COBRA Golf Punches Above Its Weight In The Innovation Arena

In the competitive golf equipment industry, bold new designs typically appear and disappear like seasonal apparel collections. True innovation – the kind that fundamentally changes how clubs are made or perform – is rare. But for COBRA Golf, innovation hasn’t just been a marketing buzzword; it’s been the backbone of a company that’s spent decades challenging the status quo.

What the hell is innovation, anyway?

“Innovation” is one of those words that gets banged around more than a range ball at a municipal course. It typically means whatever the person using it wants it to mean. So perhaps it’s worth understanding what “innovation” actually means to COBRA Golf.

“Innovation is coming up with something that didn’t exist before,” says Mike Yagley, VP of Innovation at COBRA Golf. “It could be something that really benefits a consumer in terms of feel, distance, speed, spin, trajectory control. Or it could literally be, ‘Hey, we figured out a way to make this a little bit easier.’ What we focus on is the consumer. What’s not working for them? What’s broken? How can we fix that?”

I know what you’re thinking. That sounds like pretty standard corporate-speak. But here’s the thing – COBRA backs it up.

From parking lot demos to industry disruptor

COBRA’s innovative spirit traces back to its founder, Tom Crow, who in 1975 introduced the original Baffler utility wood, designed to help golfers escape difficult lies. To show the effectiveness of his unique design, Crow would visit local pro shops, drop balls in the parking lot and ask the employees to hit balls into the Carlsbad hills.

It worked.

The distinctive rails on the sole became a COBRA signature. While Carlsbad has changed significantly (good luck finding undeveloped hills these days), the Baffler rails have endured for nearly 50 years.

“Mr. Crow would say, ‘Hey, man, it’s a skidder,'” Yagley says. “And we do an FEA (Finite Element Analysis) study of a railed club going into the turf and a non-railed club – same exact leading edge, same shape, same everything, but no rails … And what we found was as it was going through the turf, you lost less speed. So, let’s say it’s coming in at 85 mph. With no rails, it might come out of the turf at like 80 mph. With rails, it came out at like 83 mph, which gave you a boatload more ball speed.”

Over the years, Baffler rails have moved in and out of the COBRA lineup and they’ve been borrowed several times by competitors. Given the pace of golf technology, it borders on incredible that Crow’s rail system has withstood a 50-year test of time.

“To this day, there’ll be some of us in the building that say, ‘We need to put rails back on the golf club,'” Yagley says.

This foundational innovation set the tone for what would become a company culture dedicated to finding solutions, even when it meant going against industry conventions.

The evolution of a challenger brand

Through the 1980s and ’90s, COBRA continued to push boundaries. In 1985, they installed an autoclave and began making graphite shafts in-house at a time when most manufacturers were still primarily focused on steel.

The mid-’90s saw the introduction of the King COBRA II which, in addition to being the top-selling iron in golf, Yagley argues was the first truly oversized iron set to gain widespread popularity.

After PUMA acquired COBRA in 2011, the company went through a transition. While they produced good products, innovation, perhaps briefly, took a backseat to marketing with an emphasis on bright, attention-grabbing colors.

“Yes, we did some colorful things. I wouldn’t necessarily say those were innovations,” Yagley admits. “But they were fun to do, I’ll tell you that.”

Several years into the PUMA era, COBRA began to find its innovative footing again with products like the LTD driver. The LTD emphasized optimized mass properties at a time when the industry was just beginning to talk about center of gravity and moment of inertia in more sophisticated ways.

The driver featured what COBRA called a “Spaceport” on the sole. While perhaps a little bit of a marketing gimmick, the Spaceport helped the company bridge the gap between unseeable but nevertheless real technological advancement and the often less important (from a performance standpoint) visual technology that conveys a product story to the consumer.

When looking for a “hook” for the LTD, the R&D team explained that “the magic trick” is the head. It’s the stuff on the inside. Bob Philion, then COBRA’s president and CEO, latched on to the idea of the magic being on the inside. A conversation about whether it was possible to show golfers what was on the inside led to the development of the Spaceport – a literal window on the sole of the driver.

