great looking shoes (one of them was also in Ecco’s) and we had a mutual shoe admiration society going on. People who appreciate style appreciate Ecco. People who have worn Ecco understand the pleasure of the step. The company has a lot of information on the technology and the controlled manufacturing environment involved to achieve that feeling but for me, it’s all about results.
I think this in an interesting little side note: with all my other golf shoes, I invariably lose spikes and have to keep spares on hand. With these shoes, I haven’t lost a single one. Well, I did take a clumsy toe-step and one popped off but that was my fault, I felt it right away, retrieved the spike and popped it right back on.
Ecco just released a bunch of new styles and I have my eye on a few. The new ladies Casual Pitch Ribbon come in new colors that I like (pictured below in white/rose) and there’s a cute raspberry color in the Grip style (above). I like their men’s styles, too, but in the Casual Cool Hydromax style, they call that color “brick” (above). I guess it sounds more manly than raspberry, but the shades look pretty similar to me.
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Telephone conversation with Annika Sorenstam
Meet Sunshine, another kind of golf chick. Sunshine is a talkative African Grey parrot who lives with our friends Hugh and Keets. Evidently, he gets phone calls from professional golfers. In this video, we listen in on one of those calls. Every noise in this video comes from Sunshine. He does all his own sound effects, including the phone ringing, the pop-top can opening and the Nextel-like beeps. My favorite is when he makes the squeaky-shoe noises as he walks. He doesn’t reveal who is on the phone until the end.
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