There’s a new way to chip away at your style game on the green, and it involves diamonds. The Chopard Happy Sport Golf Edition is the latest version of the company’s flagship ladies timepiece collection, first introduced in 1993. With five bezel-set diamonds that roam freely with the wearer’s movements between two sapphire crystals, the famous look now includes a mobile golf club and ball. The frosted dial is coloured to symbolise the green and was made using a stamped metal technique that gives it raised texture like the freshly mown grass of the fairway. The matching calfskin strap is similarly textured. The crown is faceted for easy grip with golf gloves and calls to mind the dimples in a golf ball. There are two versions, one with a polished gold bezel and the other with diamonds set into the bezel.
Chopard introduced the Happy Diamonds concept in 1976 after Ronald Kurowski, a designer working for the company, was inspired by a waterfall he saw on a walk in Germany’s Black Forest. He wanted to somehow reproduce the effect of the water droplets reflecting the light and sparkling with a prism of colours. The concept was originally used for a jewellery collection, but in 1993 the company’s creative director and co-president Caroline Scheufele applied it to a line of watches, the Happy Sport. Creative iterations over the years have included Happy Fish and Happy Beach, with diamond-set flip flops or gem-set fish spinning gaily between the crystals. “Diamonds are meant to be free,” says Caroline.
The 36mm case, as well as the mobile golf club and ball, are made of ethical gold, sourced either from artisanal, small-scale operations regulated by the Alliance for Responsible Mining or from refiners certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council, which promotes responsible sourcing.
The Happy Sport Golf Edition contains an automatic movement with a date function and a 42-hour power reserve. They say it never rains on a golf course, but the watch is water-resistant to 30 metres in case it does. It is priced at US$9,980 (slightly over RM42,000) without a diamond bezel and US$19,700 (roughly RM83,000) with a diamond bezel.
Previously published on Robb Report.
