In Praise of Daylight Savings Time

As a golfer, I absolutely love daylight savings time. More daylight at the end of the day means more daylight for after work practice sessions or a chance to squeeze in a few holes after dinner. While the doomsayers complain about the possibility that the nation’s electronic time stamping systems will be screwed up because Congress mandated the nation go on daylight savings time three weeks early this year, I say, “Hooey!” That’s the same crowd that predicted the End of The World a.k.a. Y-2K. Remember that? I was working for a small technology company whose initial are IBM and we had a gigantic flurry of activity in the months leading up to 1-1-00. But guess what? Nothing happened and nothing will happen at 2 a.m. Sunday morning when we set our clocks ahead.

Here’s a true story I tell every year about daylight savings time. When I was a reporter in Fort Worth, Texas in the mid-70s, I answered the city desk phone on the Saturday night before daylight savings time. A woman asked if she was supposed to set her clock ahead or back when she went to bed that night. I repeated the mantra: “Spring forward, clocks ahead; fall back, clocks back.” She found that most helpful and then asked, “Do I set my alarm ahead an hour, too?” “Only if you want to get up an hour later.”

Anyway, I love daylight savings time. Farmers apparently hate it but my response to that is, hey, I’m not a farmer. The best part about it this year is that Congress also extended daylight savings time three weeks later into November. All of which means only one thing: more golf!


Hitting range balls while wondering whatever happened to Calvin Peete.