The course in February is a different creature. The gorse has gone to bone, the fairways run hard and fast, and the greens — cut higher, rolling truer than you'd expect — ask a plainer, more honest question of your game than they ever do in July.
Most clubs shut the good greens for winter and shepherd you onto temporaries. We don't. The links was built for weather, and there is a great deal to be learned from a round played into a cold wind off the sea with the ball refusing to stop where you tell it.
Winter golf is the game with its manners stripped away. What's left is you, the ground, and the wind's opinion of your swing.
The honest ground
In summer the course forgives. Soft greens hold a poor approach; lush rough sits the ball up kindly. Come the cold, none of that. A firm green will punish a ball struck without thought, and reward, almost tenderly, one played low and true along the ground in the old style.
Our head greenkeeper has a phrase for it. The winter course, he says, doesn't lie to you. We think that's most of the reason to play it.
— From the greenkeeper's notes