The sun has been up for 10 minutes, cresting the mountains in East County and now peeking through the pillars of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge.

John Higgins takes a swig of coffee, looks at his watch and retrieves a rusty metal cage from a shelf. Inside are wooden balls numbered one to 75.

SEAN M. HAFFEY / Union-Tribune Against the backdrop of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, golfers (from left) L.B. Rickards, Ken Trude, Bill Whaley and Sam Browning walked the greens not long after dawn at the Coronado Golf Course, which averages 103,000 rounds per year.

“All right, step on up,” Higgins says. “Let's get it done.”

The two courses at Torrey Pines may be closed to prepare to host the U.S. Open this week. But America's finest golf city rolls on, like a ball smacked down an endless fairway.

This is how the day begins at Coronado Golf Course, how it has begun since the course opened 51 years ago. People line up at the starter's booth. A metal cage is twirled and it spews out a wooden ball.

The lottery is for tee times two days in advance, but only for times between 6 and 7 a.m. Later tee times have been gobbled up by advance reservations; Coronado, with green fees a steal at $25, averages a whopping 103,000 rounds per year. Higgins will pull out balls for an hour, then start assigning the sacred tee times.

On this day, he has 22 available. Half go to those lucky enough to draw a wooden ball with a low number, the other half to those lucky enough to get through by phone.

He starts assigning tee times at 7 a.m. By 7:07, they're gone.

“Now I have to listen to the whining for the rest of the day,” says Higgins, who has worked at Coronado for 12 years. “That's the one thing about this job I'll never understand. If you get a tee time, great. If you don't, it's not the end of the world. Go do something else.

“But I've never heard such whining. You have no idea how seriously people take their golf around here.”

9:08 a.m., Carlsbad

Sean Toulon raises both arms and points.

SEAN M. HAFFEY / Union-Tribune (From left) Jeley Garcia, 7, DoShone Smith, 8, and Christian Flores, 8, at Colina Park.

“Callaway is over there,” he says. “Titleist is right over there.”

Toulon is the executive vice president for product and brand creation at TaylorMade-adidas Golf, and he is sitting in his second-floor office at the company's lush Carlsbad headquarters. Beneath him, the production line has been operating since 5 a.m. In another area, mechanical engineers stare at computer screens, dreaming up the clubs and balls players will be using in 2013.

TaylorMade became the first big club company to move to Carlsbad, relocating in 1982 from McHenry, Ill., to take advantage of the aerospace industry for club design, the foundries for raw materials and the weather for year-round testing. Others quickly followed, and now 40-odd golf companies have offices in the county.

Callaway, Titleist, Cobra, Aldila – they're all here.

This is great news for the golfer. Proximity has bred fierce competition, which has stretched the sport's technological envelope as few imagined.

It also is what separates San Diego County from other golf meccas. Other places have postcard weather, or a plethora of courses, or a legacy of championship golfers. But where else can you gaze out from a course and see the company where your clubs were designed and manufactured?

“It's very competitive, and the fact that we're all so close to each other only intensifies it,” Toulon says. “The bottom line is, we have to do our job better than they do.”

11:02 a.m., Carlsbad

Masao Sugimoto has a problem.

SEA OF GREENS: FACTS, FIGURES ABOUT GOLF IN SAN DIEGO THE COURSES There are 92 facilities with courses in San Diego County. They range from the nine-hole, 601-yard Spindrift course in La Jolla to the 7,628-yard Torrey Pines South, which has a single hole measuring 614 yards. The fees range from $10 for nine holes at Sun Valley in La Mesa to the $350,000 initiation fee at The Bridges of Rancho Santa Fe. THE PLAYERS Junior golf programs have produced an unbroken chain of accomplished players, from Gene Littler and Billy Casper to Craig Stadler, Scott Simpson, Phil Mickelson (right), Chris Riley and Pat Perez. USC's Jamie Lovemark, a Torrey Pines High alum, won the 2007 men's NCAA individual title; UCLA junior Tiffany Joh, a Rancho Bernardo High alum, was runner-up for the 2008 NCAA women's crown. THE TOURNAMENTS Torrey Pines hosts the annual Buick Invitational, and the Junior Worlds have been played on area courses for decades. Tiger Woods won a record six Junior World titles in San Diego, including the 10-and-under division twice at the Presidio Hills par-3 course in Old Town. La Costa Resort and Spa hosted pro tour events for 38 years. THE TEACHERS There are close to 100 teaching facilities in San Diego County, offering everything from group classes to individual lessons to multiday academies. Kip Puterbaugh's Aviara Golf Academy has been rated in Golf Magazine's top 25 teaching schools for 14 years. THE INDUSTRY More than 40 golf-related companies are based in San Diego County, most of them within a pitching wedge of each other in Carlsbad. They design, manufacture and distribute an estimated 75 percent of the clubs and balls in most players' bags, as well as some of their apparel. Among them: Titleist, Callaway, TaylorMade, Odyssey, Cobra, Aldila and Ashworth. THE WEATHER With an average high temperature of 70 degrees, minimal rainfall and mild humidity, there may be no better climate suited for year-round golf. Most courses stay open from dawn to dusk, 365 days a year. – MARK ZEIGLER

He's a superb golfer who carries a rare plus-one handicap, meaning his average score is one under par. But recently Sugimoto has been pushing the ball right ever so slightly, particularly with his longer irons, and he can't figure out what's wrong.

