Sunglasses for Golfing: Question from customer

Question: I have prescription progressive lens which I think are giving me problems golfing. I did not notice so much until this last prescription I got recently. Can you recommend and provide a pair presciption-made, tinted, polarized, nonglare, no progressive or bifocals, and whatever else I need to better play golf?

Answer: You probably want a rimless or semi rimless frame (where there is no frame at the bottom). This is best for golfing so when you look down at the ball, you don’t catch the rim of the frame to interfere with your line of sight on the ball. We can do this in most of the Rudy Project styles (i.e. Rydon, Kerosene, Ketyum, etc.) at http://www.sporteyes.com/rudy.htm or the Switch at http://www.sporteyes.com/switch.htm. We can do it in single vision (distance only) so no bifocals or progressive. Single vision is the best for golfing as most of golfing is done in your distance vision. The only thing you need to read is a scorecard and we have press on bifocals which are stickers you can stick anywhere on any pair of glasses to give you that reading correction if you need it. Often people try to play in progressives and find that to get the ball in their distance vision, they have to hold their head at an unnatural position which will affect their swing.

Let’s discuss the polarized lens though for a moment. We can do a polarized lens in the styles above. However, I personally would advise against polarized lenses for golfing. While polarized do the best for glare, and you get a lot of glare off the water while golfing, they do such a great job of controlling glare that it is harder to read the greens. The glare is what helps you distinguish depth of the terrain (ie. Breaks). With the polarized lenses, it is much harder to read breaks in the green. Polarized lenses are pushed in the marketplace as being the best for all around use, and they are which is why they are about $100 more in prescription. However, they also have this side effect which may not be the best lens for a given sport.

The lens we get the best feedback on is the Peakvision lens designed specifically for golf. It is non-polarized and is darker at the top than the bottom. The most common complaint they got when researching and talking to professional golfers is that many professionals don’t like to wear sunglasses because it is too dark when they look down at the ball. The ball could be in shade, etc. Thus, Peakvision designed their lens to be lighter at the bottom so that the ball is not too dark but the darker lens at the top shades the sun above. These also can be done in prescription single vision. You can view them at http://www.sporteyes.com/peak.htm. However, these lenses are not as dark overall. So if your main problem is glare or light sensitivity, you would be better off with the polarized lenses in the styles first mentioned.

I hope this information helps! Let me know if you have any additional questions!