Dusk and After Dark Practice Solutions

[Salmon]

With it coming into Winter here in Melbourne, I'm starting to look at dusk and night time praticing solutions for after work during the week. There is also a great bonus of there being no people around and I don't have to pay to practise once the Pro shop closes at my local course. So I'm currently looking at two different methods to solve my issue and would love your opinion and advice if any of you have already gone through the whole process before.

 

Basically they come down to two options of light up the whole area with my own portable flood lights, or use minimal lighting and utilise a glow in the dark or light up golf ball of some kind. And just to add in I'm only looking at practicing short approach shots and chipping around the green at the moment so something along the lines of 130 yards and in.

 

Option 1 comes with some fairly obvious issues of cost, where I would have to provide my own flood lights or lighting solution to privide something effective enough to not loose a ton of balls. My idea has gotten as far as trying to find a cheap hand held rechargable flood/spot light and using some PVC and a garden spike to make shift my own tripod like contraption. I would have it set up along the lines of two overlapping lights around the green giving enough illumination to easy see the green and the immediate surrounding, and use one where I'm playing from. This will still put me back a couple of hundred with what I have found so far but has the added benefit of me being able to use balls that I game with so I get true distances.

 

Option 2 solves the whole spending a fortune on lighting equipment that I would then need to transport as well with a golf ball that lights up or glows in the dark making it easy to see where it finishes and how it flys. I would really only need a few LED light sticks where I'm playing, on the flag, and around the green for reference. The down side to this however is I have no idea if they have produced a glow in the dark or light up golf ball that properly replicates a real tour ball yet. I have found two examples that may be good which are the Twilight Tracer, and the Light up golf ball from nightupsportsusa.com but I don't want to be hitting balls that go 80% of the distance and don't react like standard tour balls which may or may not be the case as they refrain from telling you on the website :S

 

I'm currently tossing up between the two and will most likely try both in the near future to see how they compare but I am hoping a couple of you have experimented down this path before and could potentially save me some dosh. Any suggestions, criteques, or comparisons are welcome

[hckymeyer]

I could be wrong, but I actually think the twilight tracer is the ball that nightsportsusa.com uses, they just rebrand them.  There are two versions, the original version has a blinking red light that lasts for 5 minutes after the ball is struck.  The new version (and the one featured on the website) is a solid color LED light that glows for 8 minutes after it's struck.  The new ones are much easier to see at night.

 

I play in a glow ball tourney every year and those are the two balls we use.  The new LED ones were debuted last year at our tourney and they were out filming that night.

 

Either ball is limited flight compared to a regular ball.  Since it's at night and usually getting colder our rule of thumb was they go about two clubs less than a regular ball, but part of that will depend on the temperature.  By themselves they fly about a club less than a regular ball, add in temps in the 40-50 degree F range and that's another club less.  Also if you are practicing I'm guessing you will be hitting quite a few balls from each location before going to pick them up.  Keep in mind they only stay lit for 5-8 minutes and once they go out it's the same as trying to find a regular ball in the dark.

 

From a cost and ease of setup solution the glow balls are going to be the easiest way to go.  However they don't react the same as a tour ball by any stretch of the imagination and your distances will be way off.  The lighting solution will be a harder way to go, but in the end would give you conditions that are closer to actually playing distance and performance wise.

 

Best of luck whichever way you decide to go!

[RookieBlue7]

Be careful with those glow in the dark balls.  SEVERAL people have reported caving in faces of fairway woods and drivers and hybrids from them because they're significantly harder than typical golf balls (several different manufacturers, not one specific manufacturer is doing it).

[Salmon]

Yea I did read that they can cause damage to titanium drivers in particular, its a shame we have not designed one that works just like a tour ball yet, as I can imagine finding your ball in a standard round would also be greatly improved.

 

In terms of the practise I think I will go for something along the lines of the lights, I'll just try and make most of it to help save on money lol