Cobra Golf’s New Drivers Incorporate Leonardo Da Vinci Invention From Over 500 Years Ago

Mike Yagley, who heads up the innovation team at Cobra Golf, can’t help but chuckle when he talks about the new PWR-Bridge weighting technology that’s part of the company’s newest line of drivers.

Not only is the suspended weight design fashioned after a Leonardo da Vinci concept from more than 500 years ago, but it’s on the inside of the clubhead.

“The marketing guys would love for all the cool stuff to be on the outside,” Yagley said as he held a yet-to-be assembled driver head at the recent PGA Merchandise Show.

For Yagley and the innovation team at Cobra, the internal bridge structure they created for the Aerojet line proved to be a great way to suspend mass without having it touch the sole of the clubhead. While well-known as one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, da Vinci was also a engineer, scientist and architect; one of his most famous inventions of the late 1400’s being the self-supporting bridge.

“He had come up with that design and we said, ‘Wow, that will work,’” said Yagley. “By not touching this part of the sole, it frees up that structure to flex. These clubs actually do flex — the crown comes up a little bit, the face deflects a tiny bit. But if you stiffened it up, it can’t flex as much. That flexing allows the ball to come off the face faster.”

The 13-gram structure is also positioned forward in the club head for maximum speed and low (without touching the sole) in order to reduce spin on the ball at impact.

In addition to the new PWR-Bridge technology, the new family of drivers features a new aerodynamic shape in all three of its models: the Aerojet LS, Aerojet and Aerojet Max. And the elevated bridge structure also makes room for the debut of a new face insert called PWRShell that delivers a larger sweet spot across the clubface.

The new driver line from Cobra, which was recently recognized by the National Golf Foundation as one of the Top 100 businesses in the U.S. golf industry, has a retail price of $549 per club.