25 reasons you should be playing winter golf

6. Indoor golf

Simulators, anyone?

7. The joy of foursomes

It’s cold, really cold. It’s supposed to rain, turning to sleet, later. There’s a football match you’d like to catch the end of. Your son needs taking to a birthday party.

This is not the time of year to be messing about so choose your partner and try a bit of foursomes. You get all the exercise and all the competition in little more than half the time.

You’ll also be playing the most fiendish form of the game known to man and you’ll learn more about your character, and that of your partner, than in a week’s worth of team building. What’s not to love?

8. You get finished early

Any enjoyment gleaned from a sun-drenched, summer round is inevitably off-set by the fact it will take you at least an hour longer to get round.

While the fair-weather fourballs clog up the course on August Bank Holiday weekend, there’ll just be the die-hard winter warriors to contend with when the going gets tough.

This breed of golfer knows the score. It’s about getting out there early, getting it done and getting home before midday. You can usually get the nice early tee-time you want too. No matter what you do for the rest of the day, you’ll feel a sense of achievement.

9. No getting .1 back

Rest easy old son, the battering of the past few months is over. You can’t go up any more. You’re safe.

The season hasn’t panned out quite as you had anticipated; your back flared up through June and July and your putting never did get going. So it’s been a steady stream of 0.1s that have kept the scoreboard going, albeit in the wrong direction.

There was that one round, but then you only buffered after finishing 6-7. And then you dance round in 41 points in the first non-competitive round and you’re silently up in arms that you haven’t been slashed for your efforts.