we played a little hookie last week and went to the Outback Pro-Am in Tampa. The greens were a little sunburned but because we went on Thursday, the crowd was sparse and the weather was Chamber of Commerce perfect. The access to the celebrities was startling to me, being as paranoid as I am about psycho stalkers in public places when there are celebs about.

There was one young woman who seemed to be following Stone Phillips around and I became fixated on her because she looked so odd and out of place. She wore a flowy sundress and high heels for god sake, and she had a clutch purse that she held tightly under her arm. She was alone (which I thought was weird) and she walked from one hole to the next and stood silently watching. She just seemed strange to me and I kept telling the GITB to keep an eye on her in case she made a sudden lunge for Stone (who, by the way, is skeletal and has NO ASS whatever but his swing is tres elegant). I kept thinking about the character in The Natural who seduced Robert Redford's character then pulled a tiny little Derringer out of her lady-like little purse and shot his ass for no apparent reason.

I was amazed by the fact that one could literally come into physical contact with the players.

Case in point: George Lopez broke a stumble on my right boob. He had hit a ball so wild that it left the fairway, crossed a cart path and landed on the opposite fairway. Lopez had to trot across the path, through the onlookers and NBC camera crew, and up a little rise to hit the ball back onto the correct fairway. It was a good hit: he made it up on the green and was closest to the pin. But as he jogged back down the rise, he stumbled a bit and I was leaning against a pine tree minding my own business as he stumbled right into my chest. The GITB was impressed that a boob-graze also served to prevent a spill for George. Hey, you know, whatever I can do to help. Oh, and George is way better looking in person than he is on TV.

Some of the big-name players did have a deputy sheriff walking with them from hole-to-hole, but others didn't. I was struck by the fact that some of the celebs were very patient with their fans. I observed some wonderful moments of kindness and sincerity. Lopez was very patient with every kid who asked him to sign a hat, a ball, or a shirt. There were busloads of inner-city kids who had obviously never been on a golf course before at the tournament that day, so they were everywhere and they didn't realize that when one is teeing off is not the time to shout "Yo! That's Ronde Barber!!!!!" But the celebs were accessible, relaxed and, as I said, super-nice. George stopped over and over to chat with the kids, Ronde too. Vince Gill smiled shyly and nodded his head as middle-age women stopped him as he walked the green to tell him how much they enjoyed seeing him in concert a few years back. As much as I think the celebrity-crazed culture we have is fucked, these guys were decent.