Imagine, if you will, a world in which you’re an R&D engineer for your favorite golf OEM. You’re working on the company’s next set of irons, trying to squeeze out every last drop of performance.

What if I were to walk in, wave my hand and give you five extra grams of discretionary weight to move wherever you want? My guess is you’d probably be grateful.

If I gave you 10 grams, you’d start dancing.

Twenty grams? You’d be doing the Southside Shuffle all night long.

But if I offered you 100 grams – 100 freaking grams of discretionary weight to completely change the mass properties of your new iron set – you’d laugh me out of your office. You’d also alert security to report that some wackadoodle is loose in the building.

That, oddly enough, isn’t far off from the real story behind the new COBRA 3DP TOUR 3D-printed irons. (Minus the wackadoodle, of course.)

The COBRA 3DP TOUR journey has more turns and twists than the 24 Hours at Le Mans. That deal about the 100 grams of discretionary weight and what it means to performance might be the twist-iest and turns-iest.

Like you, we have many, many questions about these irons, such as:

What’s so special about a 3D-printed iron? How much better than regular irons can they really be?

Then there’s the biggie: Why the hell would I, or anyone else for that matter, spend over two grand on them?

COBRA 3DP TOUR irons: What are these things?

The COBRA 3DP TOUR irons have no tools, molds or carbon steel billets. They’re just a bunch of digital ones and zeroes in a computer file.

Until someone hits the print button, that is.

That’s when a big 3D metal jet printer sparks up, melts a bunch of 316 stainless steel powder and starts squirting out material. The result may be the most unique iron head you’ve ever seen.

“I’ve been with COBRA 25 years, nearly half the company’s existence,” Ryan Roach, COBRA’s Director of Innovation, tells MyGolfSpy. “We’d been using 3D printing for prototyping with plastics. But right around the time we were being sold to PUMA in 2010, we started looking at metal printing.”

Most OEMs today 3D print playable prototypes to help speed up the R&D process. Just before COVID, COBRA started creating 3D-printed one-offs for some of its Tour players to use in competition. That eventually led to the November 2020 launch of the first commercially sold 3D-printed golf club, the KING Supersport-35 putter.

Last year, COBRA released two small batch runs of the 3D printed LIMIT3D irons. Those same irons, with a different name and branding, hit the streets next week, mass-produced as the COBRA 3DP TOUR.

To say COBRA is excited about this might be a small understatement.

“This is an opportunity to shift how people think about COBRA,” says company Innovation and AI Director Mike Yagley. “This is a huge holy s**t moment for us, which is exactly what this brand needs.”

So what is so holy s**t about 3D-printed irons?

Remember that hundred grams that got me thrown out of your imaginary office? That’s real and it’s a huge part of the 3D-printing story.

“With 3D printing, you’re making something that separates form from function,” explains Yagley. “With the 3DP TOUR, you’re getting a compact, nice-looking player’s club in form and a forgiving game-improvement iron in function.”

The secret sauce, according to COBRA, is found internally. The COBRA 3DP TOUR irons are about the size of a muscle-back blade (maybe a skosh larger). 3D metal jet printing, however, allows COBRA to replace the solid inside of the club with a unique lattice structure. That lattice is what saves those 100 grams.

One. Hundred. Grams.

That’s anywhere from 33 to 40 percent of the total head weight freed up to move elsewhere.

Holy s**t, indeed.

“Our innovation project was to see if we could design a blade that was forgiving enough for a mid- to high-handicapper to play,” says COBRA Senior Product Manager Caitlin Farley. “Before 3D printing, we couldn’t move enough weight around to get those mass properties. Saving 100 grams by using the lattice framework gets us there.”

Let’s say that again, just so we all understand. COBRA is claiming its new 3DP TOUR irons, which feature a thinner topline, shorter blade length and an overall more compact profile than its KING TOUR irons, are just as forgiving as the COBRA DS-ADAPT game-improvement iron.