The “window” surrounded by strategically positioned tungsten weight helped COBRA achieve what Yagley describes as “true zero CG.” The result was a 5,000 MOI driver that offered low spin and exceptional performance.

You’ll still find LTD in some bags and I’d argue that the fundamentals of the design – high speed paired with low spin and forgiveness – have inspired products that exist in nearly every manufacturer’s driver lineup today.

Smart clubs, ONE Length and the low-key inspirational F9

In the years that followed, COBRA continued its pursuit of innovation on multiple fronts. They became the first major manufacturer to integrate Arccos sensors into their clubs, allowing golfers to track their on-course performance.

“We were the first one to put Arccos sensors into clubs, and there’s been a couple other companies that have done the same. We may focus a lot on launch and spin and accuracy and forgiveness, but there’s also, ‘Hell, where’d the ball go [on the course]?'” Yagley says.

The partnership with Bryson DeChambeau led to the development of ONE Length irons – a concept that challenged conventional wisdom by making all irons the same length as a 7-iron to promote swing consistency.

“The whole flipping point is to groove your swing,” Yagley explains. “We found with a lot of players, they were more consistent with their impact across the entire set once they adopted the whole ONE Length philosophy. Is it for everyone? No. Just like blades aren’t for everyone and super game-improvement irons aren’t for everyone. ONE Length isn’t for everyone but the damn thing works.”

At their peak, ONE Length accounted for more than half of COBRA’s iron sales. In recent years, COBRA has streamlined its ONE Length offerings as its understanding of the market evolved but the products still sell well, accounting for 25 percent of TEC X sales.

Perhaps COBRA’s most remarkable innovation during this period was the F9 SPEEDBACK driver. It built on the mass properties of the LTD with improved aerodynamics, excellent sound and, most notably, an entirely new construction and shape.

While it’s not often the first to come to mind when reminiscing about COBRA drivers, the F9’s impact on the industry is still visible today, with competitors adopting elements of its design – from the wrap-around carbon construction to the distinctive shape with its raised skirt and dropped aft section that serve to increase MOI without compromising aerodynamics.

Despite these successes, COBRA has sometimes struggled to get the recognition its innovations deserve. Between the occasional questionable product name (AEROJET, RADSPEED) and an at-times excessive emphasis on flashy colors, the substance of COBRA’s technological advancements hasn’t always broken through to the average golfer.

As one industry veteran I spoke with remarked, “You could make the case that over the last 10 years, as a whole, COBRA has made the best drivers.” That’s not likely something the average golfer would consider, but there’s little question that COBRA belongs in the conversation with the biggest names in the business.

An “aha” moment among “aha” moments

For COBRA’s Mike Yagley, the pursuit of innovation has been a career-long mission spanning multiple industries. When discussing the significance of COBRA’s 3D-printing breakthrough, he frames it within what he calls his “four professional moments”: true game-changers he’s been part of throughout his career.

“I’ve had like four professional moments,” he says. “One was at Boeing with an airplane we were working on. It was like a next-generation Concord. We knew we had something.”

His second pivotal moment came at a small defense contractor. “We took a massive program away from Raytheon and we were a tiny little company but we figured out something better from a projectile standpoint. It was aerodynamics and all sorts of streamlining … we just crushed Raytheon, took the contract, a multi-billion-dollar contract.”

The third breakthrough involved the development of a solid-core golf ball. “I worked on a solid-core ball at another company before there was a Pro V1. We had something that was way better than anything on the market. We’re like, ‘This is like lightning in a bottle.'”

These experiences give Yagley a unique perspective when he says COBRA’s 3D-printing technology represents his fourth career “aha” moment, putting it in the company of revolutionary innovations that have shaped multiple industries.

3D printing: A paradigm shift in club manufacturing

The Supersport 35 was COBRA’s first commerically available fully 3D printed putter

COBRA began exploring 3D printing around 2015, initially using it for rapid prototyping to shorten the development cycle.

