Cobra have had some of the best selling drivers in the UK in recent years, they have recently been taken over by the sports giant Puma and this has led to some ground breaking Cobra drivers hitting the market.

Cobra Drivers - A Brief History

A History of Cobra Drivers

Cobra as a company began in 1973, it was founded by Australian amateur champion Thomas Crow, it started trading under the name Cobra Golf.

In 1979 Cobra introduced a 46 inch driver with a graphite head and shaft, this length was one of the predecessors of the more common place longer shafted drivers today.

10 years later Cobra brought out the autoclave system which allowed graphite shafts to be strengthened through a compression curing process. At the time this was considered to be the biggest advance in shaft production for 20 years, this meant shafts could be longer and yet remain consistent through this design process.

A few years after Greg Norman joined the company in 1991 to endorse the brand of Cobra they introduced the Cobra Ti offset woods which were incredibly easy to use for drivers at the time and it helped to cure many golfers slices.

In 2001 Cobra introduced the King Cobra SS (sweet spot) range of drivers and metal woods. This Cobra driver featured a thin titanium insert and a thin surround and this allowed them to move a heavier weight to the back of the head. This is a principal that many driver manufacturers continue to exploit to its full potential to make the golf club more forgiving and with a higher launch.

It was at this point that Cobra started to really make waves in the driver market, the SS drivers went to the limit of the rules of the time as regards the spring characteristics of the face. This technology was subsequently banned by the games governing bodies which meant that golfers only had a year or two to use this technology. The R and A considered the COR which is the measurement of the speed of the ball when it is rebounded off the face to be too high.

Shortly afterwards all manufacturers had to switch to making drivers that conformed to the new ruling but this did create a boom in sales as so many golfers had no choice but to upgrade their drivers, Cobra were in the right place at the right time to capitalise on this.

Cobra drivers continued to feature the 9 spot sweet zone and they started to focus on the ease of use and forgiveness of the drivers whilst trying to maximise distance.

In April 2010 the worldwide sports brand Puma purchased Cobra and they became known as Cobra Puma Golf heralding an exciting new dawn for the company.

The current Cobra driver range owes a lot of its styling to the Puma brand, with a more radical use of bright colours and a flamboyant list of endorsed tour professionals.