The ultimate Christmas gift for a golfer: Reconvilier Hercules Golf Master

bb10I am always interested in new functions for watches, and so was intrigued to come across this piece, the Reconvilier Hercules Golf Master. It looks like a normal watch, 44 mm in diameter, albeit a bit thicker than most, with an automatic movement providing hours, minutes and seconds. But it hides a transformation: the watch case, along with an inner bezel, comes away from the outer bezel and strap, and you can rotate the case to reveal a GPS range finder applicable to all golf courses in the world, measuring the distance to the green for the hole that you are aiming for.

It achieves this by means of another unit, the base station, that you carry in your caddy, a GPS receiver that measures your position and compares it with the information that it stores regarding the golf course.

Distance is displayed in metres or yards, and you can choose whether you want to see the distance to the front edge of the green, or the hole. If the data for a particular golf course is not included in the data base, it can be loaded into the base station. The watch is available with crown on right or left side of the watch, according to player’s needs. The watch and the range finder are made with special shock-absorbing technology to enable the equipment to stand up to the rigours of the game.

The watch has an automatic ETA Calibre 2892/A2 movement with COSC certification, and 50 metres water resistance, providing hours, minutes, seconds and date. It is made in several versions: titanium with black rubber strap, in steel with black rubber strap and black dial, and in steel with black PVD coated case, black dial and green hour markers.

Reconvilier (complete name Société Horlogère Reconvilier) was founded in 1905 in Bern, and it became famous for its low-priced mechanical watches (“the people’s watch”). They seem to have been a casualty of the quartz revolution, disappearing from the market in 1970, but the company was given a new lease of life in 2006, with new premises in Zug. You can request more information on the Reconvilier Hercules Golf Master direct from Reconvilier at http://www.reconvilier.com/, and you can purchase it from Superbrands whose website is www.for-experts-only.com. Superbrands has a boutique in Munich, Anders Superbrands,Perusastrasse 7, D-80333 München, tel. +49 89 2000 1510. You can also purchase it online from Brooks Brothers, or from the Brooks Brothers boutique in New York on 346 Madison Avenue. Price varies according to strap finish: the version in titanium with a leather strap costs €5,400, in titanium with black rubber strap €5,800, in titanium with white rubber strap €6,050, and in black PVD-coated titanium with black rubber strap (with orange or green dial markings as in the photos below), €6,450.

Below, front and back views of the Hercules Golf Master, version in titanium:

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Below, version in black PVD-coated titanium and orange:

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Below, version in black PVD-coated titanium and green:

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Below, the natural titanium version of the product, with front and back views:

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Below, the case is a complicated mechanism in itself, incorporating shock protection technology:

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Shown below, the base unit carried in the caddy, which contains the GPS receiver:

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