Cobra Golf is getting in the player's distance iron game, announcing a chic-looking replacement to the King Forged Tec irons from 2015. The King Forged Tec Black irons are designed, as the forged callout implies, for a softer feel, sport a darker finish and offer a balance of performance in scoring clubs, balance in the mid-irons and more distance in longer irons.
These irons -- available in traditional lengths and as a One Length offering -- use 1025 carbon steel as the head with a new 4140 stainless steel face which is thinner than the prior generation while adding strength to offer better ball speeds and forgiveness across the face. The Dimonized Black Metal (DBM) finish is a matte offering which, Cobra claims, is the most durable ever produced by the industry. The black actually helps the game improvement-sized head a smaller look, which should appeal to better plays.
A new Technology Enhanced Cavity (TEC) is a carbon-fiber badging designed to dampen vibration and offer better feel and sound at impact.
Tungsten weights in the heel (4 grams) and toe (12 grams) sections of the irons drive down the center of gravity and move it toward the middle of the club, all designed to increase forgiveness and create more ideal launch conditions.
The One Length version of the set, as you probably know by now, sports seven clubs all with the length and weight of a 7-iron. This is done by using progressive tungsten weighting in the mid and long irons, while lie angles have been adjusted to optimize ball flight. Long irons have a more upright lie angle, while the short irons and wedges have a slightly flatter lie angle for consistency across the set. The 3-7 irons have a single, heel-toe-wide tungsten weight.
Both sets feature the True Temper AMT Tour White steel shaft, which has been powder coated black to match the finish of the heads. The shaft weights increase in 3-gram increments through the set, from long irons down to wedges, with the aim of promoting more speed and higher ball flight with the long irons.
The King Forged Tec Black irons have the Cobra Connect tie-in to the Arccos platform, giving players an opportunity to use game performance-tracking for perhaps the first time or to carry on with it by using native sensors in the butt-end of grips. In addition, golfers purchasing this set in any length will get additional Arccos sensors to use in their other clubs by screwing them in the butt end of the grip.
The Cobra Golf King Forged Tec Black irons are available April 6 for $1,100 in a 7-piece (5-GW) steel-shaft set. Add $100 for graphite shafts as a custom order, with the choice of the UST Recoil 760 ES SmacWrap (in lite flex) and 780 ES SmacWrap in regular and stiff flexes.
As part of this release announcement, Cobra also unveiled the King Utility Black irons, available in both traditional and One Length varieties.
The utility irons have an all-over black PVD coating (so, different from DBM) on top of a hollow-body construction, sporting a forged, CNC-milled face. The company's Pwrshell face technology uses a forged 455 high-strength stainless steel unsupported face insert, designed to work with the hollow-body build and a high-density tungsten toe weight (67-73 grams in the Variable iron and 90-94 grams in the One Length version). These utility irons have MyFly8 adjustability to move the loft range 3 degrees.
Cobra Connect is in the grips of these utility irons as well.
The King Utility Black Iron will be available April 6 in a 3-iron (18-21 degrees) and 4-iron (21-24 degrees) with a Graphite UST Recoil 780 ES SmacWrap shaft in regular, stiff and x-stiff flexes for $219 each. The One Length version, priced the same in a 7-iron length and weighting, also has a 5-iron (24-27 degrees) available. A $200 steel option is available in custom orders, using the True Temper AMT Tour White shaft.
