What Rolex Watches Does Roger Federer Wear?

A little something different for the blog today as it’s not really tennis related. I thought I’d take a closer look at Roger Federer’s Rolex collection. Well, the ones we’ve seen him wear in public.

He’s got a pretty cool collection with a few classics and some modern pieces in there too so if you have an interest in watches or luxury goods then you should find this post interesting.

How much Does Rolex Pay Roger Federer?

Rolex partnered with Roger back in 2006 in what was one of the largest single endorsements for any professional athlete at the time, a $15 million dollar 10-year contract. A 10-year contract is rare for sports stars even now, especially when you consider how a players career can fluctuate or even fall apart due to injury.

That deal ended in 2016 but the Federer Rolex contract was renewed in 2017, with Roger now earning $8 million per year from Rolex and with no end date reported it looks as though he is now a lifelong ambassador.

Is Roger actually interested in watches? I would guess so, he’s been associated with Rolex since his junior days, leaving briefly to partner with Maurice Lacroix in 2004, only to return and be a Rolex testimonee (their terminology for ambassadors) in 2006 and he’s been with them ever since.

Interesting fact: Roger (i.e. Rolex), actually paid an undisclosed early termination fee to Lacroix to end the deal with the company two years into a five-year contract.

He’s also from Basel which hosts Basel World every year. This is the largest watch and jewellery trade show on the planet so he will have certainly seen the event during his childhood.

Whether the interest comes naturally or having brands queuing up to pay you a few million dollars is the real driving force who knows. Either way, there’s been some very nice watches on his wrist over the years, even if it is dominated by one brand and one brand only.

Let’s take a look at what Rolex watches Roger Federer wears:

Rolex GMT-Master II Ref. 116710 BLNR – The Batman Watch

I’ll start with the most memorable tournament of recent times, the Australian Open Final 2017. For this trophy presentation, Roger wore the Rolex GMT-Master II also dubbed the ‘Batman’ watch.

This is one of the more modern looking Rolex’s in Federer’s collection and this model first launched in 2013. It’s one of my favourite Rolex designs and is a classic pilot’s watch with a stainless steel body, ceramic bezel, and a black maxi dial.

The stand out feature is, of course, the two-tone ceramic bezel. This took a while to ever reach the market as Rolex thought it would be impossible to produce something in ceramic that blended two colours.  Eventually, they figured it out and produced the Pepsi and Batman designs with a scratchless and fadeless bezel.

You wouldn’t know it based on today’s prices but the original GMT Master was somewhat of a budget Pilot’s watch. This latest iteration Federer wears is really an amalgamation of all the little details that have become synonymous with the GMT over the years but with a few modern sprinklings.

It’s probably one of the most recognised Rolex watches out there but have the modern touches made people lose sight of what this watch really is? I think so.

The original GMT was conceived in the 1950s when air travel was really beginning to take off. Suddenly the world had become a lot smaller.

With such quick advancements came problems and with Universal Time still a long while off the problem of multiple time zones and having to deal with the confusion of day and night were just some of the growing pains of this advancement, especially for Pilots. 

It was also a time when Rolex were attempting to pitch themselves as a supplier of professional instruments and this booming transatlantic aviation industry was exactly what founder Hans Wildorf had in mind when he made conceived the GMT Master 6542.

In developing the watch Wilsdorf approached Pan Am to find out what it was Pilot’s needed most. It seems obvious now but the simple ability to know the time in the place you were going and where you’ve been and whether it’s day or night was a massive benefit.

Even outside of the cockpit, long-haul pilot’s body clocks were so out of sync that an easy reminder of home and local made all the difference.

It wasn’t as straightforward as just making a new watch, however, Wilsdorf’s approach was always to keep it simple to better his chances of success. I guess you could almost say he liked to do things on the cheap.

Not wanting to put all his eggs in one basket he developed on his existing platform for his many ideas. The result was the Turn-O-Graph which was an evolution of the Datejust with a customizable rotating bezel.

So whilst a watch designed from the ground-up with an independently adjustable sub dial would probably have been a better product for Pan Am pilots it didn’t fit the Rolex mould at that time. 

As a businessman, Wilsdorf wanted a cheaper solution, something he could build onto his existing watch components with minimal changes.

The result can be seen below with the GMT 6542 which features a clever addition of a fourth hand geared for one rotation every 24 hours.

That was the most complex modification required and with an unadjusted 24-hour hand being no use on its own the bezel was also switched out for one with a 24-hour scale divided into equal sections in red and blue to indicate the day and night.

The modern GMT’s all pack the slick ceramic bezel but even though the silicon nitride used today was actually discovered in the 1950s, Rolex instead used the forerunner to plastic; bakelite.

