At Night

A golf ball soared through the night. Stars twinkled overhead, night winds sighed as the ball landed, bounded, rolled up on a putting green unaccustomed to such nocturnal visitations. On the green, the ball moved steadily toward, was swallowed up by, a dark little shadow--the hole. No fairy-flight nor golfer's fevered dream, this. Back in the direction from which the ball had come, 246 yards over hump and hummock, stumpy little Gene Sarazen, onetime U. S. open champion, grinned and chaffed with many bystanders as he cracked out other balls into the night from the first tee of his Briarcliff Lodge (N. Y.) links. The bystanders were illuminating engineers having a convention, and in their honor, by their ingenuity, the first tee, fairway and green were flooded with day-like light from huge searchlights, from bulbs strung down the rough; Not every ball reached the green ; only the one reached the hole at one stroke. Many were lost. But all" persons present conceded the possibility of playing "night golf."* Wrote Colyumist Phillips for The Sun: "'Ever play Geranium Hills?' one golfer will ask another. " 'No, but I'd like to.' " 'Come on over some night and try it.' " Are there any hazards ?' " 'Yes, there's a dark corner on the sixth and two broken bulbs on the eleventh. Then there's a short circuit on the fourteenth green that gives a player a lot of trouble if he doesn't carry matches.' " 'Who's the club champion now ?' " 'Elmer Griggs. He plays a wonderful game of night golf. Never losee a ball!' "'What makes him so good?' " 'He used to be night watchman in a mothball factory.' "

*This possibility had already been demonstrated by four Houston Texans (TIME, Aug. 25), who played a full 18-hole round with the aid of luminous paint on their balls, searchlights on tees and greens.