{VIDEO} – A Shot of the Truth: Wilson Driver vs. Driver 2

MyGolfSpy Owner, Adam Beach and Director of Club Testing, Sam Robinson were featured on Episode 5 of Wilson’s Driver vs. Driver 2. As guest judges, they hit each of the 4 remaining designs and joined Jeremy Roenick and Rick Shiels in providing feedback on the performance.

If you haven’t done so already, there’s still time to enter our Driver vs. Driver contest. And you’ll definitely want to watch today’s video for an opportunity to win something truly special…in a matter of speaking.

Watch as Adam and Sam discuss the Wilson Golf brand, their experience on Driver vs. Driver, and which club they think has the best shot at winning and coming to retail.

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The Top 10 Tools for Tracking Your Web Metrics

So, you’ve built a website for your business and you’re up and running.

But, do you know what’s actually happening on your site? Do you know which pages people are visiting most, and which pages are most likely to encourage a purchase? What are your best traffic sources?

Trying to sift through all of the data that your site is generating can be a frustrating and confusing process.

Thankfully, there are a number of great tools for tracking your web metrics (both free and paid) that can help you get a better understanding of what your users are doing on your site and even how your competitors are faring in their own online efforts.

What is web analytics?

Before we go through our top 10 recommendations for the tools you should be using to better understand your web analytics, it’s worth doing a quick review of what web analytics actually is. It’s an important piece of managing your business and making the most of your web presence.

Web analytics is more of an ongoing process than just an analysis of data. The process does start with the collection and analysis of your data and competitors’ data, but even more important than the collection of the data is the second step—what you actually do with it all.

Once you have your data in hand, you need to translate it into a set of actions that you will take to improve your website. And finally, those actions must be aligned with your most important business goals: increasing sales, increasing social sharing, increasing customer engagement, or whatever the appropriate goals are for your specific business.

The best tools for understanding user behavior:

1. Google Analytics [free and paid]

We’ll start with what has become the standard in web analytics tools for businesses of all shapes and sizes (and it’s not the standard just because it’s free).

Google Analytics is actually one of the most robust and powerful analytics tools out there. It will help you understand exactly what your visitors are doing on your site. If you run an ecommerce site, Google Analytics can track your transaction data and help you identify which pages on your sites drive the most sales.

Beyond user behavior data, Google Analytics does a great job giving you a sense of your user demographics, showing you where your users are from, what types of internet browsers they are using, and even the size computer monitor they are using.

While Google Analytics has reams of data available which can be overwhelming, they have thankfully added educational tips within the application so you can turn to help at any point.

There’s also a paid version of Google Analytics for larger enterprises that you can upgrade to, but most small and medium-sized businesses will do just fine with the free version.

2. Statcounter [$9/month and up]

If simpler analytics is what you’re looking for, take a look at Statcounter. It does much of what Google Analytics does but in a slightly simpler format.

If you’re new to analytics in general and are looking for an easier learning curve, Statcounter is worth a look. It also easily integrates into a variety of popular site building tools so you can get up and running quickly.

3. CrazyEgg [$29/month and up]

CrazyEgg’s heatmap tool.

CrazyEgg’s secret to success is their heat mapping tool.

A heat map is a simple way to get beyond the sea of data provided by other analytics tools and visually see exactly what’s happening on your site. CrazyEgg lets you see what users click on and also where they move their mouse on the page.

You can even see how far users scroll on a page, which gives you the information you need to adjust your site design to make sure critical information gets seen by as many people as possible.

If you’re a power user, you can even segment the data to see how users from just one traffic source behave compared to others.

The best tools for SEO and competitive research:

4. MOZ [$99/month and up]

MOZ (formerly SEOmoz) is an all-in-one tool for tracking your rankings in search engines as well as what’s going on with your competitors and your social network presence.

MOZ gives you detailed data about which sites are linking to not only your site, but your competitors’ sites. You can see exactly how you rank in Google for a specific search term and then track your performance over time compared to your competition. This gives you a huge leg up as you try and optimize your site for search engines and climb the organic search rankings.

And, as Google and the other search engines put more and more emphasis on how your site and brand is shared on social networks, MOZ gives you actionable data to improve your presence on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

5. SEMrush [$69.95/month and up]

If you advertise on Google, Bing, or Yahoo!, then SEMrush is an excellent tool for you.

In addition to excellent data on your rankings (and competitor rankings) in search engines, SEMrush tells you what keyword searches your competitors are advertising on and even shows you their ad text. And, believe it or not, you can get an estimate of how much your competitors are spending on their search advertising.