Bakelite was chosen due to its ability to be moulded which meant that luminous material could be formed into the bezel itself. Unfortunately, this turned out to be too fragile and was replaced by the simpler aluminium bezel for the later 1675 GMT.

But the idea itself was sound, the numbers in the bezel glowed in the dark making the watch even more usable as pilots flew through the night.

To look at the modern GMT Master today, as refined as it is, could mislead you into thinking that it has always been a high-priced polished luxury item but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Limited to the technology and budget available at the time the Rolex GMT master was as much an exercise in building the right watch for the job as it was about making do with the resources available to Wilsdorf in the 1950’s. 

Looking at the picture above of Federer’s gleaming GMT-Master II Ref. 116710 might seem like a homage to a precision instrument built with no expense spared but really the charm in this watch is that it’s exactly the opposite.

Rolex GMT-Master II Ref. 116710 BLNR Specification

Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 6263

We don’t see the Rolex Daytona 6263 watch very often and for good reason, it’s arguably the most treasured and expensive piece in Roger’s collection.

I’ve only ever seen the Swiss wear this piece once during a press conference at the 2011 US Open. He wore a more modern Daytona on court later that week and as far as I know hasn’t worn the Daytona again during a tournament.

This isn’t surprising, as typically you won’t see an ambassador (or testimonee) wearing a vintage piece publicly because you can’t buy them from a boutique and would you want to lug this around the locker room week in week out?!

This particular Daytona is from 1981, his birth year, and was sourced by Mirka for his 30th Birthday. Well, I say sourced by Mirka, what I mean is she rang Rolex and they managed to track one down 😆 which is a feat as this watch is extremely rare, especially one in near mint condition with box and papers which I assume Roger’s will be.

It features a clean dial with its black and white contrast, simple straight hands, an external tachymeter and the screw down pushers which were introduced around the mid 1960’s. Inside is what Rolex called the Caliber 727 which is a modified off-the-shelf Valjoux 727 movement.

Why are Vintage Daytona Watches so Rare?

So why are the Daytona’s so expensive and rare today? Again like with a lot of the Rolex history it’s the reverse of why you might think.

You might have seen Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona 6239 sold for $17.8 million very recently. So it might surprise you to know that the Daytona 6263 is actually one of the most unpopular ranges Rolex has ever produced.

Historically the Chronograph had been a bit of an oddball in the Rolex range. Dive watches were for divers, aviation watches for pilots and so on. But the Chronograph’s weren’t really designed for anyone in mind.

That changed in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnikone. That saw NASA step up a gear and so began the epic race to the moon that dominated the sixties.

Rolex meanwhile whose sales of its 6234 chronographs (considered the grandfather of the Rolex Daytona) were flagging took the opportunity in 1963 to try to carve a niche for the chronograph watch.

The change was dramatic with their new 6239 Cosmograph watch growing in size, getting a bold, simple redesign with contrasting subdials and most importantly having the tachymeter move from the dial to the bezel for cleaner operation.

With this move, Rolex clearly intended for the 6239 Cosmograph to end up being flight-qualified by NASA for all manned space missions.

Unfortunately for Rolex, astronaut Wally Schirra had already worn a Speedmaster on his 1962 Mercury-Atlas 8 mission and with the favourable performance from the Omega during testing Rolex didn’t get the Nasa gig.

In response to Omega receiving the official NASA seal of approval in 1965 Rolex rebadged their Cosmograph immediately with the single bright red word appearing on the dial that read: Daytona.

Hedging its bets, Rolex turned their attention to the growing motor racing scene and they were a major sponsor of land speed record set by Sir Malcolm Campbell.

Campbell ripped up the sands of the Daytona Beach, Florida as he sought to achieve higher and higher speeds. Meanwhile, as prohibition was repealed liquor runners repurposed their vehicles originally used for outrunning the police into racing cars and so NASCAR and the Daytona 500 was born with Rolex, a primary sponsor.

Rolex first called the Daytona the Le Mans after the famous 24-hour race in France, so the struggling chronograph couldn’t even settle on a name at the time.

With Heuer making significant strides in the motorsport world the Daytona got left behind and sales numbers were terrible. The so-called Paul Newman dialed 6239 version of the Daytona that sold for $17.8 million was even less popular, and there are stories of retailers struggling to even sell them at the time.

The reason? Rolex was considered a bit of a young pretender having only been in business since 1905. It wasn’t until the quartz crisis that people really began to understand what significant strides Rolex made to the industry despite its young age.

As a result, the Daytona is a watch that’s been on the back foot for most of its existence never really finding a place in the brand’s lineup. While the vintage design pulls in exorbitant sale prices today, at the time its Speedmaster inspired design was a bit of a leap in the 1960s making it a hard sell without the kind of heritage and reputation Omega had at the time.

While this made it a hugely unpopular watch in its youth, this has only increased its value through rarity today and it’s a reminder that like Federer, even the very best have to start from somewhere.

Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 6263 Specification

Rolex Datejust 41mm Ref. 126303

Rolex’s best selling wrist watch is the Datejust and it’s been around since 1945. It was the first ever watch to display the date in a window and come with a quick date mechanism. Nothing too flashy, just a classic dress watch which you’ll see worn by lots of their ambassadors including Roger.

Roger wore the Datejust 41mm Ref. 126303 for the Wimbledon 2017 final when he defeated Marin Cilic and this particular model launched at Basel World in 2016, replacing the clunkier Datejust II.

Why is the Rolex Datejust so Popular?

The Datejust is the quintessential watch and by that, I mean that it’s exactly what you imagine when you think of the word watch. I’m sure it’s one most of you guys know as soon as you see it.

To me it is one of the simplest blandest and unimaginative designs created yet also perhaps the most popular and iconic timepieces in the world,  why is that?

The roots of the Rolex Empire are somewhat more humble than you’d otherwise imagine. What we see is the biggest most popular luxury watch brand today that pays Federer millions a year and has an army of loyal fans supporting it, but one that started life as a bit of a gimmick.

What you have to understand is that back in 1905 wristwatches just weren’t a thing. It was a piece of women’s jewellery. Effeminate, dainty and undesirable, a man would sooner wear a dress. 

So when you’re a young businessman trying to start a watch company one hundred years or so after your competitors it’s no good to simply copy them.

You have to do something new, something risky and Hans Wilsdorf founder of Rolex, was just that, a risk-taking businessman.  Not a watchmaker, not a designer, a businessman. His skill was taking things that already existed and combining them and marketing them in a way that appealed to a new audience.

It was while working at a watch exporter in Switzerland that he had an idea. Pocket watches while fashionable weren’t a practical source of timekeeping for people working in industry, science, engineering and exploration.

This dedication to progress was blooming following the Industrial Revolution, all these new fields made the pocket watch seem increasingly outdated.

To be more specific, what Wilsdorf noticed was that the wristwatches that did exist were manufactured for women in the style of jewellery and so with his contacts in Switzerland he sourced a wristwatch movement with respectable accuracy and had a case made to put it in.

Despite being Swiss, Wilsdorf was something of an Anglophile and moved to London to set up his business where he housed the movements he’d ordered into the cases he’d had made and he branded them Rolex.

But he knew that wouldn’t be enough if his watches were to be worn by professionals in their respective fields as he hoped.

He’d need some kind of hook to draw them in, making the watches appear as the only ones up to the job. So Willsdorf, unwilling to leave anything to chance didn’t just think of one angle he could pursue, he thought of all of them.

The first thing he did was get his creations reviewed for accuracy, the movements earning chronometer ratings. More importantly, the first chronometer ratings for a wristwatch, simply because no one else had ever bothered to try.

Then he borrowed a waterproofing concept for a pocket watch that had been on display at London’s Great Exhibition some half a century earlier and had his case maker use it with his watches. Again something no one else had really bothered to try.

He even adopted a rather new marketing concept, the celebrity endorsement. Having record-breaking swimmer Mercedes Gleitze wear his watch as she attempted to swim the English Channel.

No idea of his was ever anything but simple and he continued to rely on resources that already existed, but ones that crucially remained untapped and so it was in 1945 when the biggest untapped idea of all came to be.

The self-changing date. It’s scarcely possible to believe that over half a century after Patek Phillipe was founded and an even more astonishing two centuries after Vacheron Constantin came to be that the self-changing date did not yet exist.

Perpetual calendars, minute repeaters and tourbillons,  these had been around for ages by the time 1945 came about but none of them had just the date.

To sum up what made Rolex stand out against competitors with far more experienced skill and quality is to understand how straightforward an idea this was. A date display that changed at midnight, it didn’t know which months had what number of days or anything like that.

But it didn’t matter because unlike the incredibly complex perpetual calendar upon which it was based just stripped of all but the simplest mechanism. It was cheap, it was compact and most importantly it was useful.

Perhaps the impact of such a thing is hard to appreciate today with the world’s data at our fingertips but imagine not being able to know the date day to day without tracking it on a calendar or buying a newspaper. Now you could simply check your wrist and you knew just like that.

It’s so simple and so obvious, it seems stupid that no one else had thought of it but they hadn’t and so the title Date Just was born.

It’s the platform that Rolex built its dominance of the professional market upon turning what was once a bit of a gimmick into the real deal.

It didn’t matter if you were a pilot, a scientist, a diver, an explorer or a racing driver Rolex had a watch for you and it was the Datejust that cemented that style, that ethos that made people sit up and take notice of Rolex.

This was a practical watch that could be used and abused and go on ticking unlike the fragile efforts of the traditional manufacturers who were only just coming to terms with the fact that they even needed to start making wristwatches at all.

