The present watch exemplifies how one can own a piece of watchmaking history - and quite an important one, in hindsight - without having to spend millions of dollars. As by today’s standard the association between pop culture icons - both fantasy ones as well as real-life ones - and watchmaking is a most cemented trend, it is difficult to imagine a time when putting a cartoon character on a watch was considered blasphemy. The very first one to infringe this taboo was indeed what is arguably the most gifted watch designer (and, later, maker) of all times: Mr. Gerald Genta.

When he first showed such creations at Basel World in 1984 - where for the first time in history the likes of Mickey Mouse, The Pink Panther and Popey made an appearance on high-end mechanical timepieces - the organisers commented that “such a serious exhibition…has no room for mice, panthers, Popeye and other unsuitable characters” and Genta consequently decided to retire from the show. The 1984 EuropaStar article from which the previous excerpt is taken continues with what now sounds like a very prophetic question: “The use of … cartoon figures may shock us today because they seem to belong to a minor art. But what about tomorrow?”.

Being tomorrow today, we all know what the answer to that question is, and it all started from a scorned line of timepieces of which the present watch is a remarkable example.
One of the most committed merging of pop-culture and watchmaking, it truly checks all the boxes: precious metals? Check: mother-of-pear dial. Complicated movement? Check: retrograde minutes, jumping hours. Pop culture reference? Double check: beyond the obvious Donald, golf itself is a sort of pop-culture sport.