Some hard starts?

[BennyLava]

Every once in a while, my 2009 automatic sedan will have a hard start. Where the car will continue cranking for another 3 or 4 seconds, after it should. But its doing this because the engine isn't starting. This only happens about once every 20 starts. But its really noticeable and I was wondering if anyone here might know what causes this. I was thinking maybe fuel pump, but this has been going on for so long now, that I assume the fuel pump would have died a natural death by now if indeed it was the problem. Then I thought maybe it could possibly be the fuel filter needing changed, but I read here on the forums that the filter doesn't really ever need to be replaced unless it clogs from bad gas and then the car just won't start.

I'd like to address this issue before whatever the real problem is, finally gets worse and I get stranded somewhere. The car just takes longer to start, but its so long that you know that there is something going wrong that needs to be fixed.

Forgot to mention, the car has 187k miles on it.