“It’s designed for Tour players up to 20 handicappers that want a forgiving iron that looks like a player’s blade,” says Farley. “You’re going to get the precision and feel of a forged blade with the distance, speed and forgiveness of a game-improvement iron.’

How is COBRA pulling that off?

From a mass property standpoint, it’s hard to maintain heel-toe MOI when you drop CG low. That’s one reason player’s distance and game-improvement irons have longer blade lengths. It’s a function of where that mass goes relative to the shaft axis.

COBRA uses up to 100 grams of tungsten in the 3DP TOUR’s muscle to gain mass in the low heel and toe. That weight lets COBRA preserve MOI without making the blade longer.

“That’s the real differentiator from an engineering standpoint,” says Yagley. “You just can’t do that with traditional manufacturing.”

As cool as 3D printing is, it can’t defy physics. Low CG is great for ball speed and forgiveness but unless you strengthen lofts, they tend to fly too high. When you do that, spin goes down. The COBRA 3DP TOUR irons straddle that line better than most. COBRA says the extra ball speed lets them weaken lofts just a bit (31-degree 7-iron) to add a little more RPM to make them more playable.

Tour validation?

Nearly 20 Tour pros have COBRA 3D-printed clubs in play. Danny Willet plays the 3 DP TOUR while dedicated blade man Gary Woodland games 3D-printed KING MB prototypes.

“They have lattice and tungsten,” says Roach. “You just can’t see them like you can in the 3DP. Gary was trying to hit the ball higher but with the same spin and, boom, these clubs did it for him.”

COBRA scored a win on the DP World Tour with an off-the-shelf LIMIT3D iron set while Kyle Westmoreland won on the Korn Ferry Tour with a set of prototype MBs like Woodland’s.

“We also use Jason Duffner a lot for testing,” adds Yagley. “He’s a good crash-test dummy for us because he’s such a good ball striker. He’s like a kid in a candy store with these.”

COBRA also knew it had a feel story to tell with 3D printing but it wasn’t prepared for its Tour pros’ reaction.

“We knew it was going to feel good,” boasts Roach, “but we weren’t anticipating the response. Our Tour manager told me, ‘They don’t want to say it but it feels better than forged.’”

“Stiffness is what makes a blade feel good,” explains Yagley. “The face is stiff so what you feel and hear is mostly ball impact and nothing else. The frequency is super-high and the duration is super low. It doesn’t ring like a cowbell.”

OK, so it has a low CG, high MOI, doesn’t rotate on mishits, spins more than player’s distance or game-improvement and feels great. C’mon, this can’t be real.

The cynic’s credo says if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We had to see for ourselves.

March lions and lambs

March in New Hampshire is a great time to test forgiveness. One day, you stripe it like a lion; the next, you duff it like a lamb.

My first range session was a Mufasa-like laser show. The ball went where I wanted and I could flight the 3DP Tours high or low on command. Long-irons were a revelation. I dumped my PING i530 5-iron for a hybrid late last season. However, after striping six or seven straight, I can see the 3DP TOUR 5-iron in the bag.

My launch monitor session, unfortunately, was all lamb chops. While I couldn’t find the sweet spot, the overall consistency was still, well, consistent. My best 7-iron shots, few as they were, averaged a steady 167 carry. Remove those and my carry average dropped to around 160 with a +/- delta of a bout five yards. Considering how I was hacking it up, I’ll take that every time.

Compared to my PING i530 gamers, the best shots with the COBRA 3DP TOUR 7-iron were about a half-club shorter. That, however, is comparing the PING at 29 degrees of loft and the COBRA at 31 degrees. Spin was about 500 rpm higher, averaging nearly 5,000.  

Dispersion matters most on mishits. That’s where the 100 grams of low-heel and low-toe weighting was noticeable. The face didn’t want to twist which led to a surprisingly small downrange landing zone, considering the hack job I was giving it.

