A follow up question: Does anybody here wear soft spikes because they offer a playing advantage over metals?
The reason I ask is that while a soft-spike Policy has been in effect at my club for at least the past twelve years, we've recently had some members requesting approval to don the metals.
I realize it puts me in the radical fringe of superintendents, but I am unconvinced that metal spikes are necessarily deterimental to putting surfaces. I have been greenkeeping since the '70's, before soft spikes came in, and I have yet to see any difference in putting surfaces due to type of shoe spikes. My suspicion is that the soft spike hysteria has been promulgated as a conspiracy between club managers who want to reduce wear and tear on hard surfaces around the clubhouse, and some marketing people and manufacturers who wanted a new market to exploit. Along the way, they managed to brianwash not only the golfing public but 99% of superintendents that sof spikes are indispensable for the health of the greens.
Many of those same superintendents then run spiking machines across the same greens to open holes the same way metal spikes would.
In 2010 we hosted a European Tour event. One of our greens is small and sloping, so even with 10 ft stimp speeds most of it is unpinnable. The PGA officials had us keep the pin in the one playable position from the Wednesday Pro-am until Sunday's final round. As Wade points out, all the Tour guys wear metals. Over five days we had 300 rounds of metal spikes going to that one, same position and the turf around it was find in the end.
I told my members to go ahead and tool up with metal spikes if they want to. I don't care, it's what real golf is about.