Gear: Cobra King Speedzone fairway woods
Price: $279 with UST Helium 4, Mitsubishi Tensei AV Blue or Project X HZRDUS Yellow shaft and Lamkin Crossline Connect grips
Specs: Stainless steel body with carbon-fiber crown, CNC-milled face and adjustable hosel. Available models range from 13.5-degrees to 22.5-degrees of loft
Available: Jan. 17, 2020
Cobra’s newest fairway woods, the King Speedzone, combine several distance-enhancing elements found in the company’s drivers with features that make hitting off the turf and from the rough easier.
As with the Cobra F9 drivers and fairway woods from last season, the new King Speedzone fairway woods have a stainless steel face that is CNC-milled. While most faces are soldered onto the heads and then hand-ground and polished to create the curvature required, for the Speedzone fairway woods a computer controls a high-speed tool that passes over the hitting area and shaves away tiny pieces of metal. This allows Cobra to control the thickness of the face more precisely, and the company said the result is more ball speed.
The use of carbon fiber in the crown saves a significant amount of weight. Much of that goes into a 12-gram tungsten weight in the back of the head that pulls the center of gravity down and away from the hitting area. This should encourage a higher launch and more forgiveness.
Cobra updated the railed sole of the King Speedzone fairways. As with previous clubs, the rails still make it easier to maintain speed through the hitting zone and keep the club from digging into the turf, but Cobra reengineered the portion of the rails behind the leading edge and made them hollow. The hollow area of the rail system lets the face flex more easily on shots struck low in the hitting area while still giving golfers turf-interaction benefits.
While the standard King Speedzone fairway woods will be offered as a 3-wood (14.5 degrees), 5-wood (18.5 degrees) and 7-wood (22.5 degrees), Cobra also designed a Tour version and a Big Tour version of the clubs because some players consider their fairway woods to be secondary driving clubs.
The Speedzone Tour (14 and 17.5 degrees) has a more compact shape with its tungsten weight just behind the leading edge. Its center of gravity is slightly more forward for a lower ball flight and less spin.
The Speedzone Big Tour (13.5 degrees) can almost be thought of as a mini driver. It has the strongest loft, the largest volume and, like the Tour version, its tungsten weight is forward to enhance ball speed and reduce spin.
All three King Speedzone fairway woods come with the MyFly8 adjustable hosel mechanism, which allows players and fitters to increase or decrease a club’s stated loft by as many as 1.5 degrees to make gap-fitting easier.