Tennis player Gaël Monfils spotted wearing a Panerai

Gaël Monfils, one of professional tennis's most flamboyant personalities, was recently spotted wearing what serious watch collectors will immediately recognize as the Panerai Submersible Marina Militare Carbotech PAM00979 — a 47mm dive watch that sits at the intersection of military heritage and advanced materials science. The sighting, captured wrist-on, also shows a chunky oxidized silver skull-link bracelet, a pairing that suits Monfils's rock-inflected personal style perfectly.

Introduced as a special series honoring Panerai's historic ties to the Italian Navy's combat diving corps, the PAM00979 deploys a case and bezel machined entirely from Carbotech — Panerai's proprietary forged carbon composite made by compressing layers of carbon fiber at varied orientations under extreme heat and pressure. The result is the distinctive swirling grey-black pattern visible on both the case flanks and rotating dive bezel. At 47mm with a 300-meter water resistance rating, this is an unambiguous tool watch, yet its skeletonized dial — exposing the bridges and rotor of the in-house P.9010 automatic calibre — elevates it firmly into collector territory.

The P.9010 movement runs at 28,800 vph, delivers a three-day power reserve, and features a quick-set date mechanism — a significant functional upgrade over earlier Panerai in-house calibres. The open dial displays forged carbon fragments beneath the hands, creating a three-dimensional depth effect rarely achieved in skeleton watches at this price tier. The crown-protecting device (Panerai's signature ponte) and luminous sword hands complete a silhouette that is unmistakably Panerai yet more technically resolved than the brand's traditional cushion-case offerings.

For collectors, the Marina Militare designation carries emotional weight. It references the actual watches Panerai supplied to Italian Navy frogmen from the 1940s onward — a provenance that gives the Submersible line genuine historical gravitas rather than manufactured backstory. The Carbotech variant adds contemporary materials credibility, making PAM00979 one of the more cohesive executions in the Submersible catalog.

On the secondary market, PAM00979 trades at a modest premium over retail given its limited production character and the continued collector appetite for Carbotech Panerais. Monfils, who has previously been seen with Royal Oak and Richard Mille pieces, signals with this choice a leaning toward serious horological substance over pure logo recognition — a mature and telling selection.