The best sunglasses for golf: the polarized question, answered honestly

For golf, a brown or amber lens is the right colour, and polarized is a genuine choice rather than a rule. Polarization removes glare and lifts contrast, which helps most players see the ball against sky and grass. It also removes the sheen on a green that some players use to read the grain, which is why a minority of golfers prefer non-polarized. Try both on a putting green before you decide. Either way, avoid dark blue mirrors and very dark lenses; the course is not the beach.

Why golf is the exception

For almost every outdoor use, polarized is simply better. Golf is the one place the argument is real, and it is worth understanding why rather than taking a side.

A polarizing film removes light reflected off flat surfaces, because that light is horizontally polarized. Wet or closely mown grass is a flat surface. The sheen you see on a green, the way it looks lighter in one direction and darker in the other, is reflected light, and its direction tells you which way the grass is lying. That is grain, and grain affects the putt.

Put a polarized lens on and that sheen largely disappears. The green looks uniform. Some players find that a loss; they read grain by the shine and want it kept. Others never read grain that way, or find that the contrast a polarized brown gives them elsewhere on the course is worth more than a cue they never used.

That is the whole debate. It is a preference, and the honest answer is to test it.

What polarized does for the rest of the round

Off the green, polarization is a straightforward gain:

• Tracking the ball. Less glare means less squinting into the sky, and a brown lens separates a white ball from a pale sky and from grass.
• Reading the fairway. Contrast between fairway and rough, and between bunker and grass, is clearer.
• Fatigue. Four hours of squinting is a real cost by the back nine.
• Water hazards. The one place on the course polarization does what it does on a lake: shows you where the ball went in.

Which lens colour for golf

Brown or amber is the golf tint. It absorbs more blue than a grey does, which cuts haze and raises contrast between the ball and its background. It is also the colour that makes green look most varied, which helps reading slope. That is the T01 Brown.

Red mirror on a warm base does something similar with a stronger separation between greens and reds, which some players prefer for ball tracking. That is the T01 Red, and its base tint does the optical work; the mirror is mostly a look.

Grey keeps colours true and dims evenly. It is fine if the warm cast of a brown bothers you, and it is the better choice on very bright, flat days. Less contrast than brown. That is the T01 Grey.

Dark blue mirrors are open-water lenses. Their base is usually dark and the blue cast flattens green. Leave them at the boat.

Darkness matters on the course

A golf course is not a beach. You move between bright fairways and shaded tee boxes, and you look down at the ball as much as up at the sky. A very dark lens makes the shade too dark and the ball hard to find in the rough. A medium lens is better than a heavy one, and this is also why heavy mirrors are wrong for golf: they make the lens effectively darker.

We do not publish transmission figures for our lenses, because none has been measured; each product page says so. If you play in hard sun all summer, that number matters and is worth asking any seller for.

The test

Take a polarized pair and a non-polarized pair to a practice green in bright sun. Look along a putt in both. If you see grain in one and not the other, and you use grain, you have your answer. If they look the same to you, buy the polarized pair and enjoy the rest of the round. Our how-to-tell post covers checking which pair is which.

Frequently asked questions