19th Hole
WRX crib sheet: Highlights from Cobra’s Tour Rep talking Rickie Fowler’s clubs
For the second installment of his Gear Dive podcast, our Johnny Wunder talked with Ben Schomin, Tour Operations Manager for Cobra-Puma Golf.
Schomin talked about his path to working on the Tour, and shared stories about building clubs for everyone from J.B. Holmes to Rickie Fowler, to Bryson DeChambeau, to Lexi Thompson, to the Great White Shark himself, Greg Norman.
While you should absolutely listen to the full pod, for those of you who are more textually inclined, here’s a crib sheet from an excellent “dive” into Cobra’s maestro of tour equipment’s work with longtime Cobra staffer, Rickie Fowler.
Schomin discussed the addition of tungsten plugs to Fowler’s iron heads.
–Fowler begins tweaking his equipment for the Masters around the beginning of the year. However, they’re constantly “making sure the wedges are dialed. Fowler puts a new lob wedge in play every six to eight weeks.”
–Fowler always puts a new lob wedge in play the tournament before a major so the grooves are sharp and he’s used to the club by the time the major begins.
–“Last year for the U.S. Open, on the Monday of…he ended up putting a Cobra Forged CB 2-iron in play.” Fowler had said the rough was so thick, he wouldn’t be able to hit his 5-wood out of it. He also felt because of the speed of the fairways, the club could function as a great driving iron.
–Regarding preparation, Schomin says, “As much as we do on the front end…months out, there’s still the chance, the possibility, that three days out, there may be something else we need to work on.”
–Fowler first switched to shorter lengths in his irons before going with shorter shafts in the rest of his clubs. This is the fifth or sixth season Fowler has played shorter-than-conventional-length irons.
–“How it came about: We were at Riviera, and we were sitting in the locker room, and he had mentioned…trying a shorter iron.” Fowler said he thought he might be able to control shorter clubs better and flight the ball lower more easily. “Being able to control the flight overall was what had him thinking.”
–“There are some inherent difficulties with shorter clubs…the weight needs to increase,” Schomin says. So he put a run of test clubs together for Fowler to try. Schomin used the same True Temper Dynamic Gold X100 shaft in a number of 6-irons: straight in, soft-stepped, bringing weight to get it to D3, leaving at D0.
–They did a “blind taste test” at the Medalist. After extensive testing, Fowler narrowed the field to two clubs, and then picked one from there. The iron he picked is the same length he continues to play: X100 soft stepped, half an inch short. He went with D0 swingweight (although he has since changed to D3).
–“He ended up winning Wells Fargo with those irons, and he put them in the bag permanently. He played with that set the whole season. In the offseason, we were working on putting a new set of irons in play” at which point Fowler decided he wanted to go back to a heavier swingweight, which required adding six or seven grams to the head.
–They’ve essentially been making Fowler’s irons the same way since (adding tungsten plugs to the head). Cobra removes six to seven grams of steel from the iron’s head and fills it with 12 to 14 grams of tungsten.
–“It’s actually a really, really involved process,” Schomin says. The company has an in-house machinist who works on the irons, and it takes a whole day just to do a couple of irons. “It’s a pretty precise operation.”
–Schomin indicated there’s a set of irons for Fowler in the Tour truck. Rickie has one at home, and there’s one at Cobra HQ.
–A couple of years ago, Rickie was struggling with a 3-wood he had loved up until that point, he was like, “Dude, I gotta do something. I’ve lost confidence in my 3-wood.” At that time, Fowler’s 3-wood was 42.5 inches. After Fowler repeatedly pured a 42-inch 3-wood Schomin built for him, he put it in the bag immediately.
–With the 5-wood it’s the “same deal.” A 5-wood is typically 42-42.5 inches, but Scomin built Fowler a 40.5-inch 5-wood with added weight since Rickie wanted something between a 5-wood and a hybrid. “It’s a golf club that has a lot of utility.”
–Last year, prior to the Honda, Fowler spent Monday and Tuesday testing a shorter driver. “He was striping it…then he goes out and wins the golf tournament.”
Schomin talks about his work with Rickie Fowler from around the 18 minute mark to around 28 minutes in the podcast. As mentioned, he addresses his work with a number of other pros and talks about his route to building clubs for some of the game’s best players.
19th Hole
‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish
An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.
However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.
Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.
Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”
Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish
— Jenny Shin (@JennyShin_LPGA) August 3, 2025
Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.
Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.
Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.
Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.
Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.
Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.
Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course. Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”
According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.
“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”
Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.
Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.
The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.
Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”
“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”
Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.
However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.
“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”
Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.
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