SEMrush is an excellent tool to understand exactly what is going on in the search engines and gives you actionable insight into how you can improve your rankings and your online advertising.

6. Ahrefs [$83/month and up]

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer reveals insightful SEO metrics and data about any website or URL. It shows you the entire Domain Rating (DR), a specific page rating (UR), the number of backlinks, referring domains, and organic traffic. Charts integrated into the dashboard make it easy to track how those metrics changed over time.

You can dig even deeper and analyze backlinks with their anchors, and organic keywords with their crucial metrics (Search Volume, Difficulty, CPC, etc). A perfect feature to see which keywords you may be overlooking is Content Gap. Enter some competing domains, and you’ll see all the keywords for which they rank, yet you don’t.

If you’re more focused on paid search, Site Explorer can help with that too. You’ll learn what keywords your competitors are bidding on, the ads they’re running, and the pages that receive the most paid traffic.

The best tools for testing and optimizing your site:

7. Convert [$599/month]

Once you’ve collected data on how your customers are using your site, the next step in the analytics process is to try new things on your site and see if you can improve performance.

Maybe you want to get more people to fill out a form or add a product to your shopping cart. Maybe you just want more people to “like” your page on Facebook. This is where a service like Convert comes in. Convert lets you quickly make changes to your site and then automatically tests which version—the old version or your new version—is better at accomplishing your goals.

The best part about Convert is that you don’t need help from a web developer or engineer—the entire interface is point-and-click and you can make changes to your site without touching a line of code.

8. Google Optimize [free and paid]

Formerly Google Website Optimizer, Google has now rolled out this free tool that gives you the power of a tool like Convert in a free package that is tightly linked to Google Analytics.

Very similar to Convert, Google Optimize lets you see how two different versions of a web page perform so you can optimize your site. Like Convert, you’ll get a point-and-click interface for making changes to your site, and Google takes care of all the heavy lifting regarding analyzing the data and telling you which version of the page is better for you and your businesses.

Best of all, this functionality is free and easy to use—it’s just not quite as full-featured as a paid tool like Convert.

The best tools for tracking social metrics:

9. Twitter Analytics [free]

Thankfully, some of the best social analytics tools are built right into the tools you are already using. For Twitter, log into their advertising site and click the “Analytics” tab in the top navigation.

You don’t have to advertise on Twitter to use this feature, so you can just ignore their buttons and links that encourage you to place an ad. Within Twitter’s analytics suite, you can see who your followers are, where they are from, what they are interested in, and even get the gender ratio of your followers. You also get an analysis of your tweets so you can see which tweets reach the most people and create the most conversion.

10. Facebook Page Insights [free]

If you run a Facebook page for your business, then the built-in Facebook Page Insights feature provides a detailed analysis of your posts—who they are reaching, who is liking them, and how your Facebook performance is trending over time.

You can even see data on visits to your Facebook page and where those visitors came from. Like Twitter Analytics, you can also get summary demographic data on your fans and the people that read your posts. All in all, Facebook Page Insights provides fascinating and actionable information so that you can optimize your Facebook presence and increase your likes and content shares.

Now that you have all of these tools for tracking web metrics, the next trick is to figure out what you should be tracking.

If you run a small business, finding the time to analyze your data can seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be, and in a few other articles, I go into more detail about the top web metrics you should be tracking and the most important business metrics to monitor across the board.

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What Is an Income Statement?

This article is part of our Business Startup Guide—a curated list of our articles that will get you up and running in no time!

An income statement, also called a profit and loss statement (or P&L), is a fundamental tool for understanding how the revenue and expenses of your business stack up.

Simply put, it tells anyone at-a-glance if your business is profitable or not. Typically, an income statement is a list of revenue and expenses, with the company’s net profit listed at the end (check out the section on income statement examples below to see what it looks like). 

Have you ever heard someone refer to a company’s “bottom line”? They’re talking about the last line in an income statement, the one that tells a reader the net profit of a company, or how profitable the company is over a given period of time (usually quarterly or annually) after all expenses have been accounted for.

This is the “profit” referred to when people say “profit and loss statement,” or what the “p” stands for in “P & L.” The “loss” is what happens when your expenses exceed your revenue; when a company is not profitable and therefore running at a loss.

As you read on, keep in mind that cash and profits aren’t the same thing. For more on how they’re different, check out this article.

In this article, we’ll go over:

• The purpose of an income statement in your business plan
• A line by line breakdown of an income statement
• Income statement examples

The income statement in your business plan

Including a projected income statement in your business plan is essential. Whether you’re planning internally for your company to stay on track, or you’re preparing a physical document for presentation to investors, knowing that the business expects to be profitable (or not) over time is vital information.

