Tennis megastar Rafael Nadal won his 14th French Open title wearing a couple of million bucks on his wrist.
It was the Spaniard’s 22nd Grand Slam title, pushing further ahead of fierce rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic (who both have 20 titles).
That’s an incredible achievement – but it’s what he had on his wrist during the final that really caught our eye.
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Nadal is one of the few tennis players to wear a watch while competing, and that watch is one of his $2.5 million signature pieces from Richard Mille.
Having partnered with the Swiss watchmaker since 2008, the two have worked on more than a handful of watches together.
The RM 27-04 Rafael Nadal wore for the 2022 Roland Garros final has to be the finest of them all, though.
Weighing just 30 grams, the watch is made of TitaCarb – a proprietary titanium and carbon hybrid.
That’s unbelievably light for a watch like this, but it’s not the most impressive part.
Using a manually-wound tourbillon movement, it’s suspended inside the case using a single 0.27mm-thick steel cable.
That cable has then been wound to resemble the strings on a tennis racquet.
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It’s an unusual way of mounting the movement, but it actually serves an important purpose.
The watch can withstand forces of up to 12,000G to ensure it holds time accurately even with the ferocity of Nadal’s serve.
That’s super important when Nadal can blast a serve at 217 km/h (134mph).
Launched last year and limited to just 50 pieces globally, the RM 27-04 has a list price of $1,050,000.
However, extreme demand for the watch means the current market price is around $2.52m as per Chrono24.
