Dominance in the driver market has traditionally been the bailiwick of the Carlsbad biggies—Callaway and TaylorMade. It’s been this way for what seems like decades. But parity seems to have caught up with golf club manufacturers. Perhaps the restrictions placed on the performance of the clubface combined with improvements in manufacturing techniques have served to make substantial gains more difficult, but last year saw some new names at the top of the driver hit parade.
Ping stole the show last year with their G400 series. The G400 MAX, in particular, proved somewhat of a unicorn appealing to amateurs and elite players alike. This year, Cobra is poised to replicate the feat with the new F9 driver.
Most drivers feature one or two key technologies which enhance performance and separate it from its competitors. Cobra has thrown the proverbial kitchen sink at the F9 by employing every trick in their playbook to extract every iota of performance from the F9.
The theme at Cobra is speed and lots of it. There might be a limit on how fast driver faces can be so Cobra set out to make the King F9 as aerodynamic as possible to help us swing it faster. They identified a common problem in today’s driver designs: to get optimal aerodynamic properties, you have to sacrifice other parts of the design.
Aerodynamically efficient drivers generally have a raised crown, blended edges and a raised tail, all of which serve to raise the center of gravity, making the club more difficult to hit. Cobra countered this with their Speedback Weighting System, which protrudes below the F9’s trailing edge, returning the center of gravity low and to the rear where it does the most good. Without it, the aero features would raise the center of gravity and make it more difficult to hit.
To this formula, Cobra added their proprietary milled face with Cobra’s Dual Roll Technology, which optimizes bulge above and below the center of the clubface. The axis of the face design is tilted at a 7-degree axis to account for the amount of toe droop the driver experiences during the swing.
Throw in the Carbon Wrap Crown, Cobra’s adjustable hosel that allows +/-1.5 degrees of adjustment in loft with draw settings as options, adjustable weights on the sole to tune the CG location and a very nice selection of high-performance golf shafts, and you have a recipe for what is potentially the driver of the year.
The King F9 Speedback drivers are equipped with Cobra Connect Technology, powered by Arccos. Electronically enabled grips work in conjunction with the Arccos Driver app on your smartphone, allowing you to collect data on your golf games for analysis.
COBRA CONNECT Technology analyzes every aspect of your game, so you can eliminate guesswork and make smarter shot decisions. All of your shot data syncs automatically to your smartphone in your pocket so you can review your progress during and after your round. Track your distances, tune your driver and pore over your stats to help you make better decisions on the golf course. It’s all there for the taking.
We had read and seen so much about the King F9 Speedback that when a demo was offered to us, we jumped at the chance to put it through its paces. When you swing the club, Cobra’s hard work on its aerodynamic properties become readily apparent; the club swings very easily and feels fast.
The Fujikura Atmos Tour Spec Blue that came with our tester is a real-deal shaft. Other Tour quality shafts ranging in weight from 50-70+ grams are available to fit the broadest selection of golfers possible. It’s mid-spin, mid-kick and produces a high, piercing ball. You can also get the King F9 Speedback with a 60-gram Project X Hazardus Smoke and a 70-gram Fujikura Atmos Tour Spec Black for the faster swingers. Golfers with slower swing speeds will love the new 50-gram, Fujikura Speeder Evolution and the 50-gram UST Mamiya Helium shafts.
The King F9 Speedback is a handsome driver to look upon at address. The carbon crown with its reinforcing ribs stands out but isn’t a distraction. The yellow Cobra logo provides reference to the location of the sweet spot.
Because we were in a bit of hurry to perform the tests on the King F9 Speedback, we decided to put it directly into play without any range time. We were in for a very pleasant surprise. True to its heritage, the King F9 is very easy to hit. Finding the center of the clubface was almost routine. It seemed every bit as long as our gamers. We will follow up this review with flight data from a launch monitor to confirm our suspicions about the ball speeds we experienced.
In sum, the Cobra F9 Speedback driver is a technological tour de force. The technologies aren’t just there for show either; this is a serious piece of performance hardware. With the wide range of shaft options, the club’s degree of adjustability for CG location, loft and trajectory make the King F9 Speedback a perfect starting point for a truly explosive hot rod of a driver.
If we had one nit to pick, it would be that the adjustable hosel requires rotating the shaft and thus relocating the position of the shaft’s spine. Now, we’ve heard from the manufacturers for years that their research has shown that the spine position is statistically insignificant. We beg to differ and kept the loft in the standard setting.
Other than that, the Cobra King F9 Speedback is a heck of a driver, and it’s just the first of the hot, new drivers of 2019. Is it the hottest of them all? We can’t wait to find out for ourselves.
The Cobra King F9 Speedback retails for P29,500 and is available at all J-Ten Proshops.