If you are creating a business plan document, it should start with an executive summary and include all of the standard components of a business plan. A financial plan section with the projected balance sheet, projected cash flow statement, and projected income statement are must-haves. And it’s useful to note that often in business planning, the word “pro-forma” is used instead of “projected.” It means the same thing.

As you’re getting started, you can create your balance sheet, cash flow statement, and income (P&L) statement using our free templates in Excel, but you can also generate them in LivePlan, which will automatically pull in your real-time accounting data from Quickbooks Online or Xero accounting software.

Now that you know the overall definition of an income statement, let’s take a deeper look.

What’s included in an income statement?

Revenue

The top line of your profit and loss statement will be the money that you have coming in, or your revenue from sales. This number should be your initial revenue from sales without any deductions.

The top line of your income statement is really just as important as the bottom line; all of the direct costs and expenses will be taken out of this beginning number. The smaller it is, the smaller the expenses have to be if you’re going to stay in the black.

If you’re writing a business plan document and don’t yet have money coming in, you might be wondering how you would arrive at a sales number for a financial forecast. It’s normal for the financials of a business plan to be your best educated guess at what the next few years of numbers will be. No one can predict the future, but you can make a reasonable plan.

Check out this article about forecasting sales for more information.

Direct costs

Direct costs, also referred to as the cost of goods sold, or COGS, is just what it sounds like: How much does it cost you to make the product or deliver the service related to that sale? You wouldn’t include items such as rent for an office space in this area, but the things that directly contribute to the product you sell.

For example, to a bookstore, the direct cost of sales is what the store paid for the books it sold; but to a publisher, its direct costs include authors’ royalties, printing, paper, and ink. A manufacturer’s direct costs include materials and labor. A reseller’s direct costs are what the reseller paid to purchase the products it’s selling.

If you only sell services, it’s possible that you have no direct costs or very low direct costs as a percentage of sales; but even accountants and attorneys have subcontractors, research, and photocopying that can be included in direct costs.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb to distinguish between direct costs and regular expenses: If you pay for something, regardless of whether you make 1 sale or 100 sales, that’s a regular expense. Think salaries, utilities, insurance, and rent. If you only pay for something when you make a sale, that’s a direct cost. Think inventory and paper reports you deliver to clients.

For more on the differences, read our in-depth article on direct costs.

Gross margin

Gross margin is also referred to as gross profit. This number refers to the difference between the revenue and direct costs on your income statement.

Revenue – Direct Costs = Gross Margin

This number is very important because it conveys two critical pieces of information: 1.) how much of your revenue is being funneled into direct costs (the smaller the number, the better), and 2.) how much you have left over for all of the company’s other expenses. If the number after direct costs is smaller than the total of your operating expenses, you’ll know immediately that you’re not profitable.

Operating expenses

Operating expenses are where you list all of your regular expenses as line items, excluding your costs of goods sold.

So, you have to take stock of everything else your company pays for to keep the doors open: rent, payroll, utilities, marketing—include all of those fixed expenses here.

Remember that each individual purchase doesn’t need its own line item. For ease of reading, it’s better to group things together into categories of expenses—for example, office supplies, or advertising costs.

Operating income

Operating income is also referred to as EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. You calculate your operating income by subtracting your total operating expenses from your gross margin.

Gross Margin – Operating Expenses = Operating Income

Operating income is considered the most reliable number reflecting a company’s profitability. As such, this is a line item to keep your eye on, especially if you’re presenting to investors. Is it a number that inspires confidence?

Interest

This is fairly straightforward—here you would include any interest payments that the company is making on its loans. If this doesn’t apply to you, skip it.

Depreciation and amortization

These are non-cash expenses associated with your assets, both tangible and intangible. Depreciation is an accounting concept based on the idea that over time, a tangible asset, like a car or piece of machinery, loses its value, or depreciates. After several years, the asset will be worth less and you record that change in value as an expense on your P&L.

With intangible assets, you’ll use a concept called amortization to write off their cost over time. An example here would be a copyright or patent that your business might purchase from another company. If the patent lasts for 20 years and it cost your company $1 million to purchase the patent, you would then expense 1/20th of the cost every year for the life of the patent. This expense for an intangible asset would be included in the amortization row of the income statement.

Taxes

This will reflect the income tax amount that has been paid, or the amount that you expect to pay, depending on whether you are recording planned or actual values. Some companies set aside an estimated amount of money to cover this expected expense.

