Cobra 3dp Tour Irons Review : First Impressions

My one liner for this.

This is the best iron set money can buy.

I got the chance to hit a 7 iron from this set, and let me tell you, if a golf equipment genie granted me 3 wishes, I would use one of them to get this iron set. 

There is so much parody in the world of golf equipment, it’s a testament to how far along the manufacturers have come. Twenty, even ten years ago, equipment companies tended to skew their designs to a certain demographic or player type. The best example of this was Titleist, who back in the day seemed to only make clubs for better players. But now Titleist makes clubs for everyone from the tour pro to the beginner, and so does everyone else. 

The winner here is the consumer. A golfer who fits a certain style of iron, can now find an iron that will perform for them, made by every major brand.  So they can be extremely discerning about things like look, brand style, even color. For example,  if you’re looking to get a “players distance” iron you’ll have the p790 from Taylormade, the King Tec from Cobra, the Callaway Apex Ai200, Mizuno JPX 925, to name just a few of the many models. Same can be said if you want a true players club, or an ultra forgiving iron, every company has an iron that fits the bill. 

But trying to combine the best parts of every category into one iron is where the Cobra 3dp is a unicorn. In my opinion, there is truly no other iron that does this like the 3dp.

A first of its kind, the 3dp stands for 3-D printed. As in, this is the first ( i guess 2nd, if you count the limited edition model that preceded it)  mass produced 3d printed iron. This innovative manufacturing process and design, is what gives this iron a uniqueness in a sea of iron parody. 

I really struggle to stick the Cobra 3dp Tour into one of the established industry iron categories, because it has so many of the best attributes from so many different types of irons.  So, lets go through all the amazing attributes this iron has.

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Looks

These irons are absolute stunners. They are sexy and slim, with a very clean design that combines timeless elegance with visual innovation. And the visuals of the innovation are not stickers, markings or anything tacky.  

The back of the iron exposes a metal “mesh” or as Cobra says a “latticing”, that is only possible in a 3d printed manufacturing process. It’s this latticing that makes the iron have ridiculous forgiveness in a slim blade package. 

The light touch and simple “C” logo, the thin top lines, and minimal offset (just barely more than cobras muscleback blades) are all in line with the kind of look that better players require, and players with higher handicaps would love to have in their bag, but usually have to shy away from, because an iron this sexy was never forgiving enough… until now.

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Forgiveness

“…is more than saying sorry”

If you get that movie reference, Kudos to you. Jokes aside, combining the looks of this iron with the forgiveness it offers, has truly never been done before. Due to the lattice structure made possible by the 3D printing process, cobra engineers can move up to 100g of weight to wherever they want in the iron head. That’s 35 to 45 percent of the overall weight of the iron. For context, in past iron designs, engineers would get excited if they could move a few grams of weight in an iron head.

Moving all this weight to the perimeter of the iron gives this player’s iron the forgiveness of a super game improvement iron. 

To be clear, I'm referring to off center strikes towards the heel or toe, and because the weight is positioned low, the iron seems especially forgiving on thin shots ( my miss). If you hit it heavy/fat, this iron will not be as forgiving as an iron with a wider sole. But in my limited testing, toe, heel and thin misses were well forgiven, losing minimal ball speed compared to center strikes. 

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Accuracy

The forgiveness story on this iron is groundbreaking which is why its been written or talked about ad nasuem in publications and reviews. But one thing that I don’t think has been mentioned as much is the accuracy. For me comparing the 3dp to Cobra King Tour to the Taylormade P770 to Titleist T150 (Ive gamed both the p770 and t150, and they are probably amongst the most comparable irons) I noticed that the 3dp just wanted to fly straighter with less curve. 

I'm a bit of a flipper at impact. I get the face closing down a little quick and have a tendency to hit straight balls that turn into draws and draws that turn into hooks. 

With the 3dp the ball just wanted to fly straighter when I was trying to hit straight stock shots. Maybe its because of that 100 g of tungsten keeping the clubhead from twisting through the impact zone, whatever it is, sign me up for more of it.

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Workability

I can see how it would be a valid concern, if this iron has ultra game improvement forgiveness, and straightness, isn't the workability going to suffer? The short answer is no.

In the few shots I hit with the 3dp tour, I could curve it left or right on command. I think this is due to the shaping and geometry of the club. It’s still a players iron shape and size, and retains the ability to work the ball as desired. 

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Distance

The ball comes off the face with just a tinge more speed than some of the aforementioned competitors. I was seeing ball speed increase about 3 mph, equating to about a half a club of carry distance on average. 

I will say I didnt do enough testing to see if there was significant standard deviation or “hotspots”. But Cool Clubs, a fitter partnered with a 3rd party testing platform, did do a great test with the limited edition version of this iron, you can watch the full video here. But to save you time, you should have no concerns when it comes to distance consistency. The Cobra 3d printed head was one of the top performers for distance dispersion for this size iron, that they have ever seen. 

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Feel. 

One would think with this forgiveness and extra speed, and non solid design, that feel has got to suffer. This is another place where the 3d printed lattice shows its super powers.

On center strikes, impact felt like a buttery blade, almost mizuno forged blade-esque. On off center hits, there was enough feedback to tell you the shot wasn’t middled, but not in any harsh scream at you kind of way.

As Mike Yagley one of the chief engineers says in this video “(with 3d printing) We can put… structures inside the head…that can move a lot of mass… and still have that thing feel solid… That’s when we went oh boy, we really have something here.”

Oh boy indeed. 

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So why isn't this in my bag?

I love, love, love these irons. I think they are the first milestone in what will eventually be the industry standard for design and manufacturing process, IF they can get the price to be closer to irons manufactured through more traditional methods. And therein lies the only reason they are not in my bag.

As of today, the price for this iron set to my specs would be ~$2800-$3100, thats double or nearly double any other iron set I would consider putting in the bag, and at this phase in life, I really can’t justify that cost to the boss (my wife).

Believe me, if I had the budget for these I’d have them.  When the manufacturing processes get optimized or when these become a prior generation, and these fall in line with my budget.  I 1000% will have these (or their successor) in the bag, unless somehow another industry changing innovation comes out. 

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Final Thoughts

I can recall a handful of equipment innovations in my relatively short (25 years or so ) obsession with this game and its gear, where a company led the charge and reshaped the equipment landscape. Some of those notables include:

• Ping with its dot system turning custom fitting into a mainstay
• Odyssey and its 2 ball bringing putting alignment tech to the forefront.
• Taylormade with R7 and its MWT, being a pioneer in CG adjustability.
• Titleist and the solid core Tour ball/Pro v1 sunsetting wound balls.
• Fujikura taking the shaft market by storm and making after market shafts part of the performance story.
• Callaway and its C4>FT series proving out Carbon Fiber as an integral material, or Callaway and its use of AI for design.

This feels like one of those. This tech and its effectiveness feels like something that everyone will have to follow suit on, if they can get the price closer to todays standard.

Bravo to Cobra, a brand that sometimes flies under the radar. But in this case, is going to the moon and beyond.

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