On a Saturday in mid-June we loaded a van with lamps and drove out to the fairways of the Summer Green Cup. The 2021 edition was played over a single long day, eighteen holes from first mist to late afternoon, and the club had asked us for one thing: keep the light going after the sun gives up.

Golf has its own grammar of light. Morning haze on the green, hard noon shadows, the long gold of six o'clock. Our hour begins when that gold runs out. Along the clubhouse terrace we set a row of portable lamps, low and warm, and between the pines at the edge of the ninth fairway we hung small points of light, just enough to hold the shape of the trees against the dark.

The hour after play

Players came in with sunburnt necks and unfinished arguments about the fourth hole. Dinner ran long on the terrace, the speeches stayed short, and our lamps travelled from hand to hand down the tables while the sky went from blue to ink. Someone asked what the light was made of. We said: patience, glass and a little wire. Almost true.

A tournament ends at the eighteenth hole. The evening after it has no final green.

By midnight the fairways were dark again and the van was full of empty crates. We left the pines their small constellation until morning, when the club took the lamps down one by one. Light visits. It arrives, it stays a while, it goes home with whoever carried it.