So my friend Richard and I play golf yesterday, getting a 7:16 a.m. tee time.
It's 38 degrees on the drive to Butternut Farm Golf Club, but the forecast is sunny.
We're enjoying the late-summer morning with a fall feel, the condensation from the night chill meeting the rising sun, the fairways and greens shimmering in fantastic dew-drop light.
That is until we see the group ahead of us.
As we're waiting to tee off on the par-4 third hole, the three guys in front of us have two carts pulled over to the right, a full ball-search exposition in play.
No biggie, we think. They'll punch out and be on their way.
Wrong.
After about five minutes, one of the guys drives his cart to the left side of the fairway and begins searching for his ball. So, yeah, this guy considered it more important to help his playing partners find their ball before he starts looking for his lost ball.
Meanwhile, one of the guys, dressed neatly in khakis and a fall-fashion blue shirt, stops in the middle of the fairway and begins tossing up blades of grass into the breeze-less sky to check wind conditions.
We wait. And wait. And wait.
Meanwhile, the twosome behind us has caught up with us and is lingering in the woods behind the tee box.
So now we're behind the tortoises and with the hares on our heels.
Stuck in a bad place.
Coming off the fifth tee, we get a closer look at the twosome behind us.
It's two women, and one of them looks just like Laura Davies (but it's not).
I say "good morning" to Davies and she grunts something undecipherable.
Whatever.
We have an enjoyable round of golf. We hit some great shots, some good shots and some bad shots. Good conversation. Beautiful day. Slow pace.
We wait for the three guys ahead of us and become more annoyed when we realize, at the 12th tee, that these guys are playing from the blues. So not only are they slow, but they think they play better than they play.
And the whole while, Davies and her playing partner (who looks like Juli Inkster) are right on our heels.
We hit our tee shots on the short par-4 14th and wait for the green to clear. We turn around and there are Davies and Inkster, standing at the women's tees, watching us.
Over the course of the round, we find we are more annoyed with Davies and Inkster than we are with the guys in front of us. We don't mind waiting; we don't like being stalked.
The topper is at the par-3 16th green. As I'm lining up a par putt, Davies says something very loud (perhaps to Inkster, perhaps to someone else), and I push my putt right, then miss the bogey putt and settle for a 5.
Annoying.
In the end, it's a beautiful day for golf and both Richard and I play OK.
But it was a morning feeling squeezed, caught in between the tortoises and the hares.