I remember a Peanuts cartoon strip a number of years back in which Charlie Brown explained that the secret to happiness was a convertible and a lake. When the sun is out, the round-headed kid said, you happily drive around in your convertible; when it’s raining, you happily watch your lake fill up.
In the world of golf, our Charlie Brown is Steve Asman. Already developer of the game’s best umbrella, the Gustbuster, Asman needed to find his “convertible,” the product that would prosper when it wasn’t raining. He found it with Sunbuster sunglasses.
Just as he did when introducing the Gustbuster, Asman traveled to numerous PGA Tour stops, talking to players for feedback on his new sunglasses. A die-hard salesman, he tells hysterical stories about trying to get his glasses onto the heads of the pros. He may have met his match in Fuzzy Zoeller, who proved to be almost as stubborn as Asman is excitable. Working together, they created a frame for the player with a big head; now called “The Fuzzy,” it is one of several frames in the Sunbuster collection, all of which offer wrap-around protection and light weight.
The Fuzzy
The different Sunbuster frames look good, come in a choice of colors, and are easily adjusted. But it’s the lens technology that really impresses.
Using a technology that Asman calls GolfCorrect, his lenses offer 100% protection from UVA/UVB rays, are shatterproof, and come in a variety of colors to suit different light and environmental conditions. Plus, they have the unique ability to prevent something called Eye-Plane Shift Disorder (ESD), an image distortion unique to golf.
Standing at address, the golfer looks at the ball through the center of the lens. However, the head has to tilt up slightly to make room for the backswing, forcing the eyes to look down and through the bottom of the lens. If the lens isn’t made to accommodate this shift from center, the ball can appear to move and the golfer—whether or not he realizes it—tries to compensate, which can have disastrous effects on the shot. GolfCorrect lenses are ground to eliminate ESD.
XCel Xchng
One lens in the GolfCorrect family offers another advantage, as well. The purple-hued PuttReaders (top of the page, clockwise from left, Xcel Xchng Large, The Fuzzy, Xcel Xchng Small) reduce the amount of the color green that reaches the eyes, thereby highlighting the other colors and the contours and breaks that can be hard to see when everything is saturated with one hue. But the purple tint isn’t only for putting; the multilayer polycarbonate lenses perform in any light, and like all GolfCorrect lenses they also help eliminate eye fatigue and headaches.
Because it’s hard to be happy—that’s real, Charlie Brown happy—if your head hurts.
Sunbuster glasses are $119.95 regardless of frame or lens color. Check out the website to see the choices in lenses and frames, as well as glasses for other sports.
