22 Years Later, Cobra Goes Big (Again)

When Cobra released its original oversized iron in 1994, many were inevitably a little unsure of what to make of it. The club wasn’t ugly by any means, but the creation of a whole new iron category was a big deal for golfers at a time before the equipment revolution had really taken off.

It didn’t take long for mid-high handicappers to discover the merits of a larger clubhead, however, the King Cobra Oversize becoming a best seller by 1995, and making Cobra synonymous with oversized irons.

Last week, 22 years after its first incarnation, the Cobra King Oversized iron was reintroduced, the Carlsbad, CA-based manufacturer launching its biggest iron head ever. The new version is Cobra’s first iron to meet the USGA’s COR limit, and boasts a number of modern technologies that explain why its price tag is one of the highest in the super game improvement category.

At $1,000 a set, the new King Oversize costs $100 more than both the Fly-Z Pro and Fly-Z Forged irons that appeared ahead of the 2015 season, and it’s $400 more than the Cobra Max, another super game-improvement iron, introduced at the end of last year.

“Both sets are in the Super Game Improvement category, but the KING Oversize irons are much more complex than the Max in both construction and materials,” says Tom Olsavsky, VP of R&D at Cobra Golf. “One example is we are using 50-70 grams of tungsten in each hollow Oversized long iron to create a lower Center of Gravity (CG) and better performance.”

Photos of the Cobra OS Irons:

In addition to tungsten weighting in the long irons, the King Oversize features what Cobra calls all-new PWRshell technology, which not only lowers and centers the CG, but also results in a thinner, lighter face and sole structure producing higher ball speeds across the face.

Each iron is hollow which gives a soft, yet solid, sound says Cobra, and grooves on the milled clubfaces have improved structure for maximum spin and trajectory control. V-shaped grooves on the 4-6 irons reduce spin for more distance, U-grooves on the 7-PW increase spin for more controlled shots into greens, and wedge-spaced grooves on the GW and SW produce extra spin for scoring around the green.

Jose Miraflor, the senior director of product marketing for COBRA Golf, says the key to distance with irons is creating a low CG which is a challenge when creating a larger clubhead. “The multi-material cavity construction, and strategically-placed tungsten weighting in the KING Oversized irons allows us to position the CG lower, which ultimately delivers more speed and higher launch,” he says.

The new Cobra King Oversize iron probably won’t affect the iron market in quite the same way as its predecessor, but the current generation of mid-high handicappers is going to love it nonetheless.

$1,000 (4-GW, True Temper XP 85 steel shaft), $1,100 (4-GW, UST Recoil 460 ES graphite shaft)
cobragolf.com

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