By Jim BrightersGolf Editor
Philadelphia, PA (Sports Network) -

Here are some rantings from the world of professional golf.

GOLF OUTING FUN

Some of my favorite columns I've written have not even been about professional golf. A few years back, I wrote a piece about my first time out for the season and last year, I told the tale of my playing in a golf outing. In 2006, we get the best of both worlds as my first time out this year was at a golf outing and now I shall write about it.
We're playing at the Gary Tinneny Memorial Golf Outing, run by the Northwest Veterans Group. It's a really great group of guys and this is a tough ticket to get. It's so crowded that we play in fivesomes with two groups per hole. It's great to show that much support as this outing benefits a scholarship to St. Joseph's University. It also makes the pace of play rival an arthritic turtle.

Let's meet the fivesome. Myself, Matt (owns a local bar which becomes important shortly), his cousin Pete (a school teacher who has called out of work the same Monday in May for five consecutive years), Jay (our 'A' player according to Pete), and Jimmy (hurting from a hangover as he tells me on the way he got drunk twice the day before.)

We open on the ninth hole and by the time we reach the ninth fairway, Matt has called his bar and convinced the cook to deliver a case of beer to the course. Three holes later, Jimmy and myself are transferring a cooler through a hole in the fence into our golf cart.

In the meantime, we birdied two holes in a row during that time frame and I didn't think we'd be two-under at any point in the round. Quickly we've formed a strategy where I putt first and Pete picked up on my read to birdie 10, then I rolled in a 15-footer at No. 11.

We're cruising along, not threatening bogey and even look strong for a birdie at the 16th. Unfortunately, the first four of us missed on our putts from six feet and yours truly walked after his before it violently lipped out of the hole. Jay, our 'A' player, is last to go and in the middle of his backswing, Matt decided it would be the best time to start a cell-phone conversation. He yelled the word 'yo' so loudly that people in Camden were looking over at him.

The wait for 17 was over 30 minutes, but it's okay because the two groups behind us are friends. It's a par-three and it's longish and with an audience I hit one straight up in the air. We make another par, but birdie 18. It nearly came with a price as our friend in the group behind hit a bomb that flew under our cart. We left them a message that we didn't appreciate it as Jay stuck the ball on top of an empty bottle.

Empty bottles were starting to become the norm. Not from me. I have a theory about drinking and golfing. I don't do the latter well enough that I could overcome losing my faculties from drinking. The remaining members of the group are going through them pretty quickly and it leads to the single funniest moment in golf history.

After an odd encounter with a homeless person, a debate on politics and Pete accusing Matt's brother of looking like Michael Stipe from R.E.M., we make a mess of the par-three fourth. Our best ball might either be short and right of the green with some tree trouble or left of the putting surface on a rocky path.

Remember we have fivesomes so Jay, Matt and Pete are splitting a cart. Pete is riding on the back of the cart going to the fourth green and falls off. It wouldn't have been as funny if he'd have fallen right to the ground, but Pete held on to the cart and was being dragged. Then he tried to run along with the cart and he looked like a cartoon character. We're uncontrollably laughing and in the process, make our first bogey.
We parred out the rest of the way and on the eighth hole, our last, I get introduced to a Gary Tinneny tournament tradition. A keg stand. You get held up and chug beer. I do that because with only one hole, I figure why not?

We head back to a nearby Veteran's Lodge with beer, food, darts, pool and shuffleboard. What's especially touching is that the quickest way to silence a crowd of drunk guys is to start talking about what the day is really about. They talk about the scholarship and even commemorate 20 young men who died in Vietnam. It's interesting to see the reactions of these men from something so powerful, especially for someone as young as me, who did not live that era.

Kind of puts the day in perspective, although it was quite a day.