When you are a twosome, and you show up at a busy golf course, you know you are going to be paired up with another group. That's just how it is. Usually the people you are paired with to make a foursome are great people - friendly, nice, not so good at golf but not so bad, and they are largely forgettable.
Alison and I had an experience at Disney's Magnolia Golf Course the other day that I don't think we'll forget - and that was Don's intention.
We had a 7:54 tee time on Tuesday, March 24 at the Magnolia Course. In the shadows of the Polynesian and Grand Floridian Resorts, the location for this PGA Tour course is great. The weather was perfect, and we could hear the sounds of the Magic Kingdom which was less than a mile away.
Our 2 partners we were paired with were two fellas by the name of "Don". These two gentlemen were going off as singles and were grouped, they didn't know each other. Young Don was about 50 years old, had a few kids, college aged, etc. He was a very quick golfer, very cordial and of average skill. He didn't take any practice swings, he actually may have been the fastest golfer I ever played with.
The tortoise to Young Don's Hare was Old Don. Old Don, aged about 70-75 or so, walked up to the first tee in his powder Blue "Member's Only" Jacket, pasty white thin legs, and a chronic mumbling problem as part of his character. Old Don had talked to the starter during my warmup and first tee shot, which was a disaster. I am pretty patient, but you gotta have etiquette, you just gotta.
Old Don got up and hit his first tee shot as badly as he'd hit about 120 of his 130 shots all day. As a matter of fact, on the 17th fairway, on the way up to the green, he hit a really good chip and mumbled, "that was my only good shot of the day!" Nobody disagreed.
Aside from Old Don's disasterous play, was his extremely quirky personality. He had his own set of golf rules. If he didn't like where the ball was, it was an "unplayable lie" and you could move it 2 club lengths with no penalty. If he wanted to tee off from the women's tees, he would. Old Don was from Philadelphia, playing with rented clubs, and seemed to be out place.
I couldn't help but think that wherever he golfed back at home, someone must have told him, "Don, you play painfully slow. You are a terrible golf cart driver, and you really need to curb the mumbling to yourself, its distracting."
But then, on the 18th green, after he talked through Alison's bogey putt, I realized why maybe nobody has said anything to him at all about those problems, and where his immunity from reality may stem from.
So the last ball drops in the hole, we shake and thank him for a fun round, which it was...he was as fun to be around in a "did he really just do that?" kind of way as he was annoying...He looks at the 3 of us and says, "So here is a story you can take back home to your friends," (I am taking him up on that offer as we speak) "You can tell everyone that you golfed with Tina Fey's Dad."
WHAT?! HIM!? I could write for hours how her growing up with this man could have formed her comedy - but what baffles me is that I have always said that no female comedian or writer has been able to tap into the male sense of humor like Tina Fey - and to know that Don Fey, from Philadelphia, Temple Graduate, was her template for this kind of thing.
Alison told him how much we loved her, how funny we thought she was...we knew she was in Disney World while we were there, as it was floating around that she was in the parks. He told us she paid for the round for him, I can imagine the conversation, "Dad, why don't you go play a 5 hour round of golf while the rest of us do something boring," then her looking at hte rest of her party, fist pumping and winking, that they are free of Crazy Don for the morning.
He wanted to give us a story, and he gave us one. I guess it just cements, as everyone already knows, celebrities are completely normal people with parents as wacky as everyone else's. Wacky Don Fey.