The subjective stuff

The COBRA 3DP TOUR irons definitely qualify as compact. The footprint is maybe a whisker larger than that of the Hogan ’99 Apex blade, making that relative forgiveness somewhat mind-blowing. Sole width is similar but the topline is just a touch thicker.

Feel was also surprising. Modern forgings feel firmer compared to that lovely smooshy softness of old Hogans or MacGregors. The COBRA 3DP TOUR sits in the middle. I found the sound and feel noticeably softer than, say, the new Srixon ZX7 or Mizuno S3, but nowhere close to my old MacGregor VIP V-Foils.

The big difference is on mishits. Just a smidge off-center with those old forgings was a bone-rattling experience. Newer forgings aren’t quite that penalizing but the COBRA 3DP TOURs give you enough feedback without making your metacarpals and phalanges hate you.

“The sound and feel are much more consistent because you don’t have that face rotation,” Yagley says. “I’ve heard people describe it as ‘soft but powerful.’”

Is this real innovation?

It’s easy to dismiss 3D-print manufacturing as a silly fad or marketing tool and the COBRA 3DP TOUR irons, while unique, aren’t magic. They do, however, represent a sea change in the future of manufacturing and, since we’re dealing with ones and zeroes, fitting.  

“We engineers sit in a room and discuss what problems we are trying to solve for consumers,” Yagley explains. “You and another player might have the same swing speed and handicap but we can make an iron just for you and a different version of that same iron just for the other guy.”

We’re talking one-of-one manufacturing, friends, with an iron custom-built to meet your exact needs. I don’t care who you are. That’s pretty innovative.

It’s also a big risk, which is innovation’s price of admission. If you’re wrong, you polish up the resume. If you’re right, you change the game. For every golfer who saw the original Big Bertha driver and said, “That’s going to change the world,” 10 more self-proclaimed experts said, “What the f*#k is that monstrosity?”

Turns out Ely Callaway was right. So was Karsten Solheim who was still making putters in his garage on weekends when he came up with the PING Anser. Hell, COBRA founder Tom Crow had just moved from Australia and set up shop when he designed the Baffler.

This level of innovation is a risk which is why the market leaders will take a back seat and just watch.

COBRA 3DP TOUR irons: Final thoughts

Thirty years ago, COBRA was one of those market leaders so much so that Acushnet paid $700 million to buy it in 1996.

Today, however, COBRA globally is smaller than Honma. It needs something that grabs golfers by the lapels and says “Try me!”

“Say you’re on a simulator and flush three in a row,” says Yagley. “But the one you missed that you thought would lose 15 yards only loses five? Well, that’s still on the green. That’s when something like this goes from a want to a need.”

That’s also when the price bugaboo comes in. COBRA 3DP TOUR irons start at $2,100 for a six-piece set. For some, that would be a non-starter. However, since both 500-set runs of last year’s LIMIT3D irons sold out so quickly, COBRA feels there is an appetite for something different.

“We have a tiger by the tail here,” says Yagley. “We haven’t heard anyone after hitting them say, ‘Yeah, I don’t get it.’ I have heard people say, ‘I may not spend that kind of money, but these are really, really good irons.’”

Despite a history of really, really good equipment, COBRA is still looking up at golf’s head table. COBRA may be taking a big risk by going all in on 3D-print manufacturing but for a company that’s also looking up at Honma, it’s a necessary one.

COBRA 3DP TOUR irons: Price and availability

As mentioned, the new COBRA 3DP TOUR irons sell for $2,100 for a six-piece set and $2,450 for a seven-piece set. COBRA offers a variety of standard and upcharge shaft and grip options.

There is some excellent news for lefties. Since 3D-printed irons don’t require molds of any kind, COBRA can print them in left- and right-handed models by simply using different computer files. The entire line is available for southpaws.

They’re available for presale now on the COBRA website. The retail launch is on March 21 but demo and fitting availability will be limited due to production capacity limitations. COBRA will offer a fitting locator tool online.

For more information, visit www.cobragolf.com.

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