It is, by far, the worst thing you can hear/see when you drive to the first tee box at a golf course: “CPO.”

It means your day is going to be slightly less enjoyable than it otherwise would have been. It means there’s a course superintendent who will be cussed in absensia. It means you better suck it up or turn around and go home.

“Cart Path Only.” (My feet got a little sorer just typing those words.)

Day Four of the Summer of John #6 through the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail brought us to the northwest corner of Alabama in Muscle Shoals. It’s 36 holes along the beautiful Tennessee River. Unfortunately, my feet trod way too much of it Sunday.

As chronicled here at the Daily Happen, our group has fought the weather all trip, but Sunday was sunshine with about 600 percent humidity. But since it has rained all week, the CPO signs were up. It means that you can’t drive your cart to the ball on the fairway; you have to keep the carts on the concrete path all over the course.

We begged, we pleaded, we tried to bribe the starter to give us Louisiana folk a break, but it didn’t happen. The morning round, I could understand. It was still a little soft under our feet. But the afternoon round, after it had baked all day? Who is this sadist they call the course superintendent?

I don’t care what some golfers say, when it’s CPO, the thought goes through your head that you might want to try to hit the ball in the direction of the cart path to cut down on the walk across the fairway.

When you are on the “wrong” side of the fairway, you have to guess the yardage, grab 3 or 4 clubs to bring with you, walk 60 yards, hope you can find your ball, hope you have the right club, hope you don’t die from heat exhaustion and the hope you don’t shank it 30 yards because then you have to go BACK to the cart and do it all over again, only this time with a different club.

If your feet are going to be miserable, they might as well be at The Shoals, a great mixture of both links and parkland-style golf courses. I mentioned about seeing turkeys on a course a few days ago; on a previous trip here, we saw a peacock behind the 17th green. Who’s the pro here, Jack Hanna?

CPO couldn’t have been so bad because one member of our group shot 74. Sadly, that man wasn’t me. Happily, though, my feet did return to their original form on the way back to the hotel.

We wrap this baby up Monday with a trip to Philadelphia … (Mississippi) … to play Dancing Rabbit. Better not be CPO or somebody is going down.