For golfers, the second Sunday in March marks a joyous occasion

I have heard a half-dozen dates that are supposed to mark the start of the new golf season. Regular PGA Tour winners — a Justin Thomas, a Jason Day, a Jordan Spieth — might speak of the first round at Kapalua in early January. Greg Norman, back in his heyday, used to say the new season began in early March, with the first round at Doral, then the first stop of the Florida Swing. Some cite the start of the PGA Merchandise Show in late January and others the first round of the Masters in early April. So, options.

But to this lifelong Northeasterner, the golf season begins on the Sunday in March when we spring ahead. This year, Sunday, March 9. You wake up. Your trusty analog glow-in-the-dark watch says it’s 7. Your phone knows better. It’s 8.

Sunset in Philadelphia, where I live, was 7 p.m. on Sunday. You could start at 5, play nine and the pizza would still be warm by the time you got home.

Dylan Dethier knows this routine. If you read his Monday-morning quarterback column (Monday Finish), you’ve picked up on this. “I’m a twilight golfer by training and preference,” he said the other day by email. He grew up in Williamstown, Mass. It’s a short season, that far north, and in spring and fall, if you want to capture the warmth of the day, you start late and finish late, holing out in the fading light and dying wind.

I polled other colleagues, over the weekend, about the meaning of the extra hour. David DeNunzio, the editor of GOLF Magazine, reported that his namesake son was on the range Sunday night, looking for the swing that will help him as he tries out for the golf team at the namesake high school in Montclair, N.J. The course architect Rees Jones played golf at Montclair High 60ish years ago. Rees’s thing is swing from the inside, swing from the inside, swing from the inside. DD2 surely has a thing all his own.

“Golf has deep roots in the history of daylight saving time, which begins for most states at 2 a.m. Sunday when clocks ‘spring forward’ by one hour,” the AP reported the other day. “Some credit goes to William Willett, a British builder and avid golfer who in 1905 published a pamphlet advocating for moving clocks ahead in April and returning them back to their regular settings in September.” Yes, the AP devoted column inches to this very subject. That story was filed in Omaha, Neb.

Our spring-ahead Sunday here in Philadelphia, as Russell Henley was picking his way around Bay Hill, was cool and windy, but I felt the draw of range and course in the afternoon. I have the good fortune to be a member of the Philadelphia Cricket Club. (Joined as a bachelor under the age of 30 and that made all the difference.) When I got to the range on Sunday afternoon the skeet shooters were still shooting skeet. One of the regular caddies was working with the shooters and upon seeing me said, “Welcome to the new golf season.”

Right on, bro.

The Cricket Club has two 18-hole courses and one of them, the Tillinghast course, was under wraps on Sunday, tees and greens covered by plastic tarps in the name of spring grass. The course is going to be the venue in early-May for a Tour event, the Truist Championship, filling in for Quail Hollow, the tournament’s regular home. Quail Hollow will be the PGA Championship host site later in May, so the Cricket Club is filling in.

The club members, as best I can tell, are quite excited about our fill-in role on this year’s Tour schedule. But it was odd on Sunday, standing on the range, and seeing a grandstand half-up around our fourth green, which will be the 18th for the tournament. Sunset on Mother’s Day, when the tournament concludes, is at 8 p.m. Spring in Philadelphia is spectacular.

On Sunday, I hit balls and played some holes for the first time in almost four months. That’s one of the longest layoffs I have ever had, if not the longest. I am pleased to say that my swing breakthrough from 2024 was tanned, rested and ready. I wish I could share it with you, I really do, because I know it will be a magical breakthrough for you, too. Unfortunately, I am legally bound to sit on this golfing insight of mine, at least for now. You don’t want me to get sued, do you?! I will reveal all come June. Try to contain your excitement.

My colleague Jack Hirsh, who also lives in Philadelphia, got in his first 18-hole round of the year on this second Sunday in March. Our colleague Josh Sens, famous in agronomy circles for his passionate writing about the art of grass growing, reports from Oakland, Calif., that now, with the extra hour of light, he can play nine-hole rounds after work and before dinner. Yes, one of the requirements to get a job at GOLF.com is to be a golf bum, with some ability to disguise it in polite company.

Drivers

On Sunday night, in the witching hour, Johnny Wunder, our gearhead-in-chief, was rummaging through boxes, looking for a Callaway 5-wood head he first knew way back when, wondering if it might make the starting lineup for ’25. Tim Reilly, our head of digital content, a Long Islander with a New Yorker’s access to Bethpage Black and other New York State courses, was making a plan to get there before Russell Henley and Co. take over the place for the Ryder Cup. James Colgan’s clubs wintered at his parents’ garage, also on Long Island, and on Sunday they saw daylight for the first time in this new year. Alan Bastable, the GOLF.com editor, found himself consulting a New Jersey weather app and booking a game for his 12-year-old golf-nut son and two pals in Tuesday’s promised warmth.

Oh, and Zak. People always want to know about Zak. People will stop me in pro shops and say, “What up with Zak?” Well, that’s a lot of question. As for his new golf season, no golf for Sean until April, owing to a wrist injury incurred while skiing. Fortunately, he can still type. On Sunday, he watched the Arnold Palmer Invitational with his father in Dunedin, Fla. On Monday, he motored over to TPC Sawgrass. The Stadium Course, if you must. His first event of the new season.

Claire Rogers, also at the Players, reports that she will return to Boston after the tourney and expects to see the first signs of spring, and the new golf season, in her native New England.

I played some holes with a Cricket Club caddie from Ghana named Terry on Sunday. Terry is 21, a student at one of our local community colleges, and he can hit a 3-iron past my driver. It was too cool and windy to play without a coat of some sort, and I wore a ski cap and a puffy down coat. Terry was wearing a heavy, bulky fleece jacket but he took it off before every swing he made.

When Terry and I parted ways at about 5:30 p.m., after holing out on nine, the course was brown and dormant and wintery but bathed in yellow light. There was plenty of daylight left. I carried on.

I would say my new golf season got off to a good start. I had a three-footer for par on my first hole of the new year, and I nearly made it.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com