Backed by the Blowfish: Clarissa Childs is one of the rare Futures golfers who has the luxury of having a sponsor. But she won’t be wearing a Nike swoosh or Adidas stripes on her clothing or gear.

She’s the only golfer who can claim the rock band Hootie and the Blowfish as her sponsor.

She became acquainted with the band because she played golf at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C., the same town Hootie and the Blowfish originated from.

“They’re just good friends of mine. I play golf with them a lot in Columbia,” Childs said.

Hootie and the Blowfish reached superstar status in 1994 when their album “Cracked Rear View” sold 15 million copies. They haven’t done that well since, but they’re still touring.

Childs said the band members still kept in touch and helped her out with her expenses.

“Any kind of help is huge, because we have an enormous amount of expenses,” Childs said.

They usually don’t see each other on the road because their tour schedules rarely intersect, but they still meet up and play an occasional round in South Carolina.

Childs said she usually came out on top.

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Hi-tech heroics: It’s difficult to reap huge cash bonuses on the Futures Tour, so players like Stephanie Bell sometimes find other ways to make money.

For Bell, that means coming out a few days ahead of the rest of the tour to examine the courses and publish her findings to sell to other golfers.

It’s rare to spot a player without one of Bell’s bright orange notebooks.

Contained within those pages are detailed diagrams of each hole for players to determine exactly how far they are from the pin from any location on the hole.

Bell does this by placing a reflector on each green to measure distances with a laser from every landmark — trees, mounds, sprinkler heads — on each hole.

So how long does this take?

“It’s about a 50-hour process. It takes us all day to laser the course, and then I sit down and draw the holes the way they look, even though I’m not an artist,” Bell said.

But the diagrams are easy to interpret, and it’s common to find players and caddies checking the book after each shot.

She sells each book for $15, making it a profitable enterprise for Bell.

Sarah Kenyon, a golfer from Australia, said she relied heavily on her copy to learn more about courses than she had time to research on her own.

“We only get here on Monday, and it’s already done,” Kenyon said. “When we do our practice rounds, we check things and add things for ourselves, but it’s absolutely spot-on.”

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Have you ever seen rain?: Relief could be coming for the several players who have indicated that the greens at Eagle Bend were unusually fast. Heavy rains overnight, along with the light rain Saturday afternoon, should slow the greens down.