Greetings Tennis Players and Fans, this is my 1st Post ever so take it easy on me 
I have had flat feet my entire life(Im sure most in same boat) and I've heard a lot of folks weigh in on different ways to find the right shoe. I'm going to share some of the hard lessons I have learned and I fully understand that everybody is different and has something unique about their feet but I also know shoe companies try to make shoes that have the largest or widest audience/potential buyers, thus the notion they might have a shoe that is totally adapted to you the individual is a tough task, just try and keep an open mind.
I wanted to run this thread specifically on this website-Tennis Warehouse because they try IMO(in my opinion) the hardest to give you great details before you order the shoes. I will go thru some of the challenges I have encountered and what specific shoe I've found that is working the best at the moment. Another challenge is when you finally find a shoe that works, many of the Shoe Co's change models and even the target market almost every year if not sooner and it's hard once you find a shoe you like to continue using them for years to come.
One of the things you will find is I'm not automatically buying in to the sales/marketing by the shoe companies and those paid to review. One of the biggest secrets it seems is that many of the articles you will find on the internet proclaiming to be "Flat Feet" centric or flat feet experts and have 10 great shoes to share but the reality is they are nothing more than Advertising Propaganda designed to make you click direct to Amazon and load your cart up. I will give you an example as this shoe has been debated in other threads, some swear by it but I think that is mostly do to bad information, both the shoe company and those customers who buy the shoes. (Adidas Barricade) There are different versions even within the shoe model.
Lab Notes: My foot is flat however I do not have the usual "Wide" foot problem that many others seem to have associated with these rabbit like flat feet. I was steered towards the Adidas Barricade as it typically is the lead off shoe in a "Flat Feet" thread or article on Google and the authors all swear by it and there is a hyperlink to Amazon...HOWEVER they also cannot make things up out of thin air can they?(Sarcasm)
The typical Fit Details which TW lists for every shoe they sell, this information can be used to make a better decision for my flat feet friends. You want to look at shoes that say "Slightly Low" or "Low" in the Arch Dept, they typically run "Medium" and that's standard for a lot of the shoes. You will sometimes see "Average" and then occasionally you will see "Slightly Low" and I believe you want to focus on those shoes. Now the 2018 Barricade is listed as "Medium" for the arch support and that might as well say "High Arch" for folks with flat feet and that's like trying to push a square peg thru a round hole, it simply will not work and you will find a lot of foot pain or much worse if you don't pay attention. You have this support pushing up thru the bottom of your foot looking to meet an arching foot and slide into that space which is now being taken up by the flat arch on your feet, IT HURTS!!!
Now some folks wear Barricades with flat feet, they might have a WIDE foot and buy the Adidas Wide 4E Barricades, interesting as it may be they have a different arch from the regular width shoes, in fact they are built for guys with flatter feet but also wide. So are the Barricades a wide shoe or not? The 2018 regular width models are a terrible choice for a good chunk of the flat feet community so there is no reason to debate this back and forth. The 4E-Wide model however has a "Slightly Low" arch as stated on the TW website, look it up.
I understand this is a wordy post but I feel the topic needs people who actually play tennis and suffer thru this ordeal of finding a decent pair of shoes that won't ruin your good time after you are done exercising. I have a a few recommendations and again I do not have Wide Feet and so a couple of the traditional types may or may not work for you. I would love to hear some deeper discussion or any reviews but I caution you to keep it simple. If you go to a Dr for special orthopedics then this thread or post is probably not going to work for you, I'm not going to debate what you report from your foot specialist, I am going on my experience and I play 2-3 times a week, Doubles, Singles, Clinics, I am probably in the 4.0 range of players which is a huge pool but that's where I am. I can play with used racquets, cheap sports clothes but shoes simply cannot get around purchasing a quality pair. I am a Clay(Har-Tru) player almost exclusive lately.
Flat Feet/Normal Width: Asics Court Speed, these babies will take good care of you. Are they the most luxurious pair of shoes I've ever played tennis in? Probably not but they are super efficient and I do not have near the problems with my feet that I had previously. The Arch is set slightly low, the width is not narrow at all but it surely is not a 4E-Wide type of shoe. Asics is my go to already for walk/run with the Kayano and so I was not surprised that one of their shoes worked so well. Do not confuse these with the Solution Line or Challenger or a couple of the others. TW has them in stock and there are quite a few colors if you check around, in fact 2 new colors were introduced recently here in Mid-2019 and this shoe has been around for at least 12-18 months. It retails on Asics website for $110 a pair which starts to get a little pricey, TW blows that price out of the water and again I like to support companies that make my life easier and their Fit Details seem to be authentic as best I can tell so far.