Total expenses

Total expenses is exactly what it sounds like: it’s the total of all of your expenses, including interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

The simplest way to calculate your total expenses is to just take your direct costs, add operating expenses, and then add the additional expenses of interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization:

Total Expenses = Direct Costs + Operating Expenses + Interest + Taxes + Depreciation + Amortization

Net profit

Net profit, also referred to as net income or net earnings, is the proverbial bottom line. This is the at-a-glance factor that will determine the answer to the question, are you in the red? You calculate net profit by subtracting total expenses from revenue:

Net Profit = Revenue – Total Expenses

Remember that this number started at the top line, with your revenue from sales. Then everything else was taken out of that initial sum. If this number is negative, you’ll know that you’re running at a loss. Either your expenses are too high, you’re revenue is in a slump, or both—and it might be time to reevaluate strategy.

Income statement examples

Because the terminology surrounding income statements is variable and all businesses are different, not all of them will look exactly the same, but the core information of revenue minus all expenses (including direct costs) equals profit will be present in each one.

Here is an income statement from Nike, to give you a general idea:

An income statement from Nike.

As you can see, while Nike uses a variety of terms to explain what their expenses are and name each line item as clearly as possible, the take away is still the bottom line, their net income.

Here is another example of an income statement, called a profit and loss statement in this sample business plan, found at LivePlan. LivePlan is a cloud-based business plan writing software created by Palo Alto Software.

A profit and loss statement in LivePlan.

This income statement reflects the type that would be typically created for a small business.

For more on small business financials, check out these resources:

• The Key Elements of the Financial Plan
• How to Do a Sales Forecast
• How to Forecast Cash Flow
• Building Your Balance Sheet
• The Difference Between Cash and Profits
• Profit and Loss Template [Free Download]
• Cash Flow Template [Free Download]
• Balance Sheet Template [Free Download]

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MyGolfSpy: Featured Judges On Driver vs. Driver 2 {Watch Tonight and Win!}

Starting tonight at 9 PM on the Golf Channel, Wilson Golf’s Driver vs. Driver 2 is about to get interesting.

Very interesting.

Driver vs. Driver 2 debuted a month ago with 13 contestants and their driver designs. That list has since been whittled down to just four: Cortex, Magnus, Roswell, and Launch Pad. Tonight’s episode takes on a unique MyGolfSpy-focused tilt, as MGS owner/sensei Adam Beach and MGS Director of Testing Sam Robinson will be featured judges as they test, critique and give their #Datacratic take on the the final four.

And if you tune in, there’ll be a little something-something in it for you (A Year’s Supply Of Wilson Golf Balls).

Watch & Win

Starting tonight (Golf Channel, 9 PM Eastern), and running through the November 13th finale of Driver vs. Driver 2, MyGolfSpy and Wilson Staff are offering you chances to win some pretty cool stuff, including the winning driver itself. All you have to do is watch.

HOW IT WORKS:

• Every Tuesday We Will Post 2 Contest Questions
• Watch The New Episode
• Come Back & Answer The 2 Questions (Have Until Friday)
• Answer Correctly To Be Entered
• Win Prizes! (Including The Winner of Driver vs. Driver 2)

So it’s watch, listen and respond.

PRIZES

And what do we have as prizes? The Episode 5 winner will receive a year’s supply (6 dozen) Wilson Staff golf balls, the Episode 6 winner gets a customized, stamped Wilson Staff PMP wedge and for the finale, Episode 7, the winner will receive the winning driver from Driver vs. Driver 2.

• EPISODE 5 – A Year’s Supply Wilson Staff Golf Balls
• EPISODE 6 – Custom Stamped Wilson PMP Wedge
• EPISODE 7 – Winning Driver from Driver vs. Driver 2

This contest is open to anyone in the US or Canada who watches the last three episodes of Driver Vs. Driver 2.

QUESTIONS (ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS SECTION)

So for tonight’s episode, our questions come straight outta MyGolfSpy:

• With which two drivers did Adam achieve the highest smash factor results?
• Which driver did Sam say the younger generation would be likely to pick up off the rack?

Nail those two, and you could wind up with a year’s supply of Wilson Golf Balls.

Remember, you’ll have to watch tonight’s episode of Driver vs. Driver 2 to find the answers, and to get a close up look at how GolfSpies test and evaluate golf equipment. As always, it’s #datacratic.

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First Look: Cobra KING F9 SPEEDBACK & SPEEDBACK TOUR Fairway Woods

Glancing at the Cobra F9 SPEEDBACK Fairway, two things are nearly impossible to miss.

