Dunhill Links Championship: The Dynamic Convergence Of IWC Schaffhausen’s Time, Alfred Dunhill Tailoring And Golfing Greatness At St Andrews

For nearly six centuries, the Old Course at St Andrews has been where golf’s history comes alive—a hallowed stage upon which legends have been forged, rivalries born and moments destined to outlive their makers.

On an autumn day in 2001, beneath the vast Scottish sky at St Andrews, the Old Course delivered precisely such a moment. The wind moved across the links, the ancient fairways seemed to absorb every footstep, and on the final green Scotland’s Paul Lawrie stood on the precipice of history. 

Then came the putt: a remarkable 40-footer from the Valley of Sin, dropping for birdie and securing Lawrie victory by a single stroke over Ernie Els in the inaugural Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. 

It was a suitably theatrical beginning for a tournament whose very identity was built around an unusually elegant idea: that golf need not separate professional excellence from the pleasure, fellowship and sociability surrounding the game. Twenty-five years later, that spirit remains gloriously intact.

From 1–4 October 2026, the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship returns for its landmark 25th edition across the Old Course at St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, bringing together leading professionals and accomplished amateurs in its distinctive individual and Team Championship formats. 

And, rather appropriately, IWC Schaffhausen is keeping time.

The Swiss manufacture returns as Official Timing Partner for the sixth consecutive year, a partnership that feels less like corporate alignment than a meeting of two cultures obsessed with precision, performance and enduring craft. 

Among the professionals this year is longtime IWC Brand Ambassador Pablo Larrazábal, wearing the new Pilot’s Watch Chronograph (Ref. IW378008): a 43-millimetre stainless-steel instrument with an olive-green dial, white printing and gold-plated hands filled with Super-LumiNova®. Its five-link steel bracelet and olive-green rubber strap allow the watch to move effortlessly between clubhouse polish and sporting practicality. 

That duality is precisely the point.

Alfred Dunhill has never been merely about clothes. Founded in 1893, when 21-year-old Alfred Dunhill inherited his father’s saddlery and harness business, the House evolved by applying craftsmanship, functionality and imagination to the emerging world of motoring. Its philosophy subsequently expanded into a distinctly British vocabulary of menswear, leather goods and luxury: restrained rather than ostentatious, sophisticated rather than showy, with craftsmanship at its centre. 

Its relationship with golf therefore feels entirely natural. The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is luxury lifestyle translated into sport: competition, conversation, friendship, travel, tailoring and heritage inhabiting the same Scottish landscape. 

Alfred Dunhill has supported golf at St Andrews for more than four decades, first through the Alfred Dunhill Cup from 1985 and subsequently through the Links Championship from 2001, with millions raised for charity over that period.

And then there is St Andrews itself.

Calling the Old Course merely “historic” hardly begins to cover it. Golf has been played at the Links for approximately 600 years, while the 1552 Hamilton Charter formally recognised the right of the people of St Andrews to play there. The Old Course is consequently not simply a golf course; it is one of the physical foundations of the sport itself. 

To walk its fairways is to encounter golf history beneath one’s feet. To cross the Swilcan Bridge, approach the famous 18th and contemplate the Valley of Sin is to participate, however briefly, in a lineage stretching across generations. 

Even today, demand for the Old Course is extraordinary, with access governed in part by a ballot designed to preserve opportunities for visiting golfers. 

IWC understands such continuity instinctively.

Florentine Ariosto Jones established the International Watch Company in Schaffhausen in 1868 with an unusually progressive proposition: marry Swiss watchmaking expertise with advanced American manufacturing technology. That union established the engineering philosophy that still defines IWC today. 

Its Pilot’s Watches, chronographs, calendars and performance materials have subsequently made the manufacture a favourite among collectors who value engineering as much as ornament. IWC’s partnerships across aviation, motorsport and sport similarly reflect a preoccupation with performance, precision and purposeful design. 

That is why the new Pilot’s Watch Chronograph looks so convincing beside a golf bag, a cashmere quarter-zip or a beautifully cut Dunhill jacket. It does not pretend to be jewellery. It is an instrument—with presence.

And that, ultimately, is the deeper luxury proposition shared by Dunhill and IWC: the acquisition is never simply an acquisition of an object. It is an encounter with accumulated knowledge, disciplined craftsmanship, provenance, invention and generations of refinement.

At St Andrews, where every shot is measured against history, that distinction becomes wonderfully apparent.

The 2026 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is therefore more than another date on the golfing calendar. It is where British sporting heritage, contemporary menswear and Swiss engineering converge—with the fairways as theatre, precision as the common language, and time itself ticking audibly towards the next unforgettable moment.

IWC Schaffhausen’s new Pilot’s Watch Chronograph (Ref. IW378008) retails at RM 38,500 and is available now in all IWC Schaffhausen boutiques worldwide. 

*Photos courtesy of IWC Schaffhausen.