To the average golfer, I think, too cold means less than 50 degree with a breeze. For the dew breakers -- typically retired folks who are course members -- I think too cold is closer to 40 degrees with a breeze.

For those who play a few times a month, I think, a drizzle might prompt a decision to stay at home. For the regulars I think a steady shower is needed before the plug is pulled on a tee time.

But in a tough-man golf tournament, all these ugly conditions are welcomed with open arms.

Such tournaments, like the FrostBite Open scheduled for Dec. 3-4 at Wendell Country Club, are designed for golfers to try their hand at battling the elements.

While you can't predict rain, and certainly wouldn't want it to rain if it the title FrostBite proved true, you would imagine a round of golf in the first week of December would present a challenge with regard to temperature.

Of course, in the last full week of November, it is 65 degrees outside and I am wearing flip flops.

I played in a tough-man tourney at River Ridge Golf Club a couple years ago and Mother Nature was not kind, nor was the greenskeeper.

It became evident conditions were going to be problematic when my fingers went numb on the second hole. It doesn't help that 90 percent of shots taken on the course are with a steel-shafted club.

Grips are not reliable hand-warming devices.

In addition to the fact a fat shot rang through me like an off-centered baseball off a wood bat, the course was a monster that day. The greens were like concrete and the flags placed in the most ridiculous sucker positions on the sides of slopes or a matter of feet from the front fringe directly behind a water hazard.

Sure, it took some constant self reminding why I out there and that the conditions were actually the reason I was playing golf -- that I wasn't a complete nut case.

But at the end of the day I have to admit when my friends asked what I did that morning it felt great to say, "I played golf." It was truly a great experience. I hit shots battling 30 mph winds in close-to-freezing temperatures that would have impressed a Scot and surely made me proud.

Since my last name is not Nature and I'm certainly no meteorologist, I have no clue what conditions those competing in the FrostBite Open will encounter.

But I do see this tournament as a win-win situation for those who sign up.

If Wendell Country Club is an ice block that weekend players will have to endure the weather, but will have plenty of great stories to tell once back in front of a wood stove.

If the FrostBite turns out to be all bark and no "bite," it will merely be another fair-weather superball event.

That being said, what do you have to lose?