Flat Feet/Wide Width: K-Swiss makes the Hypercourt and the Big Shot Light 3, both of them have Arch support that sits slightly low which you want, both of these shoes are wider in the forefront of the shoe vs the Asics I just wrote about which would be much narrower than these ones I listed. I've tried both of these shoes on as well as other K-Swiss brands and to this point I have not found one that quite works but if you have wider flat feet I would look these up, both of them are reasonably prices on TW.
Some other things to keep in mind as you are looking at TW site now that you know what to zone in on. Lottos makes a shoe called the Ultrasphere which looks like it is similar to the Asics Court Speed, they have another called the Stratosphere but it has a "Narrow" width so if you have a combo of flat feet and they are somewhat on the narrow side you might want to think about trying one of them. Diadors has one with a slightly low arch called "Fly" I think and they are a little pricey and I haven't read a good review on them yet so I can't really comment much about them but they would seem to fit the model of what we are looking for.
I can tell you that trying to buy a shoe with a normal or medium arch and then retro fitting it somehow by removing the insole and buying Dr Scholls, that has never worked for me either.
Other shoes that haven't worked for me...Babolat SFX or something like that, wanted to love them but they just are too roomy around the ankle and heel, was totally bummed as I liked how my foot sat in the shoes otherwise. I wear a size 13 and I refuse to go up or down a size, first of all after 13 it jumps to 14 most of the time and 12.5 is not long enough. I don't reach for shoes where they run small or big, that just seems silly to me, get the right fit. Another black hole is Nike, that Vapor X model that is always featured for flat feet, what a bunch of garbage. That shoe does not have a low arch support, in fact I find Nike to cater to people with high arches and narrow feet, take that info how you like but it also makes me shy away from most of their clothes.
I hope you enjoy this post/thread and I hope we can continue the discussion.
I have had flat feet my entire life(Im sure most in same boat) and I've heard a lot of folks weigh in on different ways to find the right shoe. I'm going to share some of the hard lessons I have learned and I fully understand that everybody is different and has something unique about their feet but I also know shoe companies try to make shoes that have the largest or widest audience/potential buyers, thus the notion they might have a shoe that is totally adapted to you the individual is a tough task, just try and keep an open mind.
I wanted to run this thread specifically on this website-Tennis Warehouse because they try IMO(in my opinion) the hardest to give you great details before you order the shoes. I will go thru some of the challenges I have encountered and what specific shoe I've found that is working the best at the moment. Another challenge is when you finally find a shoe that works, many of the Shoe Co's change models and even the target market almost every year if not sooner and it's hard once you find a shoe you like to continue using them for years to come.
One of the things you will find is I'm not automatically buying in to the sales/marketing by the shoe companies and those paid to review. One of the biggest secrets it seems is that many of the articles you will find on the internet proclaiming to be "Flat Feet" centric or flat feet experts and have 10 great shoes to share but the reality is they are nothing more than Advertising Propaganda designed to make you click direct to Amazon and load your cart up. I will give you an example as this shoe has been debated in other threads, some swear by it but I think that is mostly do to bad information, both the shoe company and those customers who buy the shoes. (Adidas Barricade) There are different versions even within the shoe model.
Lab Notes: My foot is flat however I do not have the usual "Wide" foot problem that many others seem to have associated with these rabbit like flat feet. I was steered towards the Adidas Barricade as it typically is the lead off shoe in a "Flat Feet" thread or article on Google and the authors all swear by it and there is a hyperlink to Amazon...HOWEVER they also cannot make things up out of thin air can they?(Sarcasm)
The typical Fit Details which TW lists for every shoe they sell, this information can be used to make a better decision for my flat feet friends. You want to look at shoes that say "Slightly Low" or "Low" in the Arch Dept, they typically run "Medium" and that's standard for a lot of the shoes. You will sometimes see "Average" and then occasionally you will see "Slightly Low" and I believe you want to focus on those shoes. Now the 2018 Barricade is listed as "Medium" for the arch support and that might as well say "High Arch" for folks with flat feet and that's like trying to push a square peg thru a round hole, it simply will not work and you will find a lot of foot pain or much worse if you don't pay attention. You have this support pushing up thru the bottom of your foot looking to meet an arching foot and slide into that space which is now being taken up by the flat arch on your feet, IT HURTS!!!
