Rick Shefchik and I played at 35 degrees Wednesday, in stiff winds of a northerly variety. (Two other members of this esteemed Discussion Group -- who shall remain, mercifully, nameless! -- declined the opportunity to join us.)
It was ... almost too cold -- because of the wind. During the rare lulls, we were perfectly comfortable.
But even at its coldest, I think it's fair to say that we had a blast. (No pun intended.)
We dressed for the weather, and we kept moving. There weren't many practice swings. There was no looking at putts from all sides. There was no honoring of "honors" on the tee; whoever got there first teed off first.
There was very little agonizing about wayward shots.
That's a really fun way to play -- impossible on most public courses in most "reasonable" weather conditions. Rick and I look forward to it, annually.
The actual course conditions were interesting: Everything except the trout stream was very firm (i.e., frozen) and very fast -- except the greens, which were frozen-firm but quite slow. Almost all of them had to bounced-onto to be held. Many of them were littered with very firm Canada goose turds.
We ended the day hitting about two dozen old, tired balls from the 10th tee onto a frozen lake left of the 10th fairway -- aiming at a little pumphouse on the far side, somewhere between 250 and 300 yards away. We fired driver after driver at the pumphouse, and listened to the wonderful sound of a golf ball ping-ping-pinging over the ice.
We both hit a bunch of very fine drives -- possibly our last drives of the year. It occurred to us that we might benefit from envisioning such a small target all the time.
Modesty forbids my reporting which of us finally hit the pumphouse. Four bounces, I think.
------------ Addendum: Golf, we decided, was "sport" that day -- perhaps never more so than during Pumphouse Time.