First is its bold yellow paint (also available in avalanche) that matches the driver. Second is Cobra’s now signature CNC milled face. F9 is the first time Cobra has offered a milled face fairway. The company says the added precision nets 2.5 MPH of ball speed compared to hand polished faces.

That’s all well and good because everybody wants distance, but with fairway woods, golfers list being easy to hit and accuracy as the things they’re looking for most (though I bet most still buy the one with which they hit the longest ball).

Cobra believes it can address those desires – particularly the easy to hit thing – with its Baffler rails. The rails are designed to provide better turf interaction for more head speed at impact. Speaking from more experience than I’d care to admit, if you’re the kind of golfer who finds himself off the fairway from time to time, I don’t think there’s a better design for bad lies. It works just fine from short grass and the tee as well, but it’s one hell of a get out of trouble club.

With the F9 SPEEDBACK, Cobra moved the 15-gram tungsten weight to sit between the rails. That helps push the center of gravity down, making it easier to launch the ball into the air. For the most part, turf interaction with a fairway wood takes place near the front of the head, so the weight shouldn’t interfere, but just in case, Cobra gave it a little bit of a fin to help you get through the turf when you stick the club in a bit deeper in the ground than expected.

Additional weight is saved via an ultralight carbon fiber crown, while the PWR Ridge design (also found in the driver) stiffens the crown prevent energy loss at impact.

While you probably shouldn’t expect a ton of additional head speed because of it, as with the driver, the F9 SPEEDBACK fairway features Cobra’s 360° Aero polymer crown and titanium sole trips to help reduce aerodynamic drag.

Specs, Shafts, and Grip

The standard F9 SPEEDBACK Fairway is available in a 3-4 (14.5° in the neutral position, adjustable from 13° to 16°), 4-6 (18.5° in the neutral, adjustable from 17°-20°), and 7-8 (22.5° in the neutral position, adjustable from 21°-24°) models in both Yellow and Avalanche colorways. Cobra may add a lower lofted option in the future as Bryson DeChambeau prefers the larger head, but needs less loft.

Stock shafts include the UST Helium 60 (R,L), and the Fujikura ATMOS Blue 7 (R,S).

The stock grip is a Cobra Connect enabled Lamkin Crossline.

KING F9 SPEEDBACK TOUR

Players looking for a compact fairway wood – possibly THE most compact fairway wood on the market – should consider the F9 SPEEDBACK Tour. While Cobra has changed the nomenclature a bit, the Tour is the direct replacement for the F8+ fairway.

There’s not a ton of competition in this space. Whether you know it or not, Cobra owns the compact front CG fairway wood space, and the F9 SPEEDBACK TOUR only increases the advantage.

That’s not to say compact is for everybody; it isn’t. The smaller footprint and enhanced workability come at the expense of forgiveness, but Cobra believes that for strong fairway wood players, front CG is better. If you’re not a strong fairway wood player, or need help generating spin, the standard model is almost certainly a better fit.

As a guy who sometimes feels stuck between a 5-wood and a 2-hybrid, the compact Tour design gives me a look I like with more forgiveness than a hybrid offers. Better players may appreciate having a true 13.5° option as well. Average golfers will likely appreciate the forgiveness of the standard model.

The F9 SPEEDBACK Tour offers the same features (Baffler Rails, PWR Ridge Crown, and CNC milled face) as the standard model, but the milling pattern itself is more traditional. The circular milled pattern common to the driver and standard fairway looks wonky with scorelines. Tour guys (Rickie) wanted scorelines, so Cobra went with a simple horizontal milling pattern. The consistency and speed benefits are the same, however.

Any Color You Want…

Unlike the driver and standard fairway, there’s no yellow option for the F9 SPEEDBACK Tour. As they say, you can have it in any color you want, so long as it’s black, or in this case, black on black. A low glare leading section is paired with a glossy black crown.

GIVEAWAY: Titleist Driver + Fitting!

TITLEIST TS2 or TS3

Enter MyGolfSpy’s Giveaway!

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Specs, Shafts, and Grip

The F9 SPEEDBACK Tour Fairway is available in a 3-4 (13.5° in the neutral position, adjustable from 12° to 15°), and 4-5 (17.5° in the neutral, adjustable from 16°-19°) models. The 4-5 is available in RH only.

The stock shaft is the Project X HZRDUS Smoke 70 (S,X).

The stock grip is a Cobra Connect enabled Lamkin Crossline.

Retail price for the KING F9 SPEEDBACK Fairway Wood is $269. Availability begins January 18^th, 2019.

For more information, visit Cobragolf.com.

