Phil Mickelson Isn’t Being Shady About His Frequent Sunglasses Use
Published July 3 2021, 10:00 a.m. ET
When golfer Phil Mickelson joined commentators Frank Nobilo, Jim Nantz, and Nick Faldo in the CBS Sports booth in August 2020, they asked the Masters champ the question on every golf fan’s mind: Why has he been wearing sunglasses on the green lately?
“Quick question, Phil,” Frank said, per GOLF. “Notice the shades. New look for you this year.”
Laughing, Phil responded, “There’s actually a story to that.”
Phil Mickelson started wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes.
After pausing for a moment to watch a golfer putt, Phil launched into the origin story of his sunglasses habit.
“Back during COVID break, I did this Carac cream — which is like a skin cancer chemotherapy treatment on your face — for like two weeks,” he said. “Your skin blotches up, and you kill these cancer cells that you can’t see. And when I went outside, I had to wear some protection, so I wore these glasses to kind of protect the area around my eyes.”
Phil eventually realized that he liked wearing the shades. “They didn’t move around on my face when I was swinging,” he told the CBS commentators. “I went out and played with them, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll give it a try.’ So that’s kind of where it started. And then my eyes were much more relaxed at the end of the day — they weren’t squinting the whole time.”
No one seems to know what brand of sunglasses they are.
So now that we know why Phil wears sunglasses, the remaining question is, what glasses is he wearing? There doesn’t seem to be a consensus among golf fans.
“Looking at the hinge, they are Mykita,” one user wrote on the GolfWRX forum. “Not sure which frame, but that’s where I would put my money.”
Another user added, “Yep, looking at the hinges, they definitely look like they are Mykita sunglasses. Hard to tell exactly which model, but to me, it seems like they are the Mykita Caleb. $545.”
On Reddit, however, people had other thoughts. “I think some people were saying the brand is Mykita,” one person wrote. “I’m pretty sure Oakley and Ray-Ban have similar styles.”
Another Reddit user, meanwhile, had a long-winded rebuttal. “They are not Mykita sunglasses. They are Uswing Green Reader sunglasses. He’s been wearing them since the beginning of 2020. He found them when he played in the Macau Open in 2019.”
That Redditor explained that Uswing is a “very small Chinese company that only sells in the Taiwanese and Chinese market currently,” and that the company is hoping to start selling its products internationally soon.
“Uswing Green Reader sunglasses are the only sunglasses designed specifically for golf and have helped Phil tremendously to read greens and ‘see the line,’” that user wrote. “He can’t endorse the sunglasses because of his deal/sponsorship with Callaway [since] they also sell sunglasses. The word is that he can’t play without these sunglasses right now because of the confidence that they give him, putting-wise. They retail for $599 USD.”