We often undervalue just how much we rely on our irons.
It’s not just approach play and tee shots on par threes where we reach for an iron. The real value comes from the variety of shots they enable, bringing added flexibility to our game.
One day, a par three of 140 yards can play an eight iron, when it’s calm, the next day, it can be a five iron to play a punch shot under a strong headwind.
Iron play can boost and erode confidence in a very quick time.
How often have you felt emboldened into thinking you're going to have a great day because you were striping your golf irons on the range with laser-like precision, only to go out on the course and have that confidence destroyed after a series of shanks, fats, and thins with every iron shot you hit?
Iron play can further baffle us when we have a distance we are confident we have the club for, only to come up miles short because of a strike out the toe, or towards the heel.
We can occasionally suffer from “iron snobbery”, such as sticking to a set of blades, when in reality, something more forgiving would be more helpful.
Blades in your bag sends a message to other golfers. You are a player who is a low handicap, who strikes the ball purely, and loves to shape their shots at will.
At the other end of the spectrum, forgiving irons for consistency sometimes look a little ungainly and are not “premium”, which is why they sometimes earn the unflattering term of “shovels,” focused towards the wide soles, deep cavities, and thick toplines often seen in these irons.
Iron development is moving fast. We've gone from forged or cast steel to multi-material hollow-body designs. Modern design blurs the line between players' and game improvement irons.
Cobra Golf has come up with something completely different to move the development of irons forward.
Cobra’s 3DP irons don’t start life as a billet of steel; they start out as a computer file because 3DP irons are laser-printed.
There are compelling reasons, according to Cobra, which make 3D printed irons a smart choice for anyone, from tour pros to 18-handicappers. We’ll explore those reasons shortly.
We’ll use the Cobra 3DP golf irons to also look at:
- When Hype Doesn’t Live Up To Reality: Golfers Often Go Wrong with Iron Changes
- What Should You Be Analysing: Understanding The Need For Change
- Design Flaws? Where Modern Irons Fall Short For Most Golfers
- The Cobra 3DP Solution: The 3D Printing Story And More
- Empowering Your Iron Play With Cobra 3DP Irons
When Hype Doesn’t Live Up To Reality: Golfers Often Go Wrong with Iron Changes
Want to hit towering iron shots that will see the ball stop dead next to the flag, even if you’re hitting a five iron from 200 yards out?
Normally, hit a 7-iron into a 160-yard par-3? How many more birdie chances would you create if you were hitting a 9-iron instead?
This may sound blunt, but much new iron marketing is like this.
Even with irons, we crave more distance, and here is where we see one of the biggest tricks that can be pulled to give us the illusion of consistently hitting less club compared to our existing irons.
Over the years, iron lofts have gotten stronger. It’s simple to explain.
One of the most successful blade sets of its time was Mizuno’s TP9s. The 7 iron featured 37 degrees of loft. The current blade offering from Mizuno, the Pro S-1, features 34 degrees of loft.
Having less loft in modern irons creates a secondary problem: a lack of stopping power due to flatter trajectories.
The PGA Tour average swing speed for a 7-iron is between 90 and 95mph. A 10-15 handicap golfer will have an average swing speed of 75-80mph for their 7-iron, which translates to roughly 30-35 yards difference in distance.
Higher swing speeds mean lower lofts won’t be much of an issue, but if your swing speed is low, lower-lofted irons are going to be a real handful when it comes to generating the right trajectory to stop the ball on the green.
Lowering lofts seems helpful, but it can hurt green control.
Mistakes can be made due to what can best be described as “iron one-upmanship”.
A set of blades in a golf bag outside the proshop gives off the sense that the owner of those clubs is an exceptional player. Game improvement irons in the golf bag don’t give off the same vibe.
Reality needs to step in here.
Only the very best players in the world are using blades; even then, they are unlikely to carry blade long irons in their bags.
Even Rory McIlroy experimented with players’ cavity backs recently because he realised how much distance he was losing on a mis-struck 5-iron from his Rors Proto blades.
