The numbers backed up the atmosphere at the PGA Merchandise Show. There were 33,000 attendees from a variety of occupations in golf. They came from 94 countries and all 50 U.S. states. And they brought all manner of golf stuff with them.
Sorting through booths and racks of new shirts and gloves and shoes and hats, never mind the sea of equipment, can be mind-numbing, just because of the sheer volume of material. So, when something pops up on the radar screen that hasn’t been seen before, it’s worth a mention.
The biggest story in 2025 is the Cobra driver with its 33 adjustable settings. The difference with this club is that it can be matched to your swing instead of you having to change your swing to match a club! Why didn’t someone come up with this before? Technology probably didn’t allow it then, but now it does. This is a real breakthrough!
Who needs Hogan’s Five Fundamentals? Gimme a driver that fits ME!
Now, there are three main parts to this Cobra system. There’s the shaft, whichever one you pick. There’s the hosel, which has all kinds of numbers and markings, the secret sauce. Then there’s the clubhead, and you can also add extra weight to that.
Cobra's whole shebang is called FutureFit33, which makes sense.
This gives a whole new meaning to grip it and rip it.
With 33 settings to choose from, you might think it’s going to be confusing, but Cobra has made a chart to help you identify what you need. It looks a bit like the target that they show us on TV when some hero or heroine has to go to the range and requalify gun skills. It’s only missing the outline of a pretend victim.
The chart has many round (“bullet holes”) circles on it, as though someone shot it in 33 different places. If you are a fan of the Curse of Oak Island, it’s also a little like the map of drill holes they have put in the ground, only better organized.
To find the fit for you, pick the circle (hole) that is where most of your current golf shots go. If you are like most amateurs, that’s to the right, or somewhere in the B6, B7, or A6 area.
Then you take the adjustable shaft adapter, which has several movable dials, kind of like the cryptex in The Da Vinci Code that Tom Hanks used to spell out Apple, and line up the settings that give you the direction you want to go, which is probably someplace between C8, C7, and B7, which would be straight or slight fade or slight draw. Once you have the settings locked and loaded, the driver is customized to your swing and swing path and swing tendencies. Not only that, but these adjustments should correct for your swing flaws and get the ball going closer to the direction you want it to go. The chart also has the loft and lie adjustments which are shown on the hosel, too.
In other words, the problem with your game is no longer you. It’s your old club. What a relief!
Is it sensible to have an expert golf professional help with this process!? Yes. But even with trial and error, you know the saying, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and again. You might hit on it. You might spend a half day on the range looking for the right settings. Up to you.
Bottom line: This club is as big a deal as the original Big Bertha when it was introduced. Time to start putting coins in that piggy bank to save up. This is one invention that probably will take strokes off your game.
Coffee Talk!
As I was walking around the PGA Show's new product area, I nearly bumped into Thomas Levet, a DP World Tour and Legends Tour golfer with 15 victories to his credit. He and his friends were sniffing divot tools. Pencils. Tees. That’s because they were made out of coffee grounds. I had to have a sniff. Boy was it good.
Coffee isn’t usually something golfers want to drink before a round because the caffeine can make some people jittery. Jittery equals shaky hands, which equals missed putts, which is why coffee and golfers usually don’t go together. Now they can. So much so that GreenUp was awarded Best New Product at the 2025 PGA Show.
To make these aromatic accessories, GreenUp and Volle worked out a formula combining used coffee grounds and biomaterial, whatever that is. Then they shaped it into tees, ball markers, divot tools, and even pencils for scorekeeping.
If you break a tee, so what? It’s not going to hurt the mowers. It’s going to become compost of some sort. These are already so popular that some packaging sizes are sold out, but as of this writing, there are still some packs available for under $7 US at vollegolf.com.
GreenUp Golf is located in Copenhagen, Denmark, and New Zealand.