Question

5.45K viewsApril 7, 2019

RadioPreacher April 7, 2019 0 Comments

Greetings,

Until I assemble my Maltby KE4 Forged irons later, I’m enjoying some older:

1999 Cobra — King Cobra II (oversize)

When I looked them up, both Maltby Playability Factor charts give them a

MPF: 115 ?

This is obviously either some kind of mistake or the MPF method has some odd chink in its armor and the K.C. 2 OS’s is falling through the cracks so that MPF doesn’t remotely reflect player experience on these.

They’re oversized, deep cavity backs with a modest, wide extra weight along the bottom of the cavity, peaking a little behind the sweet spot but not a lot. They’re (were) almost unanimously talked up by players of most skill levels.

A hack, I find them easier to hit than its successor the King Cobra 3400 I/XH listed as a MPF of 780, which is like you merely took the King Cobra II OS and injected some foam in the said broad, sweet spot-peaked weighted area. Not 665 MPF points worth it would seem.

I haven’t learned exactly how the score is tabulated…

Is anyone interested in looking at it and telling me if there’s a real score that can be gleaned (specs below)

These are far, far easier to play and more forgiving than clubs marked hundreds of points higher.

I lean toward call them SGI’s IMHO and limited experience, but definitely at least GI’s for sure.

Maltby’s MPF book with specs says:

Year1999
BrandCobra
Head Weight258
“C” Dimension1.030
Basic VCOG0.890
Moment of Inertia (MOI)13.62622
Actual RCOG0.450
Loft26
VCOG Adjustment-0.008
Actual VCOG0.882
VCOG Correction Factor-63
MOI Correction Factor0
Calculated Points85
MPF115

Thanks!

Jeff

2 Answers

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Answer 1 · 2019-05-19T20:51:41+00:00

First, understand that if you like a club and have had success, that’s great. We, myself included, have had irons I have played over the years that I liked that do not have a high playability number. That being said, the King Cobra II Oversize is not a good design. So many things wrong we actually talk about it in every advanced school as a perfect example of how not to design an iron for playability. The C-Dimension is almost as low as you can find and that is because the cg is approx. 1/4″ towards the heel of the club. Basic vertical is well above the .840 threshold. This is because when they designed the head they put the “wing” they licensed from another company (Palmer) on the back of the hosel and took all the weight out of the toe to accommodate it, shifting the cg well into the heel, and high on the face. Nothing good about that, in our opinion and experience. The club saw success in the market when it came out, but quickly ended up at discounters because it simply was not playable for most people. Might have been talked up by players being paid to talk them up, or even by some that were not, when they first came out. The fact is, it died in the market very quickly. We have found that poor designs have the shortest life cycles in the market. Higher playabilty designs and sequels of those designs that maintain the design features that enhance playablity stay around much longer.

Again, if you like them, that is all that matters. What I think does not matter. You can’t understand the Maltby Playability Factor unless you read what it is. I would encourage you to do so if you want to understand how playability is calculated. The facts are, the mass and dimensional characteristics of that model are not designed to deliver stability, forgiveness or a solid feel (unless you hit the ball on the heel side of center).

Britt Lindsey

Thanks. The technical info. is much appreciated. The stuff about no one liking them much just comes as such a surprise. I’ll believe you if you know this to be true about their initial retail sales… but before I bought these used I searched all over the forums and couldn’t find a negative post about them except one guy saying they’re old and new clubs are better. Everyone else seems to love them. They have a 4.5 out of 5 with most of the 70 reviews being King Cobra II OS specifically. One after another people liking them better than a handful of other major makes and models, so between the forums and the reviews that all are saturated with detailed experiences, that’s why I’m still a bit confused about the technical stuff looking so bad and all the testimonies looking so good. They’re not paid shills and they’re not people who just bought them new kidding themselves because of the investment. They’re 20 years of people at random. Weird. I wonder if there could be some physics that are not accounted for that change the end result in any of these MPF estimations? I just wish my game was good enough to line them up against others, better, now. When I’m better I’ll have different favorite clubs because they don’t have enough vintage appeal and they’re too old to be cutting edge. I just hope they’re not messing me up too badly to learn with. I’ll try to alternate with some of my other sets of irons (I’ve been refurbishing and storing a few). Thanks!