Very little has changed with the Datejust since it launched, sure there have been models come and go, facelift,  technical revisions but what you see above in the Datejust is essentially built upon the same ethos that started the brand in the first place.

Even now as mechanical wristwatches serve a different purpose as objects to enjoy and appreciate Rolex continues to keep it simple, keep it clean, It’s what made the watchmaker successful, saw it through the quartz crisis and it’s what’s got it to the top as well. Can you draw parallels with Rolex and Federer’s success? Maybe so 🙂

Rolex Datejust 41mm Ref. 126303 Specification

Rolex Day Date President Diamond & Ruby Everose Ref. 218235

Released in 1956 the Rolex Day-Date quickly became an iconic watch due to it being the first watch to having the days of the week spelt out in full on the dial. It carries the name President due to the bracelet style that was worn by Lyndon Johnson.

The model Federer is wearing above is from the Wimbledon 2012 final and is the Day-Date II Everose gold version, a 41mm watch with a chocolate brown dial.  The Swiss is said to have a number of Day Date’s in his collection and they are his preferred choice for evening wear. He discussed one particular Day Date, with an ice ‘glacier’ blue dial in the video below:

Rolex Day Date President Diamond & Ruby Everose Ref. 218235 Specification

Rolex Sky-Dweller Ref. 326934

Roger has a number of Sky-Dwellers in his collection, most recently he wore the White gold Rolesor (with black dial) model for the 2018 Australian Open final.

The Sky Dweller is one of the more polarising designs in the Rolex lineup as it’s quite a big and statement type watch. First launched in 2012 it’s the most complicated watch modern watch produced by Rolex, which again divides opinion as a lot of traditionalists prefer Rolex’s historically simple approach.

It’s powered by the calibre 9001, an annual calendar with dual-time capabilities, which can be set by the crown, using the rotating bezel to change the watch functions.

It measures 42mm and prior to this model that launched at Basel World in 2017 it had only ever been made in precious metals, such as Everose, yellow, and white gold. That all changed with the Rolesor model.

Roger is also lucky as he gets these watches well in advance of any dealers. Posting this picture in Miami, just 3 days after the watch launched at Basel World 2017, and regular customers would have to wait until September. He, of course, wore it for the final when he beat Nadal in a stunning performance.

Rolex Sky-Dweller Ref. 326934 Specification

Rolex Datejust II Silver Blue Arabic Ref. 116334

The Rolex Datejust II. A highly significant piece in Federer’s collection as it’s the timepiece he was wearing in 2009, when he defeated Andy Roddick, to win Wimbledon and break Pete Sampras’ all-time Grand Slam record.

This one is a stainless steel model, with a silver dial and blue Arabic numerals. Classy and understated.

Rolex Datejust II Silver Blue Arabic Ref. 116334 Specification

Rolex Yacht-Master II Ref.  116689

The only time I’ve seen The Rolex Yacht-Master II on Roger’s wrist was for the French Open in 2009. It’s specifically designed for sailors, with the regatta timer complication.

It’s the first Rolex with a programmable countdown function with a mechanical memory which is basically for Yacht Racing. The solid platinum 90-degree rotatable bezel is directly linked to the calibre 4161 self-winding movement.

This means the wearer can use the countdown function to synchronize with race start times. A  red countdown arrow is distinct against the white dial allowing the wearer to easily read the coordinating 10-minute countdown graduations on the dial and bezel.

The 44mm Oyster case is made from a stainless steel screw-down case back, scratch-resistant sapphire crystal, and a Triplock winding down crown to offer durability as well as waterproof protection up to 330 feet.

Rolex Yacht-Master II Ref.  116689 Specification

Other Rolex’s Federer Has Worn

Federer’s Not the Only Family Member to Wear Rolex

That’s right, Mirka is also in on the act, and although pictures are naturally harder to come by to know how many she has in her collection she often wears a special edition Platinum Day-Date President.

This is a Day-Date 40 that carries the model number 228396TEM and is extremely rare. Made from Platinum it’s also detailed with a pavé diamond dial and emerald bezel. Guide Price? About €400,000.

I’ve also spotted her wearing a Yacht Master which is my favourite:

This was worn at the Australian Open 2018 and is the Yacht-Master 40 in rose gold on Oysterflex .

And it looks like she also wears a President bracelet like Roger from time to time too:

Thanks to @inspiredtennis for sharing the Rolex Datejust Royal Black Zebra on Twitter, I hadn’t seen this one before:

And yes that is Mirka’s hand in case you were wondering.

If you have any questions about the watches above feel free to leave a comment below. Also, let me know which is your favourite (if any) and if you’ve ever owned any of the ones mentioned.

And if you have spotted Roger wearing any Rolex I’ve not covered here, let me know 🙂