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First Look: Cobra KING F9 and KING F9 ONE SPEEDBACK Irons and Hybrids

Inside the walls of Cobra, the KING F9 SPEEDBACK iron project was referred to by its codename.

Bruce Lee.

Why? According to Cobra’s VP of R&D, Tom Olsavsky, “because he kicks ass.” The new irons? They kick ass too.

Truth be told, I haven’t been the biggest fan of Cobra’s more recent game improvement irons, but why dwell on the past when this time around things are different? As with the driver, the shape of the F9 SPEEDBACK irons is purposeful, though unconventional It’s a design that may prove to be polarizing, but as with the driver, I love that Cobra is taking a risk on something different that’s not just for show.

What you’ll likely notice are boxier heel and toe regions that house a significant amount of tungsten. Very early prototypes featured F7 driver weights welded to the heel and toe portions of the iron. It turns out, F9 SPEEDBACK wasn’t the most radical design on the table. The final version is more conventional than it could have been, but Cobra is still banking that its F golfers (80% have handicaps above 10) are willing to buy into something that looks a little different because of the improved performance it delivers.

F9 SPEEDBACK is Cobra’s attempt to resolve a critical flaw with most distance irons on the market today. They may be long, but despite manufacturer claims to the contrary, they’re not particular forgiving. I suppose the converse is true for many game-improvement designs. They’re forgiving, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re often not among the longest. Cobra’s position more or less holds true when you consider MOI and Sweet Area. Mizuno’s JPX919 Hot Metal is good, and you can make a case for PING G700, but that one has a blade length that’s longer than most.

Ultimately what Cobra was seeking to create with the F9 SPEEDBACK is an iron that’s truly long, truly forgiving, and doesn’t rely on an overly long blade to make it happen. If some other things have to look a little bit different for that to work, so be it.

Unique Shaping

Some of the things packed into the F9 irons are typical of what you’d expect from Cobra in this category. Progressive hosel lengths that are shorter in the long irons keep CG low. Longer hosels in the scoring irons raise CG to help generate a penetrating flight with more spin. It’s all part of Cobra’s TechFlo design strategy.

What is new is the shape. It’s boxy, and I need to be clear about this point, boxy isn’t the same as clunky, and I’m not calling F9 a bag full of shovels either. It’ good boxy – if that makes sense. Typically flowing regions, specifically, the low heel and toe regions have been squared off considerably. That allowed Cobra to place a massive amount of tungsten (image below) in those areas (33-grams of tungsten in the 7-iron alone). That gets you a huge boost in inertia without having to make the club any larger, but yeah, it does look a little different.

The second unusual detail is the F9’s two-tiered SPEEDBACK Sole. Olsavsky calls it a weight belt, but what we’re talking about is a wide sole that’s used to push weight lower and deeper into the head to create higher launch. By way of comparison, center of gravity locations are significantly lower than F8 in the longer irons and appreciably higher in the scoring clubs. That extra mass has everything to do with controlling trajectory.

We’ve heard this part of the story before and because of that wide soles aren’t usually particularly noteworthy. With the F9 SPEEDBACK, however, there’s a bit more to it. The SPEEDBACK sole features a narrower, raised center section that’s dramatically thinner than the total sole width. It’s designed to improve turf interaction, which generally isn’t the strength of wide sole irons. My experience with the irons suggests it actually works. It gets through grass nicely and plays narrower than its footprint.

Another small tweak to the head design offers a huge improvement visually – at least I think so. Cobra added a little bit of camber to the topline. It’s a preference thing, but the last several generations of Cobra GI irons offered exceedingly flat, blunt toplines. Adding a bit of radius makes it appear significantly smaller at address. It’s much easier on the eyes though I’d be remiss not to mention that the wide sole design does put a bit of the backcavity in view from the 4 to the 7-iron. Once you get into the true scoring clubs that stuff disappears and the irons themselves look a bit more conventional from all angles.

GIVEAWAY: Titleist Driver + Fitting!

TITLEIST TS2 or TS3

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PWRSHELL FACE TECHNOLOGY

PWRSHELL is Cobra Speak for its speed-boosting face technology. PWRSHELL has been a part of several generations of Cobra iron face stories, but as with most anything else in golf, it continues to evolve.

Like any good face technology, it’s thin (1.8mm at its thinnest point). Cobra has added a variation of its E9 technology to further increase speed on off-center hits. Engineers also thinned and extended the return – the lower part of the face that gets welded to the body – deeper into the body itself. It’s not a true cupface design, but the principle is similar to slot designs. It helps generate more face flex and boosts ball speeds particularly on low face shots.

