Indoor Golf: First Look: 2017 Cobra KING F7 Fairway Wood

The 20 Second Intro

Available Models: 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
Adjustability: Cobra MyFly8, 20g and 3g front/back weights
Available Colors: Black, Blue, Silver
Stock Shafts: Fujikura Pro 75
Retail Price: $239
Availability: 1/13/2017

To an extent, last season’s Cobra F6 Baffler Fairway was a bit of a sneaky, under the radar, niche product release that probably didn’t get the publicity it deserved.

More of you should have tried it, and probably bought it. I’m not kidding about that even a little.

For those who aren’t familiar with the F6 Baffler, it’s a small profile, short-shafted 5-wood (technically a 4-5 wood in Cobra speak), that plays like something between a fairway wood and a hybrid.

I'm not sure there's anything else quite like it on the market.

The F6 Baffler started as a bit of a skunkworks project for Rickie Fowler. The goal was a higher launching fairway that would hold the 15^th green at Augusta. Speaking from plenty of experience (full disclosure: none of it at Augusta), I can tell you that the F6 iteration of the Baffler design not only achieves its goal of high launch, but it’s also the most versatile and playable fairway I’ve ever hit. Between the functionality of the rails and the control that comes with the shorter shaft, the F6 Baffler was nothing short of a revelation.

It’s been in my bag all season. I expect it’s going to stay there.

Baffler Technology for Everyone

Given my personal experience with the F6 Baffler, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I learned that Cobra would be adding Baffler rails to its mainstream F7 fairway offering.

For many of us, fairway woods are the most difficult clubs in the bag to hit. That fact is why golfers consistently say that they want a fairway wood that it’s easy to hit.

More distance? That’s actually secondary to being able to hit the ball straight consistently.

Score one for common sense.

Why Do I Want Rails?

So why would you want rails? Hear me out, my cynical friend.

Under the worst conditions (rough, deep rough, bare dirt, and shall we say other anomalous ground conditions) the rails help the club navigate the mess and make better contact with the ball.

In closer to ideal conditions (the fairway, for example) the rails help the club glide through turf without digging, which helps maintain speed and keep the face pointed in the proper direction.

Cobra quantifies the benefits at 3-4 MPH in ball speed resulting from favorable turf interaction, which allows the club to exit the hitting area 2.3 MPH faster, and with less deceleration than a standard fairway.

That’s Cobra’s story. Believe it, don’t believe it. Frankly, I don’t care, because frankly, we’ve already covered the fact that fairway wood distance is, for most of us, a secondary concern.

Consistency. Playability. These are the primary reasons to consider the F7 fairway wood and its Baffler rails.

Don’t The Rails Get In The Way?

A fair question (which is why I assumed you might be wondering about it).

The rails getting in the way was my concern too. You’d think they would, right? It’s hard enough to make solid contact with a fairway wood anyway, and now you’re resting the face on a pair or rails.

Thin shots must be a problem, right? Nope.

The leading edge of the rails is beveled. As I've said, that allows the club to glide through the turf (not hop, bounce, and skip into the ball). While rail height varies between the 3 fairway models (rail height is optimized for the corresponding angle of attack), what I’ve found using the F6 Baffler isn’t that the rails get in the way, it’s that they get everything else out of the way. That same should be true for the F7.

In simple terms that many of you might understand, the rail design makes for a more playable version of the original Adams TightLies.

All of this isn’t meant to suggest that some better players wouldn’t benefit from the F7. As we’ll discuss shortly, F7 offers some design features that should have broad appeal.

But if I might take a moment to speak directly to those of you who have struggled to hit fairway woods with any degree of consistency; the rails are the reason you absolutely must put the F7 at the top of your demo list.

What About Adjustability?

This is Cobra we’re talking about, and given what the company has produced over the last several years, there’s a degree of expectation around adjustability.

The F7 won’t disappoint.

For 2017 Cobra has taken an aggressive approach to fairway wood center of gravity movement. The F7 offers a two-weight system that pairs a 20-gram weight with a 3-gram weight. Quick math - that makes for 17 grams worth of movable weight, which yields 3.5mm worth of front to back CG movement.

I know… 3.5mm doesn’t sound like a big number, and if you don’t spend your day staring at mass properties charts, the numbers can be hard to put into context. So rather than bog you down further, trust me when I tell you that it’s a massive amount of movement for a fairway wood. As the image above shows, the weight is being moved over the full length of the clubhead.

As you should understand by now, the front position (black in the chart below) produces a lower, more penetrating ball flight, and is often better suited to higher swing speed players, while the back position (orange) should launch higher and produce a more towering flight.

Adding to the adjustability is Cobra’s MyFly8 hosel, which provides 3° of loft adjustability (in ½° increments) along with three draw settings.

While there is loft overlap between F7 Hybrids, the same isn't true of the fairway woods. There’s 1° between where one ends and the next begins.

How Does F7 Compare to Other Fairway Woods?

From a design (and ultimately playability) perspective, the Cobra F7 Fairway Wood remains a back(ish) CG design. While it’s not as far back as PING’s G and G30 or Cobra’s own FLY-Z XL, it’s in the general ballpark of Cobra’s FLY-Z and F6, along with Callaway’s Big Bertha, Great Big Bertha, and XR16.

What we’re talking about is a fairway wood that offers above average forgiveness and, with the 20-gram weight forward, a center of gravity location significantly lower than the average for the category. This is a very good thing for most of us.

In fact, the only thing lower would be Cobra’s ZERO CG KING LTD. Note that the LTD also fills the middle CG space with popular offerings from TaylorMade.

Worth a mention, for those seeking an aggressively forward CG fairway wood. Cobra’s FLY-Z+ can still be found new for less than $140 bucks.

What’s the Face Made Of?

Perhaps of interest to some of you. For the F7, Cobra chose to use 475 steel as the face material. Most modern fairways use either 455 or 465 steel. 475 has a higher strength to weight ratio, which as these things often do, allowed Cobra to create a bit more ball speed on off-center hits, and save a little weight in the face, which it repositioned low and back.

What Are My Color Choices?

The Cobra F7 Fairway Wood will be available in black, blue, and silver.

What’s the Stock Shaft?

The stock shaft is a Fujikura Pro (65g).

How Much Does it Cost?

The F7 Fairway will retail for $239. That’s on the low end among major OEM offerings. While Callaway’s XR16 comes in at $229, most others are $249 and above.