The Alfred Dunhill Cup was a team

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

tournament which ran from 1985 to 2000, sponsored by

Alfred Dunhill Ltd. Alfred Dunhill Limited (known and stylised as dunhill) is a British luxury goods brand, specialising in ready-to-wear, custom and bespoke menswear, leather goods, and accessories. The company is based in Westminster, City of Westminster, Lond ...

It was for three-man teams of professional golfers, one team representing each country, and was promoted as the "World Team Championship". It was a "special approved event" on the

European Tour The European Tour (currently known as the DP World Tour for sponsorship reasons), legally the PGA European Tour is the leading men's professional golf tour in Europe. The organisation also operates the European Senior Tour (for players aged fi ...

, which means that it was supported by the Tour, but the prize money did not count towards the Tour's Order of Merit. The host course was the

Old Course at St Andrews The Old Course at St Andrews, also known as the Old Lady or the Grand Old Lady, is considered the oldest golf course. It is a public course over common land in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland and is held in trust by the St Andrews Links Trust under ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. The stature of the members of the American team was variable as the Dunhill Cup clashed with a

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also ...

event, though the fact that it was played at "The Home of Golf" helped to attract some star names. The other countries were generally represented by their best three golfers, or nearly so. The Dunhill Cup was in competition with the

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

, a similar event for two-man teams. In 2000, the World Cup's status was enhanced by its inclusion in the

World Golf Championships The World Golf Championships (WGC) are a group of annual professional golf tournaments created by the International Federation of PGA Tours as a means of gathering the best players in the world together more frequently than the pre-existing four ...

series, and in 2001 the promoters of the Alfred Dunhill Cup replaced it with the

Alfred Dunhill Links Championship The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is one of the richest golf tournaments on the European Tour. It is played in September, on three different links courses, centred on the "home of golf", St Andrews in Fife, Scotland. The tournament is a p ...

, which is a celebrity pro-am tournament and an official European Tour event.

Format

The field was always 16 teams of three players each. From 1985 to 1991, they compete in a

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final mat ...

that included a third place match. Beginning in 1992, the format switched to group play followed by a single-elimination tournament. The first three days were round-robin play amongst four groups of four teams to determine the semi-finalists. The semi-finals and the final were both played on the Sunday and the third place match was eliminated. The tournament was always played using

medal match play Match play is a scoring system for golf in which a player, or team, earns a point for each hole in which they have bested their opponents; as opposed to stroke play, in which the total number of strokes is counted over one or more rounds of 18 h ...

Winners

Results table

References

External links

Coverage on the European Tour's official site
{{Alfred Dunhill Cup Team golf tournaments Unofficial money golf tournaments Golf tournaments in Scotland Defunct golf tournaments Sport in Fife Recurring sporting events established in 1985 Recurring sporting events disestablished in 2000 1985 establishments in Scotland 2000 disestablishments in Scotland