“We knew we could print a club which allowed us to dramatically decrease the cycle time between ‘we’ve got an idea’ – we normally have to tool it, make heads, finish those heads, test the heads, get the data, make changes – and that could literally be anywhere from three to six months.” With 3D printing, COBRA can go from idea to fully tested product in a single month.

While the initial prototypes required substantial post-finishing work, COBRA quickly recognized the potential to manufacture clubs using 3D printing. The technology allows them to create internal structures (generally some form of lattice) impossible to produce through traditional methods like forging, casting or even milling.

In 2002, after years of development and testing, COBRA released the fully 3D-printed KING Supersport-35. More affordable putters featuring weight-saving 3D-printed structures would follow soon after.

While the printing technology is fundamentally different, efforts in the putter space would pave the way for the first commercially available 3D-printed irons: 2024’s LIMIT3D irons. Demand exceeded expectations which led to a second limited run before a broader release of the irons under the 3DP Tour irons.

You can expect more 3D-printed products to follow.

What makes the 3D-printed irons special is their unique combination of properties.

“You look at it, it’s like, ‘It’s not an MB blade, but it’s a blade. It feels really good. What’s the big deal?'” says Yagley. “Within anywhere from two to 10 shots in the hit bay, depending upon the skill level of the player … they’re going to turn around. They’re going to go, ‘Wait a minute. It looks like a blade. It feels like a blade. I just hit it on the toe and I didn’t lose 15 yards. I lost five. What is this thing?'”

The secret comes down to one of the most basic concepts behind additive manufacturing: You don’t print what you don’t need. With traditional manufacturing techniques, sacrificing mass to the fundamental nature of the process is unavoidable. With 3D printing, it’s entirely avoidable and that changes the realities of what’s possible.

Traditional forged blades are solid pieces of metal whereas COBRA’s 3D-printed irons feature an internal lattice structure that saves approximately 100 grams of weight.

That weight is redistributed to the heel and toe in the form of tungsten inserts, dramatically increasing forgiveness while maintaining the look and feel better players prefer.

To put the weight savings in context, in one of my earliest conversations with Mike Yagley, he described the fight for mass savings as “sub-gram fisticuffs.” In an industry where fractions of grams are not insignificant, 100 grams is unheard of in a compact iron like 3DP Tour.

Of all COBRA’s innovations, Yagley ranks 3D printing at the very top.

“They’ve all been freaking phenomenal but this one’s at the very top because of the remarkable aspect of it. The improvement in the lowering of the center of gravity, get the ball up in the air, make it easy to hit, the improvement of moment of inertia that we got from that 100 grams that was able to be hogged out but still make it stiff enough that it feels good and put it low and wide makes it extremely remarkable.”

3D printing on Tour: Validation at the highest level

Long before consumers could purchase 3D-printed clubs, COBRA was quietly developing and testing the technology with its PGA Tour staff. What began as experimental prototypes has evolved into a significant presence in professional golf.

“Last time I added up, it was well over 50 things that have been put in play or tested with a Tour player,” Yagley says. “We’ve really accelerated … we’ve got to be way over a hundred things that have been tested now with Tour players. We’ve got a bunch of irons in play. We’ve had wedges go in play.”

Before Bryson (or anyone else, for that matter) had heard of Avoda Golf, he played 3D-printed COBRA clubs and he wasn’t the only one. Rickie Fowler, Gary Woodland and Kyle Berkshire all played 3D-printed clubs well before most of us knew it was possible.

The speed at which touring professionals, notoriously conservative when it comes to equipment changes, embraced the 3D-printed technology surprised even COBRA’s team. Players like Woodland, Max Homa, Danny Willett and Kyle Westmoreland made the switch with remarkable quickness.

“These are guys who have played forged blades for a majority of their lives and some of them may have played forged blades their entire lives because they were that good,” says Yagley. “I added up once. Let’s say it’s seven players. It might be upwards of 200 [combined] years of playing forged blades. They switched in minutes. That just doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t.”

The feedback from these players has been encouraging. “Gary [Woodland] calls us up and he goes, ‘Yeah, I’m never playing these other blades again. These things are amazing.’ And he says they feel better than his forged blade. The 3DP Tour or the MB version that he’s playing, it’s not going to twist as much. It’s a much more efficient transfer of energy. So, the sound when he misses it a little bit, heel, toe, is going to be much more like when he hits it in the center.”