Now some folks wear Barricades with flat feet, they might have a WIDE foot and buy the Adidas Wide 4E Barricades, interesting as it may be they have a different arch from the regular width shoes, in fact they are built for guys with flatter feet but also wide. So are the Barricades a wide shoe or not? The 2018 regular width models are a terrible choice for a good chunk of the flat feet community so there is no reason to debate this back and forth. The 4E-Wide model however has a "Slightly Low" arch as stated on the TW website, look it up.
I understand this is a wordy post but I feel the topic needs people who actually play tennis and suffer thru this ordeal of finding a decent pair of shoes that won't ruin your good time after you are done exercising. I have a a few recommendations and again I do not have Wide Feet and so a couple of the traditional types may or may not work for you. I would love to hear some deeper discussion or any reviews but I caution you to keep it simple. If you go to a Dr for special orthopedics then this thread or post is probably not going to work for you, I'm not going to debate what you report from your foot specialist, I am going on my experience and I play 2-3 times a week, Doubles, Singles, Clinics, I am probably in the 4.0 range of players which is a huge pool but that's where I am. I can play with used racquets, cheap sports clothes but shoes simply cannot get around purchasing a quality pair. I am a Clay(Har-Tru) player almost exclusive lately.
Flat Feet/Normal Width: Asics Court Speed, these babies will take good care of you. Are they the most luxurious pair of shoes I've ever played tennis in? Probably not but they are super efficient and I do not have near the problems with my feet that I had previously. The Arch is set slightly low, the width is not narrow at all but it surely is not a 4E-Wide type of shoe. Asics is my go to already for walk/run with the Kayano and so I was not surprised that one of their shoes worked so well. Do not confuse these with the Solution Line or Challenger or a couple of the others. TW has them in stock and there are quite a few colors if you check around, in fact 2 new colors were introduced recently here in Mid-2019 and this shoe has been around for at least 12-18 months. It retails on Asics website for $110 a pair which starts to get a little pricey, TW blows that price out of the water and again I like to support companies that make my life easier and their Fit Details seem to be authentic as best I can tell so far.
Flat Feet/Wide Width: K-Swiss makes the Hypercourt and the Big Shot Light 3, both of them have Arch support that sits slightly low which you want, both of these shoes are wider in the forefront of the shoe vs the Asics I just wrote about which would be much narrower than these ones I listed. I've tried both of these shoes on as well as other K-Swiss brands and to this point I have not found one that quite works but if you have wider flat feet I would look these up, both of them are reasonably prices on TW.
Some other things to keep in mind as you are looking at TW site now that you know what to zone in on. Lottos makes a shoe called the Ultrasphere which looks like it is similar to the Asics Court Speed, they have another called the Stratosphere but it has a "Narrow" width so if you have a combo of flat feet and they are somewhat on the narrow side you might want to think about trying one of them. Diadors has one with a slightly low arch called "Fly" I think and they are a little pricey and I haven't read a good review on them yet so I can't really comment much about them but they would seem to fit the model of what we are looking for.
I can tell you that trying to buy a shoe with a normal or medium arch and then retro fitting it somehow by removing the insole and buying Dr Scholls, that has never worked for me either.
Other shoes that haven't worked for me...Babolat SFX or something like that, wanted to love them but they just are too roomy around the ankle and heel, was totally bummed as I liked how my foot sat in the shoes otherwise. I wear a size 13 and I refuse to go up or down a size, first of all after 13 it jumps to 14 most of the time and 12.5 is not long enough. I don't reach for shoes where they run small or big, that just seems silly to me, get the right fit. Another black hole is Nike, that Vapor X model that is always featured for flat feet, what a bunch of garbage. That shoe does not have a low arch support, in fact I find Nike to cater to people with high arches and narrow feet, take that info how you like but it also makes me shy away from most of their clothes.
I hope you enjoy this post/thread and I hope we can continue the discussion.
