The Iron Every Golfer Wants: Cobra 3DP Tour
Coming March 21, Cobra 3DP Tour irons blend player-preferred looks with game-improvement forgiveness
It’s a great time to be a player who deep down knows they should be playing game improvement irons, but has the urge, the ego, or whatever you want to call it, to bag a better player's iron instead.
The Cobra 3D printed 3DP Tour irons – a widely available edition of its 500-set LIMIT3D release in mid-2024 – combine the forgiveness of a game improvement iron with the compact footprint and sleek aesthetics of a player's iron. The irons will be available on March 21, 2025.
I got up close and personal with Cobra’s 3DP Tour irons, from a complete crash course from Cobra’s Senior Director of Innovation / AI, Mike Yagley, to testing them myself. Whether or not you’re willing to pony up Cobra’s $2,450 asking price, you need to know about these irons.
Inside Cobra 3DP Tour Irons (Literally)
Inside the Cobra 3DP Tour irons you'll find a unique lattice structure and hefty tungsten weights on the toe and heel
SHOP LIMIT3D
3DP Tour: Coming March 21, 2025
Price: $2,450
Decoding golf equipment marketing hype is excruciating, and I do it for a living. I don’t blame anyone who instinctively rolls their eyes at every claim of longer, straighter, and more forgiving. That said, the Cobra 3D-printed irons certainly feel like a milestone innovation.
Because Cobra 3D prints these irons, they can take advantage of an internal structure that no other iron in history can compete with. Inside the 3DP Tour irons is a strong but lightweight lattice structure. That gives the irons strength and allows Cobra to drop two hefty tungsten weights – 100 grams total – behind the face, one on the toe, and one on the heel.
Translation? Stability.
That’s how Cobra delivers the performance (distance and forgiveness) of a game improvement iron in a player-preferred package.
Looks & Feel
Here's what the Cobra 3DP Tour irons look like straight out of the printer before they're buffed and finished
That player-preferred package includes a smaller footprint, slimmer topline, and sleeker backside than game improvement irons. Meanwhile, with so much weight behind the toe and heel, the irons are hot all over the face, so you won’t be punished for missing the center the way you would be with the muscle back irons these quasi resemble.
With you, the reader, in mind, I managed to execute both center and off-center strikes while hitting the 3DP Tour irons. As a result of those tungsten weights on the perimeter, they feel pure from toe to heel. I could feel the strike location on every shot, yet it felt pure and powerful regardless of where I hit it on the face. The whole face almost felt like a big sweet spot.
That’s great news for players who want to bag a tour-looking iron but need some of the advantages of the often off-putting game improvement offerings.
Performance
That’s a lot of cool technology, but how do they perform?
For starters, it’s worth noting that freshly minted Cobra staffer Max Homa has already gamed LIMIT3D in 2025.
My distances with these 3DP Tour irons were at the top end of what I would expect with a good strike with a typical game-improvement iron. The distance was nice but I didn’t see out-of-this-world distances, which is good. I’m not really interested in hitting my 7-iron 30 yards farther than I ever have before.
Accuracy was strong as well. It was easy to hit my target line consistently, which could be at least partially because that perimeter weighting helps the club resist twisting at impact.
I did see some curvature, about the normal amount I’d expect from my mid-irons, so if you’re looking for something that only flies straight, that hasn’t been invented yet. But if you rely on a dependable shot shape, you can expect it to be there with the 3DP Tour irons.
Forgiveness is where these 3DP Tour irons shine brightest. I didn’t quite get all of my sweet-spot distance from off-center strikes, but pretty darn close. Distance losses away from the center were minimal, much better than any other iron I’ve tested.
Price
When Cobra dropped its limited, or LIMIT3D, run of its first 3D printed irons in mid-2024, they came at a cost of $3,000 per set for one of the 500 original sets.
Despite that steep asking price, those sold out quickly, which is why Cobra is bringing them back with slightly different branding. These 3DP Tour irons are the same thing, except they aren’t limited to 500 sets, which inspired the tweak to the name.
Since Cobra is making these en masse, and some of the costs associated with 3D printing are coming down, the price is dropping, a little.
When the Cobra 3DP Tour irons become available in March 2025, they’ll cost $2,450 for a set. Still around two-and-a-half-times what you’d pay for an ordinary set of irons, but these are no ordinary irons.
If you’re intrigued but put off by that price, I’d say its a safe bet that over the next 3-5 years, we’ll see more and more 3D printed options at lower and lower prices. Hang tight.
Who Are Cobra 3DP Tour Irons For?
Cobra’s 3DP Tour irons are an exciting release. With a blend of player-preferred looks, stability, and forgiveness across the face, they really appeal to a larger chunk of players than most irons that fall into one category or another.
Max Homa has already bagged a 3D-printed 4-iron, proving that even for the best players in the world, the performance benefits are appealing. I haven’t spoken with Max personally, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the extra forgiveness of the LIMIT3D iron is what led him to add the typically harder-to-hit 4-iron to his bag.
However, you don’t need to be an elite ball-striker to bag these irons. In fact, they may offer as much appeal to average game-improvement territory players as any other caliber player. Who doesn’t want a tour-looking iron with game-improvement forgiveness?
In the end, it comes down to price. Despite the price drop, $2,450 is a steep ask for a set of irons. If that’s in your budget for new irons, by all means, visit a certified fitter and see exactly how these perform for you.