This professional validation has been crucial for COBRA, helping to establish credibility for what might otherwise be dismissed as merely an interesting manufacturing technique rather than a genuine performance breakthrough.

The future: Truly individual golf clubs?

The ENZO is one of COBRA’s newest 3D printed putter models

While the current 3D-printed offerings represent a significant leap forward, COBRA sees even greater potential on the horizon including the ability to create truly personalized, one-of-one clubs tailored to individual golfers.

“Every time we have this conversation, it’s like, ‘When are you going to do this for me?’ or ‘We’re doing it for Tour players, but when is it going to be commercial?'” Yagley explains.

The underlying potential is clear: because 3D printing requires no tooling, mass properties can be precisely tuned for each individual golfer.

COBRA has begun exploring this potential with its Tour players, creating multiple versions of clubs with different mass properties to suit specific needs.

“We’ve made three different versions of the last version of that head, and we call it the heel center and toe CGs because we were wanting to do some testing on moving CG around,” Yagley says about work they did with Tour pros.

Just as a Tour player might get a center-of-gravity position perfectly optimized for their swing, recreational players could benefit from the same personalization.

“It is such a good fit for golf because of the nature of golf. Everybody’s swing is different. Everybody wants different things to look at. Maybe sometimes they want to look at something that they can’t hit or they need something that they don’t like to look at. And maybe this technology can either bring all that together in a package that you like to look at or enable you to get a product that you couldn’t get otherwise.”

Some of the customization options COBRA is exploring include optimizing spin characteristics, adjusting center-of-gravity position, modifying sole designs for different turf conditions, even creating specific versions of clubs for different course conditions.

“From a personalization standpoint, in terms of ‘What’s in it for me?’,” says Yagley. “With wedges, we’ll probably be able to help you flight the ball better. Same with hybrids. I can’t not hit hybrids left. There’s a pretty good chance we’ll be able to help a guy like me or you. Whoever else out there is like, ‘I can’t quite hit that club but I know if I could hit that club or that shot, it would be very useful.'”

While mass customization at scale presents logistical challenges, COBRA believes the technology is evolving rapidly enough to make it commercially viable in the near future. The vision is to create a system that evolves like software, with new capabilities added over time, perhaps starting with basic customization options and gradually expanding to include more sophisticated personalization features.

This vision of truly personalized golf equipment may represent the future of the entire industry and COBRA appears determined to lead the way.

If 3D printing is so great, why aren’t other golf companies doing It?

It’s a question that naturally arises when discussing COBRA’s 3D printing innovations: If this technology offers such dramatic performance benefits, why haven’t other major manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon with commercial 3D-printed products?

The answer involves a complex mix of intellectual property protection, manufacturing challenges and strategic business decisions.

“We would like to believe we have it locked down pretty well,” Yagley says when asked about intellectual property. “We do have a lot of patents or intellectual property. Patents are not bulletproof but we have a lot of them and they’re pretty broad.”

These patents represent a significant barrier to entry. COBRA has invested years and substantial resources into developing its approach to 3D-printed golf clubs, securing intellectual property protection along the way. This makes it difficult for competitors to create similar products without risking potential infringement.

Beyond IP considerations, establishing a viable 3D-printing production pipeline presents formidable challenges. “It’s expensive. It’s not easy to make these things,” Yagley acknowledges.

The economics of 3D printing at scale remain challenging. While the technology has advanced dramatically in recent years, with printing speeds increasing and costs decreasing, it still requires significant expertise and investment to implement effectively for commercial products.

However, it would be a mistake to think other manufacturers aren’t deeply engaged with 3D-printing technology. In fact, virtually every major golf equipment maker now uses 3D printing extensively in their prototyping and development processes. The ability to quickly produce test parts without expensive tooling has transformed how golf clubs are designed across the industry.