As we’ll see with the Cobra 3DP X iron, game improvement irons today can look sleek and premium, delivering advanced technology for players who need extra help—breaking the stereotype that function must sacrifice style.
A common fault we see when golfers come from iron fittings is that their existing irons are the wrong lie angle for them.
We vary in height and arm length, so no standard iron exists for everyone.
And yet, for golfers who buy their golf clubs off the shelf, we see them contort their posture to ensure the sole of the iron is flat on the ground at address. Compromises with your posture at address will be the foundation for flaws in the swing, which makes consistent ball striking even more difficult.
So, if that’s how mistakes can be made, when it comes to investing in a new set of golf irons, how can we avoid the same mistakes?
What Should You Be Analysing: Understanding The Need For Change
Good golf iron play is all about consistency.
Consistency in distance gapping between each iron, consistency in accuracy, consistency in trajectory, and consistency in launch and spin numbers.
Distance gapping is crucial to preventing a compromised scenario where you either opt for a longer club and swing it softly, or choose the shorter club and swing harder to cover a chosen distance.
Neither option is good and generally will lead to a poorly struck shot.
Trajectory can also be a problem. Hit the shorter club, and the ball can balloon up in the air, leading to the shot landing well short of the target, or the ball comes in too low, and can’t hold the putting surface.
When you are playing, observe the ball flight with your irons, and even compare it with your playing partners if they hit similar clubs to you, to quickly understand if you are hitting the ball too high or too low with your irons.
Even if distance gapping isn’t bad, irons that fly too high or too low will leave you second-guessing whether or not you can hit and hold your intended target.
Accuracy is an obvious marker to pay attention to.
If you’re not a massive stats fan, at least pay attention to how often you hit the par threes at your home course on a regular basis. An additional detail to pay attention to is whether you consistently miss the green right or left.
Diving a little deeper into your iron play, you could start to assess how often you are hitting the middle of the face during a round.
The key here is honesty. Be honest in your appraisal, and think about what the typical miss is, either in the heel or toe of the face.
Hitting golf irons well gives a solid, reassuring feeling through the club and into your hands. Hitting shots from the heel or toe feels and sounds awful, and we won’t talk about the effects of a badly thinned shot, especially on a cold winter morning.
But, here’s the thing, like the driver, hitting far away from the sweetspot will cost you in distance, direction, spin, and launch rates.
Like drivers, manufacturers are wising up to the idea that improving an iron face’s responsiveness on off-center hits will make them easier to hit, more predictable, and improve your confidence along the way.
Think about that in a real-world scenario. That badly-toed iron strike could still land on the putting surface compared to buried in a bunker, or in deep greenside rough.
With the Cobra 3DP iron range, their unique approach to iron construction is centred around creating more forgiving faces, which help keep ball speed and accuracy up, regardless of where the strike comes from.
We’ll also demonstrate that if you have used blades for most of your golfing life but want something easier to hit, Cobra irons provide the visual appeal of blades along with extra forgiveness and improved performance, increasing your confidence on the course.
The Cobra 3DP Solution: The 3D Printing Story And More
Cobra Golf pushes design boundaries, exploring what others won't for several product cycles.
It’s no surprise that Cobra would enlist the power of 3D printing in the search to build a better golf club.
If you’re not completely familiar with the 3D printing process, instead of laying down flat ink, a 3D printer builds an object layer by layer, stacking thin slices of material (usually plastic, but sometimes metal or resin) until the full shape is formed.
This feature is really important when it comes to the Cobra 3DP irons.
Each iron head is constructed from 2600 layers of stainless steel powder, which is fused together using lasers.
Internally, the 3D printing process creates a lattice pattern, which creates huge weight saving, up to 100 grams, according to Cobra, over traditional irons, allowing the Cobra engineers to reposition the saved weight to create an iron head with incredibly high MOI.
High MOI helps reduce the twisting of the clubhead, helping to create more consistent iron shots, ideal if you really struggle for control.
Another advantage of the 3D printing process is that Cobra engineers can precisely position the centre of gravity. In iron play sense, improving the centre of gravity helps to create more consistent launch and spin through each iron.
