Before sunrise on Sunday at the US Mid-Am, the players warmed up under the drone light.
Kyle LaFerriere/USGA
Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird. It is. . Drones!
They seem to be everywhere in golf these days, providing a bird’s-eye view of the Top 100 courses, low noise over the course, driving Jon Rahm off the tee.
This week they played another role.
At Independence Golf Club, a community center outside of Richmond, Va. co-hosting the stroke-play portion of the 43rd US Mid-Amateur Championship, two special drones were sent into the pre-dawn darkness to illuminate the driving range.
A sign of the future?
Randall Bostick sees it that way. Bostick, 52, is a Virginia native and former US Navy sailor who turned his passion for all things aviation into a high-flying business. PegaPod, the company he founded in 2020, was built around the bright idea of attaching powerful lights to drones.
Building a prototype took time, but two years ago, Bostick received a patent for his product, and the business quickly took off. Before long, PegaPod drones were lighting up everything from construction sites to baseball and soccer fields.
“We’re a small startup,” Bostick said this week, in an interview with the USGA. “We see potential in many different areas.”
Giff Breed saw the potential, too. President of the Independence Golf Club, Breed has been working closely with the USGA to prepare for the US Mid-Am. Eager to give the competitors enough time to warm up by lighting the practice areas one hour before sunrise, Breed went online to find other lighting options when he discovered the PegaPod. The birth reached Bostick. In no time, they had a deal, with PegaPod providing drones capable of producing 250,000 lumens each, enough to light up a football field. In the weeks leading up to the competition, test flights were made. Because the drones were flying below 400 feet, a Federal Aviation Administration permit was not required. But the bright lights still attracted local attention. One neighbor wondered if they had seen a UFO.
Kyle LaFerriere/USGA
As the practice rounds continued earlier this week, the players also noticed.
“It was great to see them open this morning, especially behind the clubhouse,” said Jerry Maynor Jr., 40, of Nashville, Tenn. he told the USGA after his Friday warm-up session. “(Thursday) night, we saw them in the sky, and it took us a while to figure out what that was. There is a lot of light on the face here. You won’t be able to see the balls (balls) very well, which is not a big deal. But you can see the ball starting.”
It may just be the beginning. The PegaPod fleet includes drones that can produce 1 million lumens, enough to illuminate long drives from takeoff to landing, and beyond.
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