The History of Cobra Golf

Cobra Golf innovations have come thick and fast since the company was founded.

When we think of Cobra Golf today, we see a company not afraid to test the boundaries of club design. We appreciate Cobra's golf club's performance and the price point at which its products sit compared to the powerhouse brands of Callaway, TaylorMade, and Titleist.

In today's parlance, Cobra Golf could be described as a disruptor.

Over our celebration of all things Cobra, we'll examine in more detail the unique position Cobra has in the golf industry.

To get to Cobra's 2024 lineup, we'll delve deeper into the brand by covering the following areas:

• Evolution of Cobra Golf
• Cobra Golf Milestones
• Cobra's 2024 Line Up
• Custom Fitting Cobra For Success

Evolution of Cobra Golf

Cobra Golf was founded in 1973 by Australian Tom Crow. Crow was a good golfer in his own right, and the highlight of his playing career was winning the Australian Amateur Championship.

Crow founded Cobra Golf because he wanted to produce high-end golf clubs that would appeal to both tour professionals and amateurs. Keeping the price point reasonable is an important consideration for amateur golfers.

Cobra developed its ranges, creating some milestone designs we'll cover shortly, but its name really became more widespread when Greg Norman bought a stake in the company in the early 90s. The world number one helped to create designs that carried his signature and put Cobra more on the map for golfers looking for an alternative to the big names such as TaylorMade, Callaway, and Titleist.

Cobra did come under the Titleist umbrella after Norman's time, and today, It is part of the Puma empire.

The tie-in with Puma has put Cobra in a position where it has street cred with younger golfers aided by staff players such as Bryson DeChambeau, Rickie Fowler, and long-drive champion Kyle Berkshire.

Cobra Golf Milestones

When we look at Cobra Golf's back catalogue of equipment, we can chart some true standouts that help tell the story of how Cobra Golf has pushed the boundaries.

The clubs we can use to chart this progression are:

• Cobra Baffler
• Ultramid Driver
• One Length Irons
• 3D Printed Putters
• Trusty Rusty Wedges

Cobra Baffler

It would be easy to believe that TaylorMade produced the first hybrid when it launched its Rescue clubs in the early 2000s.

However, the original concept of a long iron replacement first became a reality in 1975 when the newly founded Cobra Golf launched its first product, the Cobra Baffler.

Made from laminate wood, the head was shaped exactly like a modern-day hybrid club and featured rails on the sole, whose design inspiration was ocean-going catamaran yachts. The rail design would make the club more effective at getting through the turf and rough, helping golfers make more consistent contact.

The club also featured 23 degrees of loft, making it a suitable alternative to the equivalent three- and four-irons of the period.

Ultramid Driver

There was only one story to cover at the 1991 PGA Championship at Crooked Stick Golf Club.

John Daly was the 9th alternate and highly unlikely to play until Nick Price had to withdraw on the eve of the tournament, and Daly was in.

The little-known American tore up the golf course and the field with a display of power-hitting that had seldom been seen in the game then.

Daly's weapon of choice to produce those mighty drives was the Cobra Ultramid.

The Ultramid stood out for two reasons. First, its head was white, making it look completely alien compared to the steel and persimmon drivers in professional's bags. Second, Cobra employed the same high-tech plastic material used in constructing bullet-proof vests to strengthen the clubface and reduce shock absorption.

One Length Irons

When Bryson DeChambeau burst onto the scene, people were captivated by his unique iron setup.

DeChambeau's irons were all cut to the same length, and when he signed with Cobra, they not only produced his one-length iron but also mass-produced the first one-length irons for retail.

One-length irons are all cut to the same length as a 7-iron. Lofts and lies are corrected on all the other irons in the one-length set to create consistent distance gapping and trajectories seen in traditional variable-length iron sets.

The idea behind the one-length set is to create consistency in strike and swing by negating the need to move the ball position depending on what iron you are hitting.

3D Printed Putters

Cobra Golf experimented with creating the world's first 3D-printed golf clubs by teaming up with printing specialist Hewlett Packard.

Let's be honest. The entire putter isn't made via a 3D printing process. Cobra's work with Hewlett Packard created a lightweight lattice structure that would form the central element of the golf putter.

This lightweight lattice structure was fused to a forged aluminum outer structure with a SIK Golf descending loft face insert added.

The 3D element meant the Cobra engineers now had the opportunity to distribute the saved weight from the lighter 3D structure and reposition it effectively around the head. Coupled with strategic tungsten weighting, Cobra was creating putters with high MOI to help keep the blade square for longer.

Trusty Rusty Wedges

For Cobra aficionados, having Trusty Rusty wedges in their golf bags is a right of passage. Other manufacturers, such as Cleveland Golf and Vokey, have also added rusty wedges to their lineups.

However, the pioneer was a pro from San Diego named Phil Rodgers, who worked with Cobra in 1981 to create the first wedges to intentionally rust, with the idea of creating more spin and control on shots around the green.

Rodgers is also credited with creating the first proper wedge gapping system by introducing the gap wedge to golfer's bags.

Cobra has introduced more innovations. In 1989, they introduced the first demo sets for golfers to try their clubs. Cobra was also the first U.S.-based manufacturer to introduce graphite shafts as stock options on their woods and irons in 1985.

We can see that Cobra has a rich, important past.

But what about its present? What innovations will Cobra bring to the golfing world in 2024?

Cobra's 2024 Line Up

Cobra's big launch for 2024 was the new Dakspeed range of drivers, fairway woods, and hybrids, which we covered in detail here.

