When you have been around for as long as the Cambridge University Golf Club – established 1869 – you pick up a few curious traditions.

There’s the annual winter dip in the sea when playing Royal Porthcawl in Wales.

Or the high stakes Dinner Match during Varsity week: the losing side has to foot the bill. And if a player wins all four of their games over a weekend, well that’s a mandatory squad night out to celebrate.

Fortunately some traditions have withered away.

“In the old days, if you did a particularly bad tee shot you had to walk to your ball with your trousers down, but we don’t enforce that anymore,” assures Blues captain and Natural Sciences student Ben Chumas (Clare, third year).

“Now you just pretend that never usually happens to you, while your teammate nods, smiles and looks the other way.” Golf may be best played in the summer months, but at Cambridge it’s a year-round endeavour.

The three teams – the first team (Blues) and Ladies who are both awarded Blues, and the men’s seconds (known as Stymies) – play every weekend during Michaelmas and Lent terms, both days, two matches each day.

That’s 72 chilly, blustery holes each weekend. Matches take the foursome format – a team of two taking alternate shots.

Fixtures, against established golf clubs rather than other universities, are largely in the south but can take place as far west as Wales and north into Yorkshire.

“We call it ‘serious fun’,” says Chumas.

“The format means you can chat to your opponent during a round, but it does mean you wake up at 4.30am on a Saturday, roll out the back of a Ford and grab a coffee and bacon roll before the first round.

Then we come back and have a big lunch. After you have spent a week on Pot Noodles it’s a good excuse to gorge yourself.” Chumas’s predecessor was Chloë Royston.

The Blues, usually with handicaps of five or below, first fielded a female player in 1986, but are still officially a men’s team, making Royston one of the few women to captain a men’s Blues team.

The ladies’ team have six players, while the Blues and Stymies are 12 apiece, drawn from a pool of more than 60. Why the Stymies?

Well, that dates back to an obsolete golf rule that meant you didn’t have to move your ball if it blocked – or ‘stymied’ – an opponent on the green.

“The Stymies was probably a derogatory nickname but is now fondly embraced,” says Chumas.

The Stymies even have a version of the Dinner Match.

“But they realised nobody really cares about dinner. So they call it the Beer Match and the losing team has to pay for the drinks.” Serious fun indeed