New Looks

Cobra’s Speed drivers feature a sloped crown and repositioned sole weighting to accommodate the deep (nearly 2.25 inches) face. Photographs: Jim Herity

Bigger and better

Making it big

Cobra’s new driver comes in three versions
A driver with a bigger face works like a larger trampoline. That’s good. Moving as much weight as possible away from the face improves forgiveness. That’s also good. The challenge is doing both, and it didn’t always work.

“When you started seeing the first clubs that were more than 400 [cubic centimeters] with really tall faces, they didn’t work that well,” says Scott Rice, Cobra’s principal design engineer. “It’s because there was so much weight in the face. What we’ve now been able to do is re-engineer the geometry in the face and the clubhead to put the weight where you need it.”

The bigger idea is evident in many new drivers, and it’s one reason Callaway’s Fusion FT-3 and Cleveland’s Launcher Ti460, for example, offer deeper faces than their predecessors. TaylorMade has used thin body-wall construction to position weight away from the face, like in its r5 dual drivers. Adams Golf has used carbon composite in the crown to save weight in its Redline RPM 460 Dual, and Nike’s oversize SasQuatch drivers stretch the front-to-back measurement as a weight-repositioning device.

Meanwhile, Cobra’s new 460cc Speed drivers incorporate those approaches and add a custom-fitting component. The bigger face is achieved by repositioning weight in three areas: a thin-face perimeter (by virtue of a crown weld), a reshaped crown that slopes down and away from front to back, and repositioned weights in the back perimeter of the sole. Cobra then tweaked the design to match three distinct ball speeds: the low-spin, neutral-face X series for ball speeds more than 150 miles per hour, the slightly draw-bias and closed-face angle F series for ball speeds of 125-155 mph, and the offset M series for ball speeds of 110-140 mph (cobragolf.com, $300).

To find a place that will measure your ball speed, visit the launch-monitor locator at golfdigest.com/equipment.
Lofty designs
How turning a pitching wedge into an 8-iron can make sense

Designers say the thin faces on TaylorMade’s new irons allow weight (more than 20 grams) to be redistributed low, deep and to the perimeter to improve launch conditions

There’s a reason more and more pitching wedges have the loft of what used to be an 8-iron. It’s because, thanks to television, we all want to hit our irons as far as tour players, and manufacturers are happy to oblige. But optimizing iron performance isn’t just about changing the number on the bottom of an iron. “Anyone can just jack up the lofts,” says Bret Wahl, TaylorMade’s director of product development.

“The challenge is to manage those launch conditions so you can hit higher shots with lower-lofted clubs.”

Many companies are attempting this feat. Adams Golf’s a2 OS set has a 44-degree pitching wedge, and the Callaway Big Bertha and Cobra 3400 I X/H are a degree higher. TaylorMade has unveiled two 44-degree pitching wedges. The r7 CGB Max and the r7 XD irons feature multiple metals and multiple-piece construction, such as plasma face weld in the CGB Max, to achieve higher ball speeds off the face. By mixing lower lofts with weight redistributed low and deep (the CGB Max uses tungsten weights), shots could be launched higher. That means longer irons that hold greens.

TaylorMade’s designers attempted to maximize the area of unsupported face on its new irons to increase a springlike effect at impact ($1,200 for r7 CGB Max steel; $800 for r7 XD steel, taylormadegolf.com). For the CGB Max, the ultra-thin steel face (thinner than the XD titanium face) is plasma welded to the rest of the body (making it the biggest iron in TaylorMade’s line), and on the XD the titanium face is mechanically pressed into the club’s steel frame. Both clubfaces have the company’s inverted-cone technology milled into the back in an effort to mitigate loss of ball speed on off-center hits. Wahl says the r7 CGB Max achieves the maximum springlike effect allowed under USGA rules. USGA Technical Director Dick Rugge would not confirm that assertion, although he did indicate there were “a small number” of irons that exhibit some springlike effect.