Every now and again I am reminded why I started this blog in the first place. Miller and I are at Shady Oaks at 6:30 this morning hoping to beat the rush.

While waiting for a threesome to finish teeing off, a guy asks if he could join our group. The guy looked like the average golfer with a pretty well used bag.

Now Miller and I usually say no those types of requests because we play deliberate, methodical golf and don’t often have the time or inclination to add another factor to the equation. We had already decided not to play an official round and we had a little extra time and decided what the hell.

He turned out to be the worst person we could have been paired with. He was loud, like every thing he said was loud, then he got louder when he got himself worked up. He had a story for every hole, every basket position, every tournament ever. He very well have been really intoxicated at 6:30 in the morning.

Then he started telling jokes. At first they were juvenile puns. Then they became progressively more racist. Finally he crossed the line and I calmly said that the jokes were racist and they stopped for a while.

He told incredibly inappropriate personal stories. Asked to play for cash then didn’t come off the money when he got crushed.

We decided we didn’t want the money – it was only a dollar. But it would have been a dirty dollar. We played fast to get it over with and scored pretty well anyway.

Kinda wish I had put a stop to it. Also kinda happy we just rode it out; he may have been the kinda guy to get upset if we had bailed.

I felt like apologizing to every golfer we came across. Pleading for forgiveness in my head, “I’m sorry we don’t know this guy at all.”

Unfortunately, these guys color the impression the rest of the world has of us. Fortunately, there are a lot of other guys working to make it better.