THE COLORADO GOLFER’S GEAR GUIDE

Then forty years ago, golf underwent another revolution when it transitioned from persimmon-headed woods to steel clubheads. A decade later came the titanium wave, and since then the designs have evolved into exotic blends of steel, titanium, carbon fiber and even 3D-printed metals. Our drivers and fairway woods have moveable interior weights that help induce better shots. It’s like going from a Model T to a Formula 1 race car in the same period.

Today’s top-end drivers, irons and putters represent years of innovation involving materials science, mathematics, aerodynamics, chemistry and physics – basically the scholarly fields that comprise rocket science.

“The challenge is,” said Tom Olsavsky, vice president of R&D at Cobra Puma Golf, “everyone wants everything at once. Better distance, better feel, better consistency.“ And that explains why drivers can cost $600, and putters nearly as much.

The most difficult club to hit has been “long irons,” the 3- and 4-irons. They had smaller heads and even smaller sweet spots, meaning the slightest mis-hit had terrible results.

Now many models of these clubs consist of five computer-milled pieces that are welded or glued together. A razor-thin face that gives a “trampoline effect” goes in the middle. The head is hollow but filled with synthetic foam to give off the proper sound and feel. Tungsten weights in the heel and toe keep the face stable even on the most off-center hits. The overall effect is these design features make these modern clubs much more forgiving than their predecessors of even 10 years ago.

For many years the idea of combining materials in clubheads was unheard of, Hoeflich said. For example, it was not possible to weld a titanium piece to a piece made of steel. And there was no way to secure sheets of carbon to a metal sole plate. Now there is.

“The epoxies have become so much better,” said Michael Yagley, Vice President of Innovation/AI for Cobra Puma Golf. “And tape. The 3M VHB tape has amazing bonding strength to dampen vibrations. We use it in metal woods and irons, too. It’s used to keep wings of airplanes together.”

Also, the tools of design are so much better. With computer-aided design (CAD) software, it is now possible to design a club on the computer and even project what kind of sound it will produce when striking a ball. And now there’s 3D printing.

“I am looking out of my office window now at guys on my team who printed out a 3D version of a clubhead yesterday and are now hitting it on the range,” Yagley said. And for all these advancements in tools and materials, the challenges in the golf market remain extreme.

In 2023, Olsavsky and Yagley took the Cobra design team to NASA’s complex in Houston to sit down with their engineers to explore ways

to achieve better aerodynamics of the Cobra drivers and fairway woods. They laid out the complexity of the issue: The driver head could only weigh 200 grams with a size of 450 cubic centimeters. It had to, depending on the strength of the player, be able to withstand up to 4000 Gs (forces of gravity). It had to have a certain frequency and volume of sound at impact. It can’t break. It had to have specific interior features, and it had to last 7,000 swings. Oh, and it could only cost so much.

“There were like ten of their engineers in the room, and they said, ‘Yes, this is very complex. We don’t know how you do it,” Yagley remembered.

Yagley majored in Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State. Olsavsky is a mechanical engineer. Cobra’s Darkspeed line of drivers, fairway woods and irons have come out of this endeavor, but the design teams of the big club manufacturers are full of mathematicians, physicists, material scientists and the like.