Finally, Cobra’s data suggests that the lattice effect created by 3D printing helps to create more consistent ball speed figures across the face, so that a toed strike is more likely to land on the green because the drop off in ball speed from a non-centred strike will be minimal.
The last point is crucial to better iron play.
Too many golfers think shot dispersion is about missing the target right or left. In reality, shots missed long or short of your target can be equally punishing to the scorecard.
Sounds good so far, but surely a 3D printed iron won’t feel as good as a super-soft forged blade.
Cobra’s answer is that their 3D forging process creates an equally soft feel to any blade. In essence, Cobra is offering you the best of both worlds: exceptional feel coupled with fast ball speed across the face.
From a looks perspective, Cobra completely controls the finished look when it hits the print button. What this means is a consistently good-looking, high-end premium finish from the tour head to the game improvement Cobra 3DP X Iron.
Empowering Your Iron Play With Cobra 3DP Irons
Cobra can demonstrate that 3D printing isn’t a gimmick. The unique lattice shape created via 3D printing carries benefits in ball speed retention across the face, improved MOI, and improved centre of gravity placement.
So, how ultimately is Cobra building their three irons for?
The answer comes in the three models available: Cobra 3DP Tour, Cobra 3DP MB, and Cobra 3DP X.
The Cobra 3DP Tour model is a traditional-style blade design, with a more compact blade shape, designed for better players who seek the ability to shape shots and generally don’t miss the centre of the face by much consistently.
The Cobra 3DP MB is still classed as a blade, but Cobra positions it as the most forgiving muscle-back blade thanks to the 3D printing process.
The Cobra 3DP X model sits in the player’s game improvement category, its sleek looks are identical to the Tour and MB heads, creating a consistent look across all the models.
The looks are important because the Cobra 3DP irons lend themselves perfectly to the combo set possibility.
Combo sets provide the option to select more forgiving mid to longer irons before switching to precision short irons.
If you are a better player, you might look at opting for the Cobra 3DP MBs in long to mid irons before transitioning to the Tours in the shorter irons.
If you are a mid to high-handicapper, your combo set could comprise the 3DP X long to mid irons, and the MBs in the shooter irons.
Building the right combo set comes down to maintaining consistent distance gaps between each iron, along with consistent launch and spin rates to provide a predictable trajectory across your iron set.
While we’ve talked about the technology within the Cobra 3DP heads to help improve performance, marrying up the correct shaft is equally important to becoming a better iron player.
Shaft selection doesn’t just rest on getting the right flex; it’s also about getting the correct weight to improve shot dispersion and consistency in strike.
More players are opting for graphite in their irons, and shaft manufacturers are rapidly expanding their options in this market to cater to the demand.
Ball striking and accuracy are also helped by having your Cobra 3DP irons built to the correct shaft length and lie angle.
All these things are achieved through a custom-fitting session.
Custom-fitting takes the benefits offered in the design and technology of the Cobra 3DP irons and makes them fully accessible to any level of player by ensuring components such as shafts, lie angles, and shaft lengths are tailored specifically to each golfer’s needs and playing abilities.
If you want to become a better iron player this year, start with a little self-analysis of your game, which will start to give you a sharper focus on what you need for your iron game.
Cobra 3DP irons featuring 3D printed technology offer a completely new take on how an iron can be built and how it can be made versatile for a wide range of players.
Marrying the technology story up to the custom fitting process, where the choice of shaft, lie, and length of each iron is tailored to your individual requirements, turns the Cobra technology into real-world gains that you can see and that will improve your confidence.
Custom-built Cobra irons, like the new 3DPs, are available on the Nine By Nine Golf website. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, build your ideal set using our online configurator, where you can choose the shafts and grips you want. You can also let our in-house engineers know what length you need if you know that.
If you are searching for the best golf irons for consistent ball striking, you can test how effective the Cobra 3D printing technology is by trying the Cobra 3DP models during a custom fit session with one of our experienced fitters at Nine By Nine Golf.