Did you expect Tiger Woods?  Nah….Go Bubba!

I posted the new Richard Mille RM038 ultralight “golf” watch here on Monday, followed by some “who would get to wear it” musing on Twitter.  Well, it turns out that Bubba Watson is the man.  With a 32nd place finish on the 2010 PGA Tour, “Bubba who?” would be a fair question for you to ask.  Indeed, if you are not a big golf fan you have likely never heard of Bubba Watson!  Phil Mickleson, Lee Westwood, Jim Furyk, or yes perhaps even Tiger Woods might have come to your mind.  But peel back the onion a bit and the rationale for such an alliance becomes a bit more clear. One of the few “lefty’s” on the tour, Bubba Watson is known for his crushingly long drives, thus providing Richard Mille with the a high technical/physical standard for which to design the watch to. 

Ultimately, my view on the new RM038/Bubba Watson partnership is that, like Mille’s groundbreaking partnership with Rafael Nadal which shocked the world of tennis, his partnership with Bubba Watson will have a similar impact on the professional golf world.  Still, I do hope that Bubba Watston is “here to stay” otherwise this whole thing could fizzle fast.  Even so, it is a really cool partnership and I like how Mille tends to align himself with seemingly normal, humble guys who don’t have huge egos despite being better than 99.9% of everyone else who plays the sport they do.  So yes, I like the choice and props to Bubba Watson who will be rocking this watch out on the golf course, hopefully soon.

The case of the RM038 is made of an extremely rugged and light magnesium alloy classified as AZ91, composed of magnesium combined with aluminum and zinc plus additional trace metals. The resulting magnesium alloy is more than the sum of the parts, providing a light yet extremely strong material with a dendritic internal crystalline structure making it suitable for extreme applications in the aerospace, telecommunication and automotive industries.

After a long and delicate machining phase, the case is given an electro-plasma treatment named Titalyt II®, covering the surface with a layer of white, crystalline ceramic oxide containing a high ratio of resistant composites.

Photo:  WatchProSite