Danish shoe manufacturer Ecco has taken its popular Golf Street Premier and applied it to the junior golf market with the introduction of the Golf Street Junior line of hybrid golf/street shoes.

The Golf Street Junior line, for boys and girls, comes in lime green, fanta orange, royal blue, purple or candy outsoles and feature the same ribbed traction elements on the soles that come on the Golf Street Premier line worn by Fred Couples, among others.

The Golf Street Junior sells for $100.

-- John Strege

Fred Couples created a stir, indeed, helped launch a revolution, at the 2010 Masters when he wore Ecco Street Premiere shoes, sans socks. Hybrid golf shoes since have become popular across a variety of brands.

At this year's Masters, Couples will sport a pair of limited-edition Ecco BIOM Hybrid shoes featuring green highlights.

The company will only offer 100 pairs. They will be available the week of April 8 at eccousa.com and golfsmith.com. The shoes retail for $190.

-- John Strege

In 1950, adidas introduced a shoe, the Samba, that evolved into the most popular indoor soccer shoe in the sport. More than 35 million pairs of Sambas (and counting) have been sold since. The Samba is still available today.

Now comes the Samba Golf majors collection, four limited-edition golf shoes inspired by the four major championship -- the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship (they're shown in that order, left to right, above). Only 1950 pairs of each will be available, commemorating the year the Samba was introduced.

The dark green, sun and white colorway Masters edition is on sale now. The navy, power red and white colorway goes on sale on May 1. The Brit blue, university red and white inspired by the Union Jack goes on sale on June 15. And the pool, half orange and white patterned after the scenery at Kiawah Island, S.C., site of the PGA Championship, goes on sale July 15.

The shoes have an MSRP of $100.

-- John Strege

Oakley is best known for its eyewear, but it also has footwear, and has just introduced what it bills as "the lightest performance golf shoe ever made."

The Cipher weighs in at 260 grams (9.2 ounces), little more than half the weight of its own Full-Auto Tour shoe (499 grams). But that might not be its most interesting feature. The shoes do not have a traditional cleat system. Instead, they use what Oakley calls NanoSpike technology, featuring "thousands of tiny spikes that bite into blades of grass to maintain traction," according to a news release. Moreover, the golfer can replace NanoSpike components as needed.

Traditional spikes increase the distance between the golfer's foot and the ground, according to Oakley, raising the golfer's center of gravity and thus diminishing stability and balance. The object of the NanoSpike technology was to keep the feet as close to the ground as possible without reducing traction.

The NanoSpike technology is employed on three pods attached via a hook-and-loop system. A replacement kit is available for $19.95 and includes six new pods (three for each shoe).

The Cipher already is being worn by PGA Tour players, as well as UNLV's golf team. It comes in five colors and retails for $130.

-- John Strege

Hank Haney's entrepeneurial spirit does not end with the March release of his book, "The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods," or his golf academies. Haney is now in the golf shoe business.

Crocs Golf with Hank Haney will begin its rollout on March 15. The Haney collection with feature three men's shoes -- the Preston (shown above, in charcoal), the Bradyn and the Drayden -- and one women's shoe, the Bradyn.

"The brand has undergone kind of a renaissance the last few years," Doug Hayes, vice president and general manager Americas, said. "Hank is friends with our CEO [John McCarvel], his contract was up with Nike and he wanted to take on a little more entrepreneurial role. He wanted to be more of a lead guy on the brand. He was involved every step of the way. He came up to Boulder [Colo., headquarters] a couple of times. He got involved with the design team. He's been testing them, wearing them."

The Crocs Golf with Hank Haney collection features the same Croslite material found in the original Crocs that become so popular. It is said to form to the wearer's foot. The shoes are spikeless and fit into the hybrid category of golf shoes, designed to be more of a casual brand, worn to, on and from the golf course.

-- John Strege

Ecco continues to chase the success that Fred Couples helped deliver by his wearing Ecco's hybrid shoe, the Street Premier, at the 2010 Masters. At the recent PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla., the company introduced the Street Premier in a lizard print.

