The earliest that you can activate Sundial of the Infinite's ability is during your upkeep step, after abilities that trigger "at the beginning of your upkeep" have been put onto the stack but before they resolve
I can highly recommend you try to do this at least once (and yes, this works, since them paying 50 life is the cost to activate the ability, they will still lose the life even if you counter the ability
Consider adding cheap staple cards like Kodama's Reach, Cultivate, or something like Emergent Sequence, Greenseeker (it also discards you a creature that you can pick up with meren at the end of turn), Primal Growth (good sac outlet too), Dawntreader Elk, Deathsprout, Diligent Farmhand, Rampant Growth, and notable Yavimaya Elder
In the spirit of saving you some time, heres my very first article featuring a deck tech for Commanders Herald