On a damp Friday night in May, on a nearly empty miniature golf course beside Highway 17 in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., a 36-year-old professional putter named Mike Brown was having no fun at all. It was barely 12 hours before the first round of the 2005 U.S. Open of professional miniature golf, and Brown was still cramming, hard. But for the fact that they turn the lights — and the volcano — off at midnight, he might have stayed all night. His practice partner Fred Stewart had been there all week, studying the breaks and the grain, but Brown was trying to learn all three courses on which the tournament would be played in just one day.