In the 4-7 irons, Cobra uses a 3-piece insert (TPU, acrylic foam, and aluminum badge) to help dampen vibration without slowing down the face. Manufacturers are always trying to make cast, multi-piece irons feel more like forgings. While it’s unlikely you’ll mistake the two, Cobra says F9 offers best in class feel. It’s certainly not a KING CB/MB, but it’s good for what it is.

Cobra’s Progressive Spin Technology carries on with F9 as well. It’s not so much technology as it is a means to explain that different irons within the set have different grooves. The 4-7 irons use V-grooves to reduce spin and maximize distance. The 8-PW have U-grooves for better control and accuracy, while the GW and SW leverage more tightly spaced wedge grooves for more spin around the green. Cobra chose not to offer a lob wedge for the F9 SPEEDBACK irons. They don’t sell enough of the high lofted set wedges to justify making them. Other than guys who just want all their clubs to look the same, I can’t come up with a single justification for using a set lob wedge anyway.

It’s also worth pointing out that the marking on the clubface now reads Milled Face instead of Forged. Cobra admits some responsibility in taking part in what has truly become one of the industry’s more misleading trends. A good number of companies are welding forged faces to cast bodies, and stamping the word Forged on the body. Golfer’s love forged, but the practice is inherently dishonest. What’s a little white lie in the interest of selling a few more clubs, right? Cobra is still using a forged face, but the company is making an effort to be more transparent about the finer points.

From a performance perspective, despite higher inertia (long iron MOI is 10% higher than F8), in Cobra’s internal testing, the F9 SPEEDEBACK was significantly longer than competitive offerings from Callaway, TaylorMade, and PING. Generally, the brands doing the testing come ahead out in internal testing, and it hasn’t tested against any of its competitors’ 2019 stuff, but it has enough of a cushion that it doesn’t think anyone will offer a longer game improvement next season.

Whether or not you should be overly concerned about a few yards worth of iron distance is another conversation entirely, but having spent some time on the course with them, I can tell you that they’re incredibly easy to hit and distance isn’t going to be an issue. It’s easily my favorite Cobra game-improvement iron in the close to a decade since I started working for MyGolfSpy.

Chrome Plating

This is one of those things that most consumers don’t think about, and many probably don’t care about, but I believe you should. In this spot in the market, a good number of the offerings aren’t chrome plated because it saves the manufactures a little bit of money. Mizuno chromes, Titleist does, PING’s recent offerings have been plated, and now Cobra does to. Callaway and TaylorMade, what are you waiting for?

The market leaders are sacrificing quality to save a buck, and because of it, the best-selling products on the market show wear much more quickly than they should. It’s not a small thing. For what irons cost, every damn set on the market should offer a durable finish. It’s nice to see Cobra making an effort to raise the quality of its product and give you a bit more for your money.

Real Deal Steel Shafts

And speaking of cost-cutting, it’s not uncommon for game-improvement designs to come stock with lightweight, made-for shafts. Like nearly everyone else, Cobra has done that in the past, but – again, raising the quality of its product – is using the KBS Tour 90 as the stock steel offerings.

The graphite offering is still a made for (Fujikura ATMOS). Cobra is far from alone here, and the typical lightweight graphite player isn’t likely to notice much of a difference.

F9 SPEEDBACK Variable Length Iron Secs & Pricing

Retail price for a stock 7-piece set (5-GW) of Cobra F9 SPEEDBACK Irons is $799 steel and $899 graphite. A 4-iron and SW are available through custom. A graphite Combo set, which includes a 5H and 6-GW is $899. A combo steel set with the same set makeup is also available through custom.

ONE LENGTH

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Cobra is offering a ONE Length version of the F9 Speedback iron. While ONE Length sales dipped a bit in 2018, ONE Length sill accounted for 40% of Cobra iron sales. In the two weeks following Bryson DeChambeau’s win at the Dell Technologies Championship, Cobra sold 150 sets of ONE Length through its website alone.

As we’ve said before, ONE Length isn’t for everyone, but there’s a market for it, and if Bryson continues to play well (I think he’s going to win a Major next year), interest will continue to grow. For now – and with all due respect to Edel and Sterling – Cobra has the mainstream market cornered, though it wouldn’t surprise me to see a legitimate competitor enter the fray.

Apart from the signature Bryson blue accents and the necessary differences in individual headweights, the ONE Length offering is basically the same as the variable length option. The one notable difference is that sole widths on the long irons are slightly wider to promote higher launch.

