Big Oakley Shades Look Better on Ryo Hisatsune Than Anyone Else

When I was at the U.S. Open last year, a fellow patron overheard me musing on the lack of sunglasses amongst the players at Pinehurst. “Yeah, pros never wear sunglasses, it makes it impossible to see the ball!” they interjected with a sense of bravado, keen on proving to me that they knew more about a golf thing than me.

Fair play, I guess. The PGA TOUR guys had not been rocking shades in full force that day (how they managed without them is beyond me), but my fellow fan’s statement is simply untrue. A ton of pros wear sunglasses, and have for decades. Ever heard of David Duval? Go and Google “David Duval 1999” and you’ll have a hard time finding a photo of him not rocking some dope face-shielding Oakley M-Frames. You don’t have to go back 25 years to find sunglasses being worn auspiciously on the course: Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott, and Joel Dahmen are all frequent sunglass-users, and I’m sure you could think of plenty more players that are members of the sensitive eye club.

While those guys look great, I think I may have just found my new sunglasses king in Japanese 22-year-old Ryo Hisatsune. He has been absolutely bringing it with his eyewear game this season, wearing an unexpectedly flashy, albeit useful, frame. His ocular-protective weapon of choice? The Oakley Sutro Lite.

The Sutro Lite is a semi-rimless version of the popular Oakley Sutro, mainly designed for cycling but obviously translating well to the golf course. The Lite version offers a more unrestricted field of vision than its bulkier cousin, which is probably why Hisatsune chose to rock those on the course—no pesky bottom rim getting in the way when he’s setting up for each shot. And we know our boy is particular.

There are a ton of color and lens combinations, and it looks like Ryo has been taking advantage of a few different lenses and frame colors so far during the 2025 PGA TOUR season. Last weekend at the Valspar, he wore a semi-transparent lens that works in both cloudy and sunny conditions, but I’ve also seen him wearing some, ahem, eye-catching lenses during other tourney’s this season, including a blue mirrored lens and a dark red/orange lens from the brand’s standout Prizm line. The frame and lens shapes fit his face nicely, and each time I see a new photo of him wearing the Sutro looks just as good as the last—I’m waiting to find one where he looks like an 80s skier but it never seems to happen.

Jealous.

It looks like the shades are doing him some good; he was sporting them en route to a T-4 finish at the Valspar. The world no. 93 will be teeing it up in Houston this week, kicking off the Texas swing and final push to the Masters in April. Keep an eye out, I’m sure you’ll see him rocking his signature Sutro Lites, hopefully in a fresh colorway we can all ogle over for the weeks to come.