Many outdoor sports that don’t involve direct physical impacts like football and soccer do, will often allow the participants the opportunity to wear sunglasses. Although the high-impact sports both indoors and out can involve protective eyewear of some type, sunglasses are not typically considered for those types of sports because they cut down the amount of light hitting the eyes, reduce contrasts and can have an effect on peripheral vision too, all qualities not too useful in many “stick and ball” sports. More casual sporting events are a different matter however, as sports like fishing and golfing don’t involve any physical impacts and often take place in the bright sunshine where glare and direct sunlight angles can present problems. These factors make sunglasses appropriate and even an advantage at times. Although people have worn regular sunglasses in these types of sports for many years, two American companies have just introduced some very new types of fishing and golfing specific eyewear.
For serious fishermen who normally wear prescription eyeglasses, ADS Sports Eyewear has worked in conjunction with the Oakley eyewear.company to develop new prescription fishing sunglasses that feature a lens designed to focus on the specialized needs of fishermen to move their heads normally while still keeping near objects in focus. In contrast to traditional progressive lenses that have a focal distance that gets progressively closer as you look at the lower portion of the lens, the new fishing lens features the largest portion of the lens designed for near-distance viewing. The new lenses are designed using digital lens technology that recalculates the curve of a lens at every point on the lens. The upper portion provides clear vision without the typical fishbowl effect caused by standard prescription sunglasses in wrap-around style frames, while the lower portion of the lens has a consistent near distance area that a fisherman can use while baiting a hook. Oakley Prescription Sunglasses are the first to market with this new technology and the ADS fishing-specific prescription lenses are available in any existing style of Oakley Sunglasses including The Oakley Deep Blue Iridium lens and the Oakley Shallow Blue Iridium lens, both featuring polarized technology and with oxide coatings to minimize blue light distortions in the fishing environment.
For the serous golf enthusiast, the 2013 Sundog Eyewear Collection features eight new sunglass models designed specifically for golfers that feature the first combination of Photochromic adaptation to changing light conditions, along with glare reduction Polarizing filters, and Sundog’s own Mela-Lens system that offers golfers superior vision protection to help improve their performance on bright courses. The “mela” in the Mela-Lens system refers to synthetic melanin in the lenses to filter blue light and block ultra-violet light and provides enhanced definition, increased glare reduction, maximum clarity, and overall visual comfort. Sundog also enjoys the advantage of having nine-time winner on the LPGA Tour, Paula Creamer, on their side, as Paula has helped the company design golf-specific eyewear since the introduction of the Paula Creamer Sundog Eyewear Collection back in 2007. Whether you golf, fish or just play outdoors a lot, the new sunglasses from ADS/Oakley and Sundog both offer designs and features that other sunglasses just can’t match.