Lower than desirable launch in the long irons has been the biggest hurdle for slower speed players looking to switch to ONE Length. The wider blade should help with that – as should some changes to Cobra’s shaft strategy (see below) – but if that doesn’t alleviate your concerns, remember that Cobra offers a ONE Length utility and ONE Length hybrids. Either of those could potentially resolve any long iron launch issues.

Call it a product of the ONE Length learning process; Cobra has updated its progressive lie angle strategy. The long irons are more upright, which contributes to higher trajectories, while wedge lie angles have been flattened for a flatter, straighter trajectory.

Real Deal Shafts – with a Twist

As with the variable length version, Cobra will offer real deal KBS shafts in the F9 SPEEDBACK ONE Length option. Instead of using a single shaft model, Cobra has chosen a progressive weight strategy with KBS Tour offerings. The 4-6 irons are outfitted with KBS Tour 80 shafts. The 7-9 use the KBS Tour 90, while the PW-SW will come with KBS Wedge shafts (115g).

It’s similar to an AMT/AWT strategy (True Temper’s AMT White is stock in the Forged Tec ONE Length). The idea is to leverage lighter-weight shafts in the long irons to generate more speed and higher flight, and heavier shafts to create a more penetrating flight in the scoring irons.

F9 SPEEDBACK ONE Length Iron Specs & Pricing

Retail price for a stock 7-piece set (5-GW) of Cobra F9 SPEEDBACK ONE Length Irons is $799 steel and $899 graphite. A 4-iron and SW are available through custom. A graphite Combo set, which includes a 5H and 6-GW is $899. A combo steel set with the same set makeup is available through custom. Left-handed is also available through custom.

Full Cobra Connect Included…if you ask for it

Last season Cobra put Cobra Connect enabled grips on all of its irons and included Arccos sensors for the rest of your clubs with every iron set purchased. The adoption rate for the Arccos powered offering was about 50%, and while that’s pretty damn good, it also meant that 50% of sensors went unused, and that’s just plain wasteful.

This year, the deal is the same…mostly. The stock grip is still a Cobra Connected embedded Lamkin Crossline grip. Cobra will also still provide free Arccos-embedded grips or Arccos sensors for the rest of your non-Cobra clubs, and it will still do all of it entirely free of charge. The only ripple is that this time around, you have to ask for them.

Cobra wants you to take advantage of the Cobra Connect platform, but it doesn’t want to effectively throw sensors away if you’re not going to use them – and you should use them, but that’s just my 2 cents.

KING F9 SPEEDBACK Hybrids

It’s not any huge secret that there isn’t a ton of innovation in the hybrid category, so to Cobra’s credit, it’s not trying to oversell what it’s done with the KING F9 SPEEDBACK hybrids. There’s not a huge tech story here. They’re designed to replace difficult to hit long irons, and they’re bigger than the F8 version, and that’s mostly the whole of it.

The KING OS hybrid turned out to be popular, even with the better players inside Cobra, so they decided to size the F9 SPEEDBACK version between the F8 and the OS. It’s 10% larger than last year’s model. Going bigger allows for a flatter leading edge and a bit better alignment at address.

SPEEDBACK F9 ONE Length Hybrid

A ONE Length version of the hybrid is also available. It shares the same basic design as the variable length model, albeit with a shorter shaft and a heavier head. The main point of emphasis Cobra would like to convey – and I’m doing it because I agree – is that ONE Length hybrids aren’t strictly for golfers who play single length irons.

They have the potential to work for anyone who struggles with long irons or variable length hybrids. It may take a bit of adjustment to get used to the look of a hybrid head on a short shaft, but if you can do it, you should find it scarily easy to hit. I’ve added it to the list of potential solutions to my struggles with a 5-iron.

Unfortunately, that’s becoming a winter project as we seem to have mostly skipped fall here in the northeast this year. I digress…and miserably so.

Specs, Pricing, and Availability

Like the F8, the SPEEDBACK F9 hybrids aren’t adjustable but will be offered in discrete lofts of 17°, 19°, 21°, and 24°. Women’s models are available in 22°, 25°, 28°, and 31°.

ONE Length hybrids are available in 19°, 21°, and 24°.

The stock shaft is a 70-gram Fujikura ATMOS Black in stiff, regular, or lite flex. The women’s model is 60-grams in ladies flex. Cobra has brought the specs of the shaft closer to the aftermarket version but concedes it’s technically a made for. Shaft upgrades are available. Price differs by model.

The stock grip is a Cobra Connect enabled Lamkin Crossline.

Retail price is $219.

Retail availability for KING F9 SPEEDBACK irons and Hybrids begins January 18^th, 2019.

For more information about, visit CobraGolf.com.

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