The carbon composite-based Darkspeed drivers are an evolution of the Aerojet woods, which were partially designed by Bryson DeChambeau and Kyle Berkshire, a world long-drive champion.

The Darkspeed range offers three distinctive driver models.

• Darkspeed LS - low spin bomber's model
• Darkspeed X - suitable for a wide range of golfing abilities
• Darkspeed MAX - ultra-friendly high stability driver for golfers who need help with accuracy and distance

With these models and the fairway woods and hybrids that accompany the drivers, we see the level of design and detail Cobra engineers in all its products.

The heads have been shaped after extensive testing in a wind tunnel to create the most aerodynamically effective shape to increase clubhead speed.

Cobra Golf technology stalwarts PWRSHELL and PWR-BRIDGE are present in the Darkspeed range.

PWRSHELL helps create the maximum flexibility for faster ball speeds and works in unison with Cobra's AI-designed face, which helps maximise those higher ball speeds across the face.

PWR-BRIDGE is a suspended bridge-like structure positioned low behind the face to help keep ball speeds high and spin rates low from strikes lower in the face.

In creating the PWR-BRIDGE concept, Cobra engineers took inspiration from a 500-year old design by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Iron Models

Cobra has created an iron range that will suit every type of golfer.

The sleek-looking Cobra King Forged MB and CB irons will suit the eye of the better player looking for the feel and creativity in the classic-looking MB forged iron. The CB model offers a small cavity that moves the saved weight out towards the perimeter of the iron head to create an element of forgiveness, which is ideal for the harder-to-hit long irons.

Both irons are forged from soft 1025 carbon steel and share similar classic looks, making them easy to blend.

If you want a little more tech in your iron but still enjoy a traditional blade-style look and feel, the King Forged Tec irons could be your ideal choice.

Cobra has also produced the King Tour iron. The King Tour is a forged player's cavity back featuring CNC-milled undercuts in the cavity to help redistribute weight, improving the iron's centre of gravity, and a TPU-molded insert to improve feel and reduce vibration.

Forged from the same soft 1025 carbon steel to create identical levels of feel as the MB and CB models, the Forged Tec's performance comes from the hollow head construction housing a PWRSHELL face for explosive ball speeds across the face and a 20g tungsten weight strategically positioned to improve CG for consistent spin and trajectory in each iron.

While the Forged Tec sits very much at the player's end of the performance distance iron category, think similar to TaylorMade's P.770 iron, the Forged Tec X offers the same performance and feel albeit in a slightly bigger head design making it a suitable comparison to TaylorMade's P790 head.

If performance is your main objective, Cobra also introduced the Darkspeed irons for 2024.

The Darkspeed irons are hollow-body construction, featuring PWRSHELL, PWR-BRDIGE, and H.O.T Face technologies to provide high, consistent ball speeds across the face.

The Darkspeed iron also benefits from a soft polymer insert in the hollow, which dampens vibrations and improves its acoustics.

Cobra 3D Putters

Cobra has refined the 3D modeling process, but the principle remains the same as the original 2020 designs. 3D printing creates a lattice-style structure that forms the chassis of the putter head and distributes weight more effectively to the perimeter of the putter, improving its stability.

The putter's basic structure is made from 6061 aerospace-grade aluminum, and the face insert is still the descending loft updated via LA GOLF to improve the ball's roll off the face.

Cobra offers a wide range of head shapes, from classic blade designs to high-MOI fang-shaped heads.

All putters have interchangeable weights, which help to improve stability further, and they can be tuned for each golfer's putting stroke.

Custom Fitting Cobra For Success

All Cobra models lend themselves perfectly to the custom-fitting experience.

If you are interested in the Cobra range, you can book a dedicated custom-fitting session for drivers, fairway woods, irons, or hybrids.

Understanding which head to fit will depend on the information we see from the launch monitor as you warm up, hitting your existing golf clubs. For drivers, we can fit you for the ideal Cobra Darkspeed head model based on your spin, launch, and clubhead speed characteristics.

We can follow a similar process when determining which Cobra iron head is best suited for your game.

Utilising Cobra's technology, such as the aerodynamic head shaping of the Darkspeed woods, the PWRSHELL and PWR-BRIDGE technologies can add ball speed and distance to your shots regardless of where your strike is on the face.

However, getting the right head is only part of the equation.

Being able to fit the correct golf shaft for your playing needs is where an experienced fitter turns a good club into a great club that will give you a higher level of performance and trust on the course.

Shafts are also designed to be fitted to your needs, and with an extensive range at our fingertips, we'll be able to hone in on the right shaft for you.

With irons, we can customise your Cobra choice further by altering the lie angle to your needs, and we can also make subtle adjustments to the Darkspeed drivers and DarkSpeed fairway woods through their adjustable necks to further dial in the shape and trajectory to deliver the best results.

Cobra has a long history of making high-quality golf clubs and innovating the market, and it will continue to do so.

In today's more price-conscious world, Cobra's range continues to offer performance through innovation at competitive prices, making it a strong contender for golfers of all abilities.

If you want to explore the Cobra range further, book yourself in for a custom-fitting session with one of our experienced fitters.

On our website, you can also view the full Darkspeed range of drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, and irons, as well as King Tour/Tec irons and 3D putters.

You can personalise your choice through our extensive range of golf shafts and tell us any additional requirements you have before placing your order for your perfect Cobra club through the Nine by Nine Golf website.