Lights at night

When you hear “night golf”, what do you picture? Events with fluorescent flagsticks, lighted balls, neon shirts and goofy giggles? Or do you think of powerful stadium lighting creating visibility for evening play? Lights at night can change an operation for the better, illustrated by two properties that are more than 7,000 miles apart.

Emirates Golf Club in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is minutes away from the Persian Gulf. This semi-private property consists of three courses: The Majlis Course, The Faldo Course and The Par 3 Academy Course. It hosts The Hero Dubai Desert Classic, a DP World Tour event, and it recently hosted the Moonlight Classic, a Ladies European Tour event played at night on The Faldo Course. Redesigned by Nick Faldo in 2005, the championship layout has been fully lit since 2010.

Matt Perry has been part of Dubai Golf (which owns multiple properties) for 15 years and has been the superintendent at The Faldo Course for six. “The Moonlight Classic was an amazing event. It’s totally unique for the professional schedule,” Perry says. Lighting is trending and people are noticing what night golf can offer. “Other clubs are introducing floodlights,” Perry adds. “A few have nine-hole installations but we’re the only course in the UAE with all 18 holes floodlit.”

The Aero Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is an 18-hole short course adjacent to Myrtle Beach International Airport, also entirely lit. Under the leadership of Andy Apple, director of agronomy at Atlantic Golf Management, the property was purchased in 2020.

“The lights were here when we bought it,” says Apple. “They were the old-timey flashlight, big bulb lights. We switched them to LEDs but the poles and everything were here. We have a contractor who did the work when we added speakers to pipe in music. There have been very few problems with the lights but if we need to, we call him.”

The lights at The Aero Club are on a timer that sits in the irrigation pump house. “They come on about an hour before dark and go off around 10 p.m., an hour after closing,” Apple says. The maintenance staff consists of two part-time greenkeepers who arrive early, work and leave by mid-afternoon.

The Faldo Course, a larger property, ensures the maintenance team is onsite during open hours and the lights are operated manually from a box in Perry’s office. “Our maintenance facility is centrally located,” Perry says. “A member of our engineering team switches the lights on and off, typically switching them on 30 minutes before play.”

The lights are turned off as play finishes. “We are sparing with the usage,” Perry says. “We essentially turn them off behind the players. For example, if the last group is on the sixth hole, we’ll switch off the lights on holes one through five.” This conserves energy and ensures that everyone is safely out of the dark before the lights are powered down.

The staff maintains the lights. “During installation, our engineering team went through a full training process with the manufacturer,” Perry says. “We don’t have to use a cherry picker to adjust or change the bulbs. The posts fold down to ground level with a machine we have that fixes onto them. The team works on the light at ground level and then we push it back up.”

Even the initial installation of the lights was easy. “We didn’t close the course,” Perry says. “I liaised with the contractors, concrete bases were built, cables and wires were laid and then the lights were up.” At first, halogen bulbs were used, but in 2018 the lights were changed to more efficient LEDs. “We have cut our electricity usage by more than 50 percent,” Perry says. “There is less maintenance with LEDs and better lighting with a brighter shine.” Easy choice.

Upgrading to LED lights is something The Aero Club and The Faldo Course have in common. Modern installations are usually shielded or are full cut-off lights to avoid any problems with brightening the sky as opposed to the property. Neither place has residential issues.

“We aren’t dealing with any light ordinances,” Apple says. “The biggest thing is the airport next door. Planes come right over the course when they are landing so we changed a few directional lights so they weren’t interfering. We didn’t want a 737 on the golf course.”

“In our location, there’s not much compliance for the lighting system,” Perry says. “All lights are directed down onto our property. Sometimes we have the lights on all night.” The lights are used all year. Twice a year, they play a “Midnight Madness” tournament where players tee off at 11 p.m. and play until the sun comes up.

At The Aero Club, the lights are used from mid-April to mid-October with some flexibility for weather. “When the temperatures start falling and it gets cool not many people come out, so we quit using them,” Apple says. “We get more play during the day in early spring and fall. In the summer, we get more at night because it is so hot. We get a crowd early and golfers start coming back around 5 p.m.”

Evening play and the decision to install lights at The Faldo Course has been “a business decision for sure,” Perry says. “With the hot summers, and periods like Ramadan, there are times when play drops off during the day. With the option to play at night, people can avoid the heat and be flexible around work.”

In 2023, The Faldo Course hosted a total of 65,000 rounds. Night rounds, recorded as tee times from 4 p.m. until 9:45 p.m., accounted for 26,000 of those. During summer, people will play early until 9 a.m. and tee times pick up again around 2 or 3 p.m. The tee sheet is full all evening.

Golfers love it but there are maintenance challenges with extended play. There’s a lot of scheduling and watering can be a concern. “One of the trickiest things is that some people might not finish their round until midnight,” Perry says. “With staff arriving at 4 a.m. for morning set up, that’s a four-hour window to totally water the course. Anticipating this, when we installed the lights, we also installed a much bigger pump system for our irrigation. We can water the course in three hours.”

Additional hours require more staff. “We have a night duty irrigation manager who follows the last group and turns on the irrigation on each hole behind them,” Perry says. “That way, we maximize the amount of time we have to water. We also have an engineer on night duty, in case there are problems.”

Challenges met. “It sounds simple but when you offer night golf, you have to ensure your lights are working,” Perry says. “You can’t have a dark spot or a green not properly lit because you’re guaranteed to receive negative feedback. There’s more pressure because if you have one light that goes down, it can ruin somebody’s round. It’s just not something you have to contend with during the day.”

Certainly, the grass doesn’t stop growing. “It’s difficult to guarantee a well-conditioned course late at night,” Perry says. “There have been many hours of growth during the day and there may be pitch marks and bunkers that aren’t in their best shape. For events, our team will do some extra prep in the evenings to ensure that extra bit of quality throughout the night.”

A testament to the conditioning is that people can’t seem to get enough. In addition to the income from extra tee times (even though more maintenance is required) the increase in revenue is compounded. “The amount of people on the property at night has changed dramatically,” Perry says. “It’s not just the golf. It filters into the clubhouse for food and drinks, and we have a lot of corporate evening events. It’s been very positive.”

Apple can relate. “We are really the only game in town at night. You can zip through here in an hour and a half. It’s popular and fun, especially in the summer,” he says. “Our business has grown and this place has been good for the community, too.”

Both The Aero Club and The Faldo Course are successful with the lights off. Managed properly, the lights make their impact even brighter. For many reasons — and who can resist watching a great drive sail across a moonlit sky? — night golf is a dream.

Lee Carr is a northeast Ohio-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.