Shine Little Glowgolf, Glimmer, Glimmer

There are only 18 Glowgolf locations currently operating -- in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin -- but I understand that more will be opening this year. It's a growing retail operation, something of a rarity in our time, and as such I took a professional interest in Glowgolf. One of these locations also happens to be a few miles from where I live, so I packed up Lilly, her friend Rachel, and Ann and went to play Glowgolf today.

Miniature golf's native habitat is outdoors, but some are tucked away indoors. (I need to play this basement course before it disappears.) All of the Glowgolf courses reside in malls. We went to the one at the Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale, Ill., on the upper level across from Cold Stone Creamery. Unlike the rest of the stores in the mall, the Glowgolf space isn't brightly lit with regular white light. Instead it's well illuminated with black lights, and the usual black-light effect of glowing shirts and shoelaces kicks in right away.

The golf balls glow too. They're infused with something that makes them a variety of pale colors under black light. The wood beams that define the holes are more brilliantly colored in green or orange or yellow. The walls are black but painted with brightly colored images -- undersea images in the case of the Stratford Square Glowgolf, including giant sea turtles and sea horses, octopi and schools of fish. Let's be charitable and call it vernacular art. That fits in the with the whole esprit de minigolf anyway. (See the Glowgolf site photo gallery for more decor in other locations.)

Otherwise it was a fairly straightforward 18-hole miniature golf course. Some holes had obstacles such as a windmill or lighthouse or a painted board with a small hole at the bottom; others were merely laid out challengingly. Lilly and her friend had a giggling good time in the way that 12-year-old girls do, hitting the balls well, or indifferently, or so badly that they wandered outside the bounds of the hole. Ann didn't know what to do with the club at first, since I don't think we've ever taken her to a miniature course before. Any younger than she is and your main worry is going to be the kid whacking things that aren't balls. I showed her how to hold the club and she took to it immediately. In fact she was the only one of us to hit a hole-in-one, there on the 14th hole.

Not that we were keeping track very closely. Or score either. My own favorite hole sported a loop-the-loop that rattled as the ball sped through. The hardest hole for everyone featured some small plastic trilithons anchored in the floor. I called it the Stonehenge hole, though it didn't really look like the monument (now that would have been interesting).

Buying a round of Glowgolf allows you to go around the course three times if you want. We went through more-or-less in order once, then played the holes we liked again a time or two. This was easy enough since the only other customers at the time were a young couple who seemed more interested in each other than the finer points of the game. The 18th hole has a sign that explains that it will take your ball for good, and not to play it unless you wanted to quit. It had two holes. Hit hole #1 and "win a prize." Hole #2 merely takes your ball. Only Lilly hit hole #1, which made a little light and noise when she did -- and so she got a card good for a free game.