Digging In With Cobra’s Tour Trusty Wedge

Written By: Tony Covey

A couple weeks ago, Cobra-PUMA sent out the official press release for the new Tour Trusty wedge. Of course that came a few months after they released the Limited Edition Rickie Fowler #BRINGIT prototype, so it’s not like this was really the first time most of you heard about the new wedge.

So rather than rehash what had already been written, or worse yet, write a few new awful Rickie Fowler jokes (something with orange, a mustache, and definitely Oklahoma State), I thought it might be interesting to dig a little deeper (no pun intended) into the refined sole design of the new Tour Trusty and see if maybe I couldn’t help educate golfers on the finer points of the new design.

The original plan was to discuss the new grind and nothing but. The thing is, when you get Cobra-PUMA’s Jose Miraflor on the phone, more often than not, you get way more than you bargained for.

Jose will be the first to admit that he’s not a 5 minute conversation kind of guy, and if I’m being honest, neither am I.

Sure…I did eventually get the details on the new grind, but Jose made sure I knew that there’s a lot more to the new Tour Trusty than that weird notch thing.

A Totally New Wedge

For their Tour Trusty wedge Cobra combined heel and toe relief with their distinctive rear notch to create what the company calls the Tour Notch K-Grind. Those familiar with Cobra’s Trusty Rusty series might be surprised to learn that other than that signature notch, every aspect of the wedge has been completely redesigned.

While the Trusty Rusty could very much be considered a game-improvement wedge, the new Tour Trusty was designed for, and to an extent, by Cobra’s Tour Pros (Poulter, Blixt, and Fowler). The tour-inspired changes are clearly evident in the shaping of the new wedge.

The Trusty Rusty’s classic, though oversized, teardrop shape has been replaced by a more modern design. Offset has been virtually eliminated. The leading edge has been straightened out, and to an extent, so has the topline.

The Tour Trusty isn’t the most compact wedge on the market, but it’s not a big wedge either. It’s at worst small to medium sized. That description holds true for the topline thickness as well.

According to Miraflor, the new design makes Tour Trusty ideal for avid to rabid golfers, better amateurs and, of course, Tour players.

Dissecting the Tour Notch K-Grind

While it’s basically impossible not to notice the notched sole, the Tour Trusty actually has 4 distinct grind points where Cobra has removed material from the head.

Leading Edge Relief

The most subtle of the grinds on the Tour Trusty is along the leading edge. Cobra added just a hint of radius to help prevent the wedge from digging into the turf.

The Notch

While the notch certainly helps the Tour Trusty stand out from the crowd, it turns out it actually serves a purpose. You didn’t think it was just a gimmick, did you?

When the wedge is in the square position, the notch does 3 key things:

It helps that radiused leading edge sit closer to the ground.

It provides relief to help the wedge glide through the turf.

Finally, an often overlooked benefit of the notch is that it helps the wedge exit the ground as smoothly as it enters. While this is perhaps something the average golfer may never have considered, it’s something that crucially important to many Tour Pros.

Heel Relief

Heel grinds are among the most common grinds found on today’s wedges. Cobra’s implementation isn’t functionally any different than anybody else’s. The heel relief helps the leading edge sit closer to the ground when the wedge is played open, which as you probably know by now, makes for a more versatile wedge.

Toe Relief

The reasoning behind removing material from the toe is perhaps more interesting than you might initially think. There is the obvious; if you’re going to remove material from the heel, for symmetry alone you should probably remove it from the toe.

Removing material from the toe is also critical for maintaining the desired center of gravity (CG) location.

Finally, as Jose Miraflor told me, there are guys that will actually stand their wedge up on the toe to hit shots out of depressions or deep grass. Like the heel grind, the toe grind better allows the club to slide under the ball when playing toe-down variations of the bump and run from less than ideal lies.

Thanks Jose…that would have been great to know a week ago. Next time.

Pulling it All Together

The Tour Notch K-Grind is the combination of heel and toe relief along with the signature notch. It’s like wedge Voltron.  The trailing edge relief grind helps the wedge get through sand and rough to produce higher, soft-landing shots.

Before I could even question the necessity of including the grinds on the lower lofted wedges (52° & 54°); clubs  that most golfers don’t play from the sand with any regularity, Miraflor told me that the grind provides enough versatility for golfers to open up their lower lofted wedges and still hit high, soft shots from longer distances.

I’ll admit it’s not a shot I’ve attempted particularly often. I think I tried it in Myrtle Beach like 9 years ago. It didn’t go so well, and I haven’t tried it since.

But Does it Spin

It’s pretty well-known these days that the USGA has put firm limits on what golf companies can do with not only their grooves, but also with surface texture.

Like everybody else in the industry, Cobra’s Tour Trusty grooves are right up against the USGA limit. To get the most bite they possibly can, they’ve made the edge radius smaller, which made the grooves sharper. Steeper sidewalls provide more volume, and the end result is grooves that are 15% larger than Trusty Rusty’s and most importantly, produce more spin on full shots.

With that out of the way, let’s be brutally honest, Cobra’s groove story isn’t that much different than what we hear from basically everyone else trying to sell a wedge. We’ve got grooves, and they spin as much as the USGA allows them to. Moving on…

Sneaky Peaks

What is actually compelling is Cobra’s approach to surface milling. You’ve probably heard of Cleveland’s ROTEX, Wilson’s micro-spin enhancers, or Callaway’s Laser Milled Micro Grooves. Basically everyone is trying to use whatever surface texture they can to help offset the USGA’s limitations on grooves. If you can’t get more spin from the grooves get it from the rest of the face.

For a surface texture to conform to USGA specifications it has to pass two different tests.

The Average Surface Roughness Test can be thought of as a measure of the abrasiveness you can feel when you run your fingernails across the face. What the test actually looks at is how tightly spaced the surface texture patterns (whatever that happens to be) are.

The Average Peak Roughness Test looks at how deep, or I suppose, how tall the surface milling is.

Cobra’s patent-pending design, which they call Variable Feed Rate Milling (VRF) cuts a percentage of the surface grooves to only half the depth of the others in the pattern. Because the USGA’s measurement is based on the average depth, Cobra’s process allows for surface grooves that are taller and more tightly spaced than what you can legally achieve through a consistently-sized pattern.

According to Jose Miraflor, the benefits of the Cobra design are most apparent from inside of 30 yards, where VFR allows for optimum spin.

Tour Proven

For whatever reason many of you seem to care who is playing what on tour. If Phil Mickelson has a backwards 64° (bent to 63.847° and 2.18° flat), U-Grind wedge, all of us absolutely need to have one too. I don’t actually think it should matter to the average golfer, but Cobra staffer Jonas Blixt has the new wedges in play, as do Cobra’s LPGA and Symetra staffers.

Blixt is a particularly interesting case, and while obviously his talent accounts for the lion’s share of his production, it’s worth mentioning that his best numbers (PGA rankings) come from inside of 30 yards – exactly where Miraflor suggested the Tour Trusty’s face milling makes the biggest difference.

Blixt ranks #16 in Scrambling from the rough and #9 for Scrambling from 20-30 yards.

The other guys…Rickie Fowler and Ian Poulter; I’m told they’ll both be spending more time with the wedge this fall, and I would classify the Cobra guys as cautiously optimistic that one or both will have the Tour Trusty in the bag for next season.

Specs, Pricing, and Availability

The Tour Trusty will be available at golf retailers on October 1st, 2013 for $119 per wedge.