As I write this article the annual “fall back” time change, when we set our clocks back an hour and return to Standard Time, has just occurred. Since daylight is important to golfers, I thought that I would take a look at the concept and practice of changing our clocks, with an emphasis (of course) on how the practice affects golf.
North vs southThe natural changing of the seasons affects the length of the day (“day” for our purposes meaning the hours of daylight), so changes in the times when the sun rises and sets, and therefore the length of the day, are familiar to all of us. The amount of change which occurs is dependent upon latitude—how far north or south the location is: for example, between the longest days of summer and the shortest days of winter the length of the day changes by anywhere from about six and a quarter hours in northern-tier states like Michigan to three and a quarter hours in south Florida.
Of course, setting our clocks ahead an hour or back an hour doesn’t affect the length of the day—it just changes where within the artificial construct of our 24-hour day the sunlit period falls. There are many reasons why the switch between Standard Time and DST was put in place, but the history behind all that is beyond the scope of this article.
Early to rise – but not too early
Using my location, San José, California, as an example, and looking at a table of sunrise and sunset times downloaded from the U.S. Naval Observatory’s website, I see that on the longest day of the year in 2022—June 21st—we enjoyed 14 hours and 45 minutes of direct sunlight. (Theoretically at least, since the sunrise and sunset times are based on a flat horizon like you would find at sea, or in Kansas, and we have hills both to the east and the west of us.) Thanks to DST, sunrise on June 21st, 2022 was at 5:47 a.m.—pretty early for most folks, but without the clock change that we made earlier in the year, on the 13th of March, sunrise would have been at 4:47 a.m.—which is really early.
This illustrates the biggest selling point of DST for most people: the one-hour shift of the clock positions the daylight hours in a more usable portion of the clock day, eliminating sunlit time that occurs upwards of two hours before most people get out of bed, and giving us more time with sunlight after we come home from work.
For golfers this mostly means more opportunity to play a round, if even only a short one, after work on those long summer days. This is of course an upside for golf course operators, who see a boost in work-week business (as written about in this Golfweek article from last summer: How golf plays a role in the battle for ‘locking the clock’ on Daylight Time.) Also of interest, but not mentioned in that article, is the fact that since tee times start at the first usable light—as much as 30 minutes before sunrise, depending upon your location—DST carries an added bonus for those golf-course employees who have to be at the course well before the first golfers tee off.
One sticking point in the argument for DST is Arizona, certainly a state where golf is a big deal, but the one state in the contiguous 48 states which does not use DST (except for the part of Arizona which comprises the Navajo Nation, which occupies an area equal to about 1/5 of the total area of Arizona, in the northeast corner of the state, where DST is used.) The rationale that is presented for this contrarian position is energy savings – not because of lighting, which is often cited as a pro-DST factor, but because of air conditioning.
Keeping the clock day synchronized with the solar day (within the construct of a time zone which spans some 5.5º degrees of latitude from one side of the state to the other), with the daylight hours positioned earlier in the clock day, is supposed to save energy and money by reducing the use of air conditioning in the harsh Arizona summers. Questions of the effectiveness of this approach aside (color me skeptical—Palm Springs, California, is hot, too…), this skews the operating principle for golfers in the Grand Canyon State toward playing golf early in the morning, before work, in the summer.
East/west matters, too
Even within the same time zone, however, your position east or west makes a difference. Only along a specific line of longitude in each time zone will clock time conform exactly to solar time (when Standard Time is in effect, of course); points east of that line will experience an earlier sunrise (and set), while points west will see later sunrise/set times. For example, in Caliente, Nevada, which lies at roughly the same latitude as my home in San José, CA, but is at the far eastern edge of the Pacific Time Zone, sunrise and sunset occur approximately 30 minutes earlier than they do in San José.
Wintertime is the test
And what about fall and winter? I realize that the part of the year during which Standard Time is in effect is not “golf season” in much of the country, but in twenty of the fifty states in the union (plus southern Utah), golf season, as defined by the USGA’s handicap reporting period, is year-round. DST or no, even with favorable weather, fitting in a round even as far south as the Miami area, where there are around 11 hours of usable daylight in the shortest days of the year, with sunrise at around 7 a.m. and sunset at 5:30 in the evening, can be tough.
Actually, it is this time of the year, during the 127 day period—or about 1/3 of the year—that is roughly centered about the winter solstice, that opponents of year-round DST focus on. In the more northerly states the sun doesn’t rise until nearly 8 a.m. in midwinter, around the solstice, setting at 5 p.m.; if DST were in effect it would mean 9 a.m. sunrises, offset by sunset at around six in the evening. Much of the debate around the concept of year-round DST is focused on this issue, with dire consequences predicted by sleep experts, and some safety professionals (because of kids going to school, and people driving, in the dark.) More information on that aspect of the debate here.
This is a battle that doesn’t affect golfers in most of the country, however, where the sticks are put away for a long winter’s nap, awaiting the return of warmer weather and longer days, no matter how the sunlit hours are distributed around the clock.