"What we've done is taken the Street Premier, which everybody calls the Freddie Sneaker, obviously, and we've just extended it with print leather," David Helter of Ecco said. "This is not lizard, it's just printed to look like lizard.

"We're finding a lot of these [Street Premier's] aren't being worn on the golf course. People like them as casual shoes. So we wanted something a little bit dressier."

The lizard print do not have a colorful bottom as other Street Premier shoes do. "It looks pretty tame," Helter said.

Since the 2010 Masters, Ecco's golf shoe business has continued to grow. "We almost doubled our business in 2011," Helter said, "and we've already exceeded our first six-month plan in 2012. This is going on two years, this whole hybrid thing. We were alone doing it. Now everybody is doing it."

-- John Strege

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The barefoot running phenomenon continues to seep into the golf shoe business, the latest entry the Barefoot B.E.R.B.S..

Introduced this week at the PGA Merchandise Show here, the Barefoot B.E.R.B.S. bills itself as the first minimalist soft spike shoe. It was designed by Jeremy Berbert, who has played professional golf and owns an irrigation and landscaping business in Westminster, Colo.

"I flew out to Vegas to see a buddy of mine, a professional golfer who is very much into fitness," Berbert said. "He was wearing the Vibram Five Fingers shoes. As a professional golfer myself, I knew that practicing golf barefoot is the way to go. It gives you balance. The only problem is that socially it's not acceptable. You can't go around a ritzy country club barefoot. Unacceptable. Plus, there's slippage. You don't have any traction, any stability under yourself when you're in that type of shoe."

Berbert set out to design "the most comfortable golf shoe ever," he said. "Oliver Wilson wore the Vibram Five Fingers at Dubai [in November of 2010]. His reaction when he was done was that they were not waterproof and they didn't have spikes. So I made the Barefoot B.E.R.B.S. that actually have a unique spike design. We limited the weight by not adding 10, nine, eight or seven, whatever, spikes. We have five on each shoe. And the design allow the perfect amount of stability because of how you swing."

The Barefoot B.E.R.B.S. have a suggested retail price of $139.

-- John Strege

Ecco, which began what has become a trend, the hybrid golf/casual shoe, continues to pursue ways to maintain its momentum, its latest offering the Golf Street Textile.

It features a textile upper designed to enhance breathability and a removable textile insole to wick away moisture, while also providing extra cushioning.

The Golf Street Textile will sell for $150 are expected in stores this month.

Fred Couples, of course, jump-started the hybrid craze by wearing the Golf Street Premier to widespread curiosity in the 2010 Masters.

-- John Strege

Allen Edmonds said that its successful entry into the golf shoe market (see this: "Shoes that Hogan would have worn") has prompted it to introduce four new offerings in its Honors Collection:

-- The Medalist, "For the golfer who wants to shoot the lowest score and look good doing it," the company said.

-- The Legend, honoring "highly fashionable golf legends like Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead."

-- The First Cut, featuring "the man-made designs with the beautiful works of nature that make golf courses so alluring."

-- The Haskell, honoring "Coburn Haskell, a fellow Midwesterner and a father of the modern golf ball."

As we noted in our original post on Allen Edmonds golf shoes, they aren't for everybody, given their price, $345. But they are stylish and creatively linked to the game's heritage.

-- John Strege

Tiger Woods is wearing prototype Nike Free golf shoes at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational this week, a shoe of which he was involved in the development.

Woods has been working out with Nike Free shoes that he also has been wearing outside the gym and sought a shoe with Nike Free technology that could be worn for golf.

Tobie Hatfield, one of the directors of Nike's Innovation Kitchen who helped developed the original Nike Free shoes, developed the prototype golf shoe that allows for greater freedom of movement for the front of the foot, while increasing stability. The golf shoe also borrows technical innovations from the Nike Basketball Hyperfuse 2011 as well as a Free-inspired outsole taken from the Special Field Boot designed for the military.

The end result is a shoe that is lightweight and flexible.

Woods has them in two colors, black and white, and will wear both at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, this week.

-- Marty Hackel

Follow Marty on Twitter: @MrStyleMH

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