Ben Griffin has been a constant on PGA Tour leaderboards this season.
The 29-year-old has six top-10s this season, including wins at the team event Zurich Classic of New Orleans and last week at the Charles Schwab Challenge. The North Carolina product’s story is well-documented. Griffin once left professional golf to become a mortgage loan officer. But he caught the bug just months after cobwebbing his sticks, and his climb began. While the story of Griffin’s rise has been trumpeted in every corner of golf media, the reason that he wears aviator sunglasses while dissecting golf courses is not.
Until now.
Griffin, who entered Sunday one shot back of Scottie Scheffler at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village, explained the eyewear on Saturday night, and there’s a lot more to the story than a curious fashion choice.
“Yeah, it’s interesting,” Griffin said. “After learning a little bit more about, like, my experience, I’m a little surprised more golfers don’t. But, yeah, I see floaters. I have really bad vision.”
According to the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, “floaters” are defined as one or multiple of the following in your vision:
- Spots, dark specks, or knobby, transparent strings of floating material
- Spots that move when you move your eyes – when you look at them, they move out of your visual field
- Noticeable spots when you look at a plain, bright background
Griffin went to see an eye doctor who told him his retina was starting to detach.
“I had retinal holes, so I had to go get basically laser surgery to fill in those holes,” Griffin said. ” I had eight retinal holes in both eyes, so I was at risk of losing vision, maybe within five or six months, had I not gotten the treatment. So I still see the floaters. I had to get the surgery just to maintain my level. Because of that, when I wear sunglasses, it’s a little bit darker out, so I don’t necessarily see the floaters as well. So if it’s really bright out and I’m not wearing the sunglasses, I look into the clouds or whatever and I see black stuff everywhere.”
Griffin wears Uswing Mojing glasses, which are designed to help golfers read greens more accurately. According to their website, their story involves Phil Mickelson, who played a pro-am with Warren Fong, a Chinese amateur golfer, in Macau in 2019. Fong was wearing the Uswing glasses when he and Mickelson saw a putt differently. Fong ended up reading the green correctly, and Mickelson began wearing the glasses after that encounter.
“They say the science behind ’em kind of helps with green reading, and I think it’s 100 percent true,” Griffin said. “I love the ability to see the contrast a little bit better than when it’s really bright, it’s kind of hard to see maybe grain changes from time to time. So seeing contours is definitely a little bit easier, I think with the sunglasses. And now, I mean, I guess I’m getting to the point where I have more and more fans and people like it, so I’m not going to stop wearing ’em, that’s for sure.”
Given his rise from mortgage loan officer to top-five in the FedEx Cup, there’s no reason for Griffin to change his specs anytime soon.
