Bright lights, big tourney: At the U.S. Mid-Am, drones illuminate the practice range

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a . . drone!

Seems they’re everywhere in golf these days, providing bird’s-eye views of Top 100 courses, buzzing low over competitions, driving Jon Rahm crazy on the tee.

This week, they filled yet another role.

At Independence Golf Club, the public facility outside Richmond, Va. that co-hosted the stroke-play portion of the 43rd U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship, two specialized drones were dispatched in 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 resident and former navigator with the U.S. Navy who turned his love for all things aviation into a high-flying business. PegaPod, the company he founded in 2020, is built around the bright idea of attaching powerful lights to drones. 

Developing a prototype took some time, but two years ago, Bostick secured a patent for his product, and business soon took off. Before long, PegaPod drones were shining light on everything from construction sites to baseball and soccer fields.

“We’re a really small company that’s just getting going,” Bostick said this week, in an interview with the USGA. “We see the potential in a lot of different areas.”

Giff Breed saw the potential, too. The president of Independence Golf Club, Breed had been collaborating closely with the USGA in preparation for the U.S. Mid-Am. Keen to give competitors ample time to warm up by illuminating the practice grounds one hour before sunrise, Breed went online to scour for alternative lighting options when he came across PegaPod. Breed reached to Bostick. In a flash, they had a deal, with PegaPod providing drones capable of producing 250,000 lumens each, enough to illuminate a football field. In the weeks leading up to the championship, test flights were conducted. Because the drones were flying lower than 400 feet, Federal Aviation Administration permission was not required. But the bright lights still attracted local attention. One neighbor wondered if they’d seen a UFO.

As practice rounds got underway earlier this week, players noticed, too. 

“It was really impressive to see them turned on this morning, especially from the back of the clubhouse,” Jerry Maynor Jr., 40, of Nashville, Tenn. told the USGA after his Friday warmup session. “(Thursday) night, we saw them in the sky, and it took us a little while to figure out what that was. It’s plenty of light on the surface here. You can’t quite see (the balls) land, which is not a big deal. But you can see the ball start.”

It may just be the beginning. PegaPod’s fleet includes drones that can generate 1 million lumens, enough to illuminate the longest drives from takeoff to landing, and beyond.