I’ve seen some interesting golf gadgets in my now 11+ years of golf blogging. In golf, alignment is a crucial aspect to the setup and golfers do everything they can and utilize every tool in the shed to insure it is correct, from alignment sticks to lasers to now sunglasses.
Birdie Max Sunglasses are not sunglasses one wears during a round of golf, walking along the beach, or riding a motorcycle. In fact, that’s not a good idea. Don’t do that. Birdie Max Sunglasses are meant for golfers to use during practice to check alignment and help them focus on only the target line and setup. How is this achieved? By blocking out everything in the field of vision except the primary target line.
Quite an interesting concept, which I poo-pooed at first. After trying it a few times I did realize a few interesting things about my setup. The most interesting part for me was that my head was not aligned parallel to the target line. My head seems to naturally line up crossing the target line from outside to in when drawing a line toward the target. If my swing wants to follow that line, I produce the dreaded hacker amateur outside-in swing path. Results of that swing path are either slices from cutting across the ball, or dead straight pulls if the clubface is square to the incorrect line.
It is interesting also to use this swing aid during putting not only for setup, but to watch the putter’s path through the stroke. I tend to be a more Ben Crenshaw style (yes, I could have picked a better example LOL), with a swinging gate. That means the putter goes inside the line on the backstroke and the end of the stroke. But the Birdie Max still helped me get the concept of being square at impact. A degree or two off on a putt of more than a couple of feet could mean a large miss. The longer the putt, the bigger the miss.
Included in the package is a nice case and cleaning cloth:
Conclusion
While this unit might seem a bit hokey, as many golf swing aids and alignment aids are, the Birdie Max sunglasses did “open my eyes” (sorry, had to do it) to some alignment issues I look to fix soon in both my full swing and in my putting setup. If you’ve tried other alignment aids and still are not able to get it right, maybe you should “look into” the Birdie Max sunglasses.
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