This Idea Might Push Golf Back Into the Dark Ages

Traditionally, golf is a game that is played during the daytime. Most people figure that’s because you must be able to see things on a golf course. Like your golf ball. Or the fairway.

But the real reason is that if golf were played at night, everyone would cheat. Give most amateur golfers the cover of darkness and they’d all shoot 68s. You think anyone is going to slash his ball out from an oleander bush if he can instead kick it into a clearing?

Rick Pendergast, the assistant pro at Woodland Hills Country Club, and Tom Clark plan to play golf for 24 consecutive hours next week. This will, obviously, force them to play many holes on the Woodland Hills course at night.

They’ve played the course so often that they won’t have too many problems hitting the fairways and staying out of the lakes. Also, they will use glowing, chemical-filled golf balls and shoot at greens with fluorescent lights attached to the pins.

And cheating won’t be a problem because there’s no competition involved. Just a zany idea to raise some money for Childhelp USA, a child-abuse prevention program. And to raise some eyebrows.

“Most of the people here think we’re nuts,” said Clark, a Woodland Hills Country Club member. “They also thought Rick and I were nuts last summer when we played golf for 14 straight hours. We finished 180 holes.”

That stunt was just for laughs. This year, Clark and Pendergast figured they might as well collect some money for a good cause during their bizarre plan. Members at the Woodland Hills and the Calabasas country clubs have pledged money for each hole that the two golfers finish. They expect to raise more than $2,000. But it will still bring a lot of laughs.

Pendergast, 26, and Clark, 21, will begin the ordeal Monday at 5 a.m. They said they will complete about 220 holes before the moon rises and then play another 70 holes before the sun rises.

“We’ve been handing out letters to people who live around the course,” Clark said. “We don’t want anyone calling the cops, thinking someone’s out on the course doing something crazy.”