Tour professionals routinely test and even compete with 3D-printed prototypes from multiple manufacturers, even if these designs never reach retail shelves under that manufacturing method. The technology allows for rapid customization and fine-tuning that would be impractical with traditional production techniques.

Patents suggest that golf clubs aren’t the only thing COBRA may 3D print.

The distinction is that, while most manufacturers use 3D printing as a development tool, COBRA has taken the additional step of bringing the technology directly to consumers as a commercial manufacturing method.

As the technology continues to evolve, costs decrease and patents eventually expire, it seems likely more manufacturers will explore commercial 3D-printed offerings. But, for now, COBRA has established an advantage in what could eventually become a new standard for premium golf club manufacturing.

“It’s not going to replace casting and forging,” Yagley cautions. “Some people go, ‘Is this the future of making golf clubs?’ No. But it’s a future. It’s definitely here to stay.”

FutureFit33: Maximizing adjustability

COBRA’s most recent innovation is the FutureFit33 hosel system which, as the name so obviously suggests, offers 33 unique hosel settings, far more than any competitor’s offering.

“When you look at other systems that are out there, we have a much larger total range. And I think we’ve done a better job of decoupling the loft and lie.” Yagley explains.

Traditional adjustable hosels might allow golfers to increase loft but would simultaneously make the face more closed. COBRA’s new system combined with their Smart Pad technology allows for independent adjustments of loft and lie without significantly changing face angle at address.

FutureFit33 might seem overwhelming to some golfers but COBRA has worked to make the system intuitive through a web-based application that helps players identify their ideal setting based on their ball flight.

“We took something that’s very complicated and I think simplified it enough that a consumer could look at it and go, ‘Oh, if I’m hitting it like this, I need to move it over there so I’m just not hitting it like that,'” says Yagley.

The system provides unprecedented fitting flexibility, enabling fitters to dial in a player’s ideal launch conditions with greater precision than ever before.

Whether golfers will actually take advantage of what FutureFit33 offers is an entirely different conversation.

A culture of innovation

What drives COBRA’s consistent ability to innovate despite its relatively smaller size compared to industry giants?

As one industry insider once told me, “Little companies innovate because they have to.”

Yagley agrees: “That’s a great way to frame it up. I haven’t thought about it that way. I mean, we do it because we can. We are given so much latitude. I’ve been at other companies and we have 10 times the latitude that I know other companies have.”

This culture of innovation permeates throughout the organization. “The innovation comes from literally anywhere at any time and any person,” Yagley points out. “The whole COBRA team has a very innovative mindset.”

The long game

For all its innovations, COBRA still faces the challenge of getting noticed in a crowded marketplace. With the major manufacturers each offering multiple driver models, standing out becomes increasingly difficult.

“Imagine being a consumer that hasn’t been looking for a driver for like the last four years,” Yagley says. “Holy crap. The landscape is so different from what it was when he bought that driver or she bought that driver five years ago. Crazy different. That’s got to be overwhelming, right?”

Nevertheless, COBRA continues to push forward with new ideas and approaches. Yagley believes the brand’s recent innovations, particularly in 3D printing, are starting to change perceptions among influential golfers.

“The 3D printing thing is an opportunity for us to get in the heads of the better player who typically are influencers. Be it a Tour player, your club pro, some stick in the hit bay who’s fitting you or your buddy at the local course who’s a better player and you look up to them. When those players hit these irons and they have that remarkable experience and they go, ‘COBRA’s got stuff going on. They know what they’re doing. They’re innovating in such a way that it makes a difference for me and it’ll make a difference for you, too.'”

The company is already working on the next generation of innovations with Yagley hinting at developments that go beyond the current understanding of golf club performance.

From the Baffler’s rails to 3D-printed metals, COBRA has consistently punched above its weight in the innovation arena. While not every idea has been a home run, and some innovations may have been obscured by marketing decisions, the company’s willingness to explore new technologies and challenge conventions has resulted in some truly remarkable products.

As the golf equipment industry evolves, COBRA’s innovative spirit ensures it will continue to find new ways to help golfers perform better. The question isn’t whether COBRA will continue to innovate but rather which of its innovations will eventually become industry standards.

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