Warming Golfers’ Hearts In the Dead of Winter

For over 20 years, golfers in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains region have proved they never get cold feet about playing the game in any conditions.

The Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau will welcome golfers of all ages, handicaps and body temperatures to the 2012 Ice Tee Tournament, a family-friendly nine-hole golf event held on the frozen surface of Lake Wallenpaupack. 

A lot of golf courses like to talk the talk about trying to stay open “year-round” to accommodate their most fanatic golfers. But few go to the extremes exercised by The Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau in Pennsylvania to keep interest in the game at a fever pitch for the golf resorts in its region, no matter how brutal the winter weather may become.

This winter, the Visitors Bureau will once again welcome golfers of all ages, handicaps and body temperatures to the 2012 Ice Tee Tournament, a family-friendly nine-hole golf event held on the frozen surface of Lake Wallenpaupack.

The 21st edition of the Ice Tee event will again be open to the public (the cost to participate is $15 per golfer in advance, or $20 at the door). Prizes and giveaways are provided, including awards for lowest score and closest to the pin shots.

Last year’s 20th-anniversary field included a record 352 golfers, each of whom was given a colored golf ball and scorecard with the “course layout.” Competitors were limited to their choice of two clubs, plus a putter, to play a course with “fairways” lined by recycled Christmas trees.

Tee times are every 10 minutes between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., with an awards ceremony scheduled for approximately 3 p.m.

The event’s organizers did show that even they aren’t completely die-hard at all costs about golf, though, attaching a “weather permitting” caveat to the announcement of this year’s tournament—and indeed, because  of the unusually moderate first part of winter in the East, the 2012 tournament, originally scheduled for January 29,  has been pushed back to the end of February.

Tags: 2012 Ice Tee Tournament issue Lake Wallenpaupack The Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau