Back in my younger days, a weekend of golf at the beach with the guys meant early morning tee times after a late night out on the town.

You probably won't believe this, ladies, but most of the time, golf is the last thing on a man's mind when he goes on a trip like that. The younger men, anyway. Under 40 at least.

But you'll be relieved to know that 99.9 percent of the time, those 'other' things on their minds never materialize.

Those days are ancient history for me. I haven't been on a weekend golf outing with the boys in years.

Until this past weekend. I and a couple of others from Gaffney played in a golf tournament at Pawley's Island and the four of us shared a three-bedroom condo.

The biggest decision we had to make was which two were going to share a bedroom.

That was easily settled when one of our group 'volunteered' to sleep on the sofa.

Turns out he made a good decision because the mattresses in the bedrooms were slightly uncomfortable. Did you note the hint of sarcasm in 'slightly?'

We never even got close to a late night out. We did stay up until 10 one night, but that was because we didn't get back to the condo after dinner until 9:45.

The reason we were so late eating was because we didn't finish our practice round until 8.

Whenever I go away for a weekend with my wife and another couple or two, the girls always take care of buying whatever supplies we'll need after we check in. Coffee, sugar, cream, snacks, etc.

We didn't think of that until after we had eaten dinner that first night, but found a convenience store near the entrance to our condo.

They didn't have a small container of sugar, so I bought a five pound bag. I did remember to pack it when we left and that's the first thing my wife commented on when I arrived home.

"Why'd you get such a big bag of sugar?"

The second thing she commented on was the big container of Creamora.

"Why'd you get that?"

I like canned milk in coffee.

The convenience store did not have canned milk. But that worked out fine, because one of our group had requested Creamora, so he was happy. I let him think I bought it just for him when in reality I had no intention of getting anything other than canned milk.

That's another thing about going off with a bunch of guys. We're all used to different things. I like canned milk. He likes Creamora.

The next morning, they complained about the coffee I bought. It was 'oily' looking. Then they complained because I had not bought any coffee filters.

"You could have used a paper towel. I do that all of the time."

One of them told me earlier that we didn't need paper filters because the coffee maker had a plastic mesh filter that would work just fine.

Now that I think about it, he was the one complaining about the grounds in the coffee.

One of them snored. One of them talked a lot. One of them (my partner) dressed in Clemson orange on the day I dressed in my Gamecock colors.

His wife told him over the phone that what he had on did not match. He's color blind and I can understand that, but how could she tell what he looked like over the phone? He asked me and I told him he looked just fine. I agreed with his wife and urged him to change. Not because he didn't match, but because we clashed. He wore the orange outfit anyway.

The next day one of our group wore denim shorts to the golf course.

The starter sent him home to change. No denim allowed on the fancy smancy courses at the beach. Never mind those denim shorts cost him $65 and had a designer label sewn to the back pocket.

He had asked us if we thought they were OK before we left and we all assured him they were.

One of the wives would have known better.

But they weren't there.

I did enjoy the trip, but it'll be a while before I go on another without the wives. Us guys (my age and older, at least) can manage fine by ourselves on the golf course, but we need a little oversight in other areas.

Cody Sossamon (cody@gaffneyledger.com) is publisher of The Gaffney Ledger.