Someone recently asked me, “Doesn’t it get boring to play the same course over and over again?”

It’s a simple question and a reasonable one that likely deserved a simple and reasonable answer. Rather I answered with a sweeping list of reasons why one never tires of playing the same course and delivered each with a passion and fervor that was just shy of pounding a fist on the make-believe podium.

Golf is a game of subtleties, I explained. The slightest adjustment in posture or swing can mean the difference between a birdie or bogey, and a simple misjudgment in club choice can change your partner’s response from “you’re dancing” to, one of my personal favorites, “there’s still some ham left on that hock.”

A course plays differently depending on the weather, course conditions, or even the time of day. A putt that breaks one way in the morning could break the other in the afternoon. On a windy day, a shot into the wind could play two clubs higher. As any New Englander will tell you, frost on the ground in late May isn’t out of the ordinary. In fact, sometimes the only thing keeping us off the course is that we can’t get the tee in the frozen ground. But colder weather keeps the ball from traveling as far. A wet course, or even dampness from morning dew, plays slower. On dry or low-cut fairways, the ball will roll further. And hacking a ball out of the rough is always tough, but wet rough, that’s a different story.

In this issue of New York Golf you’ll find many courses that never tire of repeated play, like those in our coverage of the state’s Donald Ross courses that stand out because of the subtleties in their design; or the park courses on Long Island’s tip that endure the changing winds and present constant challenges for golfers who return to them time and time again.

And this year, one cannot mention park courses with paying homage to Bethpage Black. In June, the Open returns to Bethpage, and you can be certain the course won’t play the same as it did in 2002. Times have changed, conditions have changed, and the players will change as well. Like any sport, you play differently with different people. I think most will agree that when teeing up on a familiar hole, there’s no better feeling than recalling the time when you birdied this hole, and no better cause for laughter than reliving the time your buddy boasted his new and improved swing, spent more time than Sergio Garcia addressing the ball, then shanked it right 15 yards off the tee.

So one may get frustrated with a course, irritated at the weather, or annoyed with the others in the foursome, but tired of playing the same course? A simple and reasonable answer to a simple and reasonable question: not ever.