A Guide to... Winter Golf, Part 1: Layering

If you are a golfer who happens to live in a semi-temperate climate, where courses stay open through winter, and your temperatures hover around the freezing point of water, you should consider yourself lucky once November rolls around.

Apologies to those of you in year-round temperate zones, you Californians and Floridians and the like, but in golf terms you are not as lucky as you think. With no offseason, you get no break from the epidemic of slow play or the mind-numbing douchebaggery of the super-casual set. In a lot of warm places the "offseason" is arguably among the worst times to play golf, with "Canadians" and other weirdos migrating in from the upper latitudes, clogging up courses and inflating greens fees.

Also let's face it, living in a winter-less climate dulls the senses. One of the great joys of life on Earth is experiencing that first flush of spring after a long dark winter, getting back on the course and feeling in one's bones the redemptive power of the sun awakening you and every other living organism around. Another of life's unlikely pleasures is that of coming back inside to a hot beverage, after a few hours of chasing pars in the cold. It is these such contrasts that remind you that you are alive, right?