RANCHO BERNARDO – No one in our eightsome saw how he got there. There was no sound to the tumble. All we heard was the comically matter-of-fact way the golfer announced his predicament.
“I found a bunker,” said the guy, and as we panned the flashlights in the direction of his voice, we saw him. He was lying flat on his back in the cool sand of a large trap, staring up at the stars on a warm September Saturday night at the Oaks North Executive Golf Course.
The lights weren't nearly bright enough to reveal if his face was flushed with embarrassment, but our flopper had certainly kept his sense of humor.
“And I didn't even have anything to drink,” he insisted. To which his buddy replied, “Maybe you should have.”
The golfer lingered in the sand for a surprisingly long time.
“I'm making snow angels,” he quipped.
“Don't bother raking,” somebody offered.
This is glow-ball golf, for which the 14th instrument in your bag should be your funny bone and the light of the moon can bring out strange things in golfers. In glow ball, people take unknowing headers into sand traps.
In glow ball, you get to feel like a teenager again, goofing around on the golf course at night, and this time, no one's going to call the cops.
“It's like Star Wars,” Lloyd Porter was saying last Saturday night. “It's like going out there and shooting flying saucers.”
For the past 11 years, Porter, the head pro at JC Resorts' Oaks North, has been staging glow-ball golf tournaments as corporate team-building outings, as well as offering several events in the fall for the public.
And it just keeps getting more popular. When the final, sold-out event of the fall is held Oct. 11, a record 600 golfers will have experienced glow ball at Oaks North for the year, Porter said.
Porter is so well-schooled in glow ball that he and his staff can manage well in the pitch black. He sends out two foursomes together in a scramble format for nine par-3 holes. There are glowing tee markers set at between about 120 and 150 yards; the flagstick is wrapped with several glow tubes; the rim of the cup is lighted with a glow-ball-specific insert.
Porter provides everyone with a flashlight and a glow tube to wear as a necklace, so as not to become a hidden target.
“It's funny. From a distance, everyone looks like they're wearing halos,” observed Escondidan Randy Wilson, a glow-ball regular.
You've probably seen glow balls in golf stores. They are the hard plastic spheres that have an opening in the middle for a small glow rod. And, man, do they shine brightly. You can spy them on a green 150 yards away. They light up the bottom of a pond, and you see them through your pants pocket.
It is a truly cool sight to see a well-struck glow ball go sailing into the dark sky. “A shooting star,” a playing partner marveled.
But they are hard to maneuver, impossible as a billiards cue ball to work. Porter said that the glow balls have improved through the years, but that hard plastic is still nothing like a real golf ball.
“Like hitting a brick,” said Wilson, who advised before the round to gear up a club or two to account for no bouncy core.
I was thanking Wilson on our third hole when I stiffed an 8-iron to 18 inches – something I rarely do in the sunshine. When my tap-in birdie putt circled every inch of the hole, everybody laughed at the site of the spinning light, and my wiseacre friend Kirk needled, “You just wanted to make it look pretty.”
I've got friends who always look like they're reading greens in the dark, but this was the real deal. It's fairly tough when you've got to feel the slope and the break with your feet. Chipping with any kind of feel or touch is almost impossible.
“Last time we played, we saw four guys miss a 2-foot putt. That was something different,” Wilson said.
Everybody's got a different strategy. Some lay down the flashlight at the back of the ball. Others from the side. Some just swing by the light from the ball. It's harder than it sounds, like playing with a blindfold.
“It actually helps me concentrate more,” said Scott Koch, an Escondido medical supply salesman and friend of Wilson's.
One of the greatest things about glow ball is the opportunity for gamesmanship. The blinking flashlight can be annoying. So can a swirling strobe. A quick flash to the eyes and the guy across from you can't find the ball among the spots.
Porter's favorite gag he's seen the JC Resorts managers pull on each other: messing with the group behind by taking the flag from the hole and leaning it against a tree or sticking it in the sand.
Our group of four suffered all night from wattage envy. It was our best excuse for why we finished second-from-last, four shots behind the winners, who shot an impressive 3-under.
While our opponents had enough power to illuminate a driving range, we were stuck with cheapie flashlights whose beams barely reached our shoes.
“Next time,” Kirk said, “I'm bringing my Coleman lantern.”
Tod Leonard: (619) 293-1858; tod.leonard@uniontrib.com