To fix it, he has come to a picturesque driving range tucked among million-dollar homes: Kip Puterbaugh's Aviara Golf Academy.

“We've taught people from Moscow, from the Czech Republic, from Finland, you name it,” says Bob Knee, an instructor and sales manager. “We've had people from just about every corner of the world. Last year we spent two weeks in Beijing teaching government officials and businessmen.”

Tour pros Chris Riley, Scott Simpson and Larry Mize take lessons there, as do many of the area's top juniors. So have LaDainian Tomlinson, Marshall Faulk and Jerry West. So have Dennis Quaid and Dennis Hopper.

It's not cheap – a three-day school costs $1,795 – but people swear by it.

“The best,” says Sugimoto, 41.

Instructor Ted Norby watches Sugimoto hit a few balls, then tweaks Sugimoto's hands, rolls his wrist just so, adjusts his shoulders. Sugimoto begins pounding balls down the range, high and straight.

“Luckily for job security, the swing never stays the same that long,” Norby says.

1:23 p.m., Rancho Santa Fe

A $110,000 red Maserati exits the front gate at The Bridges of Rancho Santa Fe. A Mercedes-Benz convertible enters, followed by a white Lexus.

Out goes a $120,000 Mercedes. In comes a $75,000 Jaguar.

There are 92 facilities with golf courses in San Diego County, totaling 1,701 holes and 546,260 yards. That's 310 miles of fairways and greens, or enough to stretch from San Diego to Phoenix.

None is more exclusive than The Bridges, a 540-acre residential community in the rolling hills of Rancho Santa Fe – so exclusive that the golf club denied a request by a reporter to visit for this story.

“It's a policy of our club to keep things private,” a spokeswoman says.

On most days, only a handful of people play the sprawling 6,901-yard layout that features a pair of 285-foot suspension bridges. The club's total membership is believed to be about 250.

The initiation fee to join: $350,000.

At Coronado, where a $930 card gets you unlimited play for 12 months, that would buy you golf through the year 2385.

3:43 p.m., City Heights

SEAN M. HAFFEY / Union-Tribune In Carlsbad, at Kip Puterbaugh's Aviara Golf Academy, instructor Ted Norby (right) helps Frank Flanagan position his back swing. The work area is equipped with cameras to help teacher and student analyze elements of Flanagan's swing that need to be tweaked. Three days of instruction at the school cost $1,795.

SEAN M. HAFFEY / Union-Tribune Mission Bay Golf Course is the only course in the county illuminated for night golf. Kirk Triplett, who has won three PGA Tour events, and son Conor were some of the last players on the course.

Rick Johnson is teaching his beginning class to inner-city youths at the Pro Kids Golf Academy at Colina Park. He finishes by saying: “When you play golf, you don't want to make a lot of noise. You want to be quiet. Golf's tough enough as it is.”

They leave the classroom to practice chip shots on the course. Johnson tries to give a few pointers; his voice is drowned out by the police helicopter pounding overhead.

Pro Kids began 15 years ago as a way to bring golf to children who otherwise would not be exposed to the sport. Last year, 2,175 youths ages 7 to 17 were registered, some coming as many as 330 days.

Once they pass the introductory class, they begin accumulating “points” for getting good grades, doing community service and attending educational seminars at the learning center above the pro shop. With points, they can buy equipment and rounds of golf at the renovated par-3 Colina Park Golf Course, a fenced oasis in inner-city San Diego.

The list of donors is as long as it is impressive, Tiger Woods being one. There's also a “home and home” program with a dozen area country clubs, where their members come to Colina Park to play a round with the kids one day and the kids go to the country club the next.

One of the participating country clubs: The Bridges.

9:23 p.m., Mission Bay

The sun set more than an hour ago, leaving the palm trees to cut a ghostly silhouette against the darkening sky.

No problem. The lights are on at Mission Bay Golf Course, an 18-hole, 2,719-yard, par-58 layout near Interstate 5.

Says starter Michael Baxter: “You get everything from the beginner who's never played a round of golf in their life to the senior who can't play the long courses to the college kids out here just to have a good time.”

And you may get a PGA Tour pro.

Putting out at the 18th hole is Kirk Triplett, who has won three PGA Tour events and will miss next week's U.S. Open while recuperating from shoulder surgery. Triplett's family is on vacation from Arizona. He and his two sons decided to sneak in a round after a day at the zoo.

“A place like this, that's what golf in San Diego is all about,” Triplett says. “Everybody plays golf here, no matter what they do. It's not just for the rich. Golf is just part of the lifestyle.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jessica Hamilton and Stephen Benedict putt out. They're the last two on the course – she took him there for his birthday – and as they walk toward the clubhouse, thunk, the lights go out.

It's 9:37 p.m. Only eight more hours until the line starts at Coronado.