You know you’re getting old when the word “fantasy” triggers thoughts of fantasy golf. And I don’t mean fantasy golf as in “18 holes with Natalie Gulbis in a bikini.”

What I’m talking about is Yahoo Fantasy Golf.

You know, my dad always used to tell me to enjoy life’s little thrills, because the big thrills are too few and far between.

And these days, Fantasy Golf is the biggest little thrill in my life.

Each week you pick two A players, four B players, and two C players from the field, and you activate one, two, and one, respectively. Then you hope that all your guys make the cut. If they do, you can switch back and forth, angling for the best players on a given day. If they don’t, your choices are considerably more constrained.

Most of the time, I choose wrong, and switch poorly.

But this past weekend at the Nissan Open, well, let’s just say that it was one of those little thrills I thrive on.

With a total of 225 points for the week, including bonus points for picking and activating the top three finishers – Charles Howell III, Phil Mickelson, and Robert Allenby, respectively – I did better than “Homers card,” the team name of the doofus who’s leading the entire Yahoo field this season with 1,297 points. (He had a paltry 212 points. Bah!)

But lest my “little thrill” blows up into a giant ego, I should note that my team, “Bad Swing-Thoughts,” is still 148 points behind “Homers card,” in 835th place overall. And my weekly total was 22 points below the 11 teams that tied for the weekly win.

Finally, and most importantly, though, my overall rank is nowhere near cracking the leader board. It’s not even within a long par-5 of my brother-in-law’s accomplishment last season, when he finished the year in the top 500.

Now, if you don’t play fantasy golf, this all probably sounds utterly pathetic. I would point out, however, that Yahoo’s three in-house “experts” are currently in 21,462nd, 25,143rd, and 44,387th place. Remember, these are the “experts.”

I do not know exactly how many people play Yahoo Fantasy Golf, but as of today, my friends, I am kicking tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of asses.

Little thrills, indeed.

If Natalie gets wind of this, she might just give me a call after all.