For those of us who love golf and watches, we got lucky. The last golden age of mechanical watchmaking in the mid-20th century coincided with a massive golf boom. As Arnie’s Army started marching down the fairway and golf shed its country-club exclusivity for mass-market appeal, the game became a symbol of leisure. All these new golfers—whether hacking it around the muni or swanning around the country club—still needed to tell the time.
Watchmakers were more than happy to oblige with the golfer’s watch. Especially after World War II, brands from Seiko to Patek Philippe tinkered with designs tailored specifically for the game. These were basically pocket watches, slightly reworked to appeal to this new army of golfers. Brands might add a leather case, golf-ball motif, or elegant chain for dangling out of your slacks.
Seiko had its Golf Timer, a compact, pocket watch with golf ball dimples on the dial and caseback, lest you forget what it was for. Seiko eventually made a wristwatch with the same dimple-covered pattern. Meanwhile, Swiss makers, in their characteristic Swiss-ness, leaned into elegance: Patek Philippe made the ref. 788, a slim, sculptural pocket watch from the late 1950s designed with golfers in mind. It was the work of Gilbert Albert, the young designer who would become one of the most daring voices in midcentury watches. This golfer’s watch was one of Albert’s first projects at Patek—an understated but clever piece that hinted at the avant-garde geometries he’d later bring to the brand’s most radical designs.
Even as quartz watches became widespread in the 1970s and ‘80s, brands continued to have fun with the golfer’s watch. One of the most infamous is the Cartier Pasha “Golf” from the 1980s, with four apertures in the dial for keeping track of the score of everyone in your foursome (just don’t go over 99). Some brands were lazier and simply slapped “Golf” on the dial or marketed an ordinary watch as a golfer’s best companion. The appeal was in the idea as much as the execution: you were buying into a lifestyle of fairways, foursomes, and post-round John Dalys at the clubhouse.
That marketing mattered because golf itself was in a transformational moment. Arnold Palmer wasn’t just winning tournaments in the 1950s and ‘60s; he was changing golf’s image. Alongside TV, Palmer’s charisma drew in ordinary fans, not just those with Patek Philippes, plural. With Palmer (and later Nicklaus and Player) as pitchmen, golf became part of the culture. Companies wanted a piece—cigarettes, cars, watches. It’s why Arnold Palmer soon became Rolex’s first “testimonee,” changing the shape of sports endorsements as we know them.
Soon enough, professional golfers moved on to wristwatches, slapping them onto their wrists after the round, just in time for photographs while they hoisted a trophy. The true “golfer’s watch” became a relic of the past. Today, these golfers’ watches are artifacts of that transitional moment—odd hybrids of pocket watch tradition and sports innovation.
I’ve got a couple of golfers’ watches from Seiko and Omega in my collection. They’re not practical for telling time on the course—or off it, for that matter—but that’s kind of the point. A small, clever vestige from an era when watchmakers chased lifestyle as much as precision.
Tony Traina is one of our favorite watch writers and the publisher of Unpolished Watches.
