Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of a story our Andrew Tursky filed for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report as part of our ongoing equipment coverage partnership. Tursky speaks with newly minted Cobra Puma staffer Max Homa and Ben Schomin, Cobra’s Tour Operations Manager. Also, enjoy the related video in the player above! Read the full article there.

See Max Homa’s full WITB here.

Andrew Tursky, GolfWRX.com: So, first question, and I’m sure you’ve answered it a million times already, but you basically had your choice of what company you wanted to go to – or go the free agent route – so I’m curious why you ended up going with Cobra?

Max Homa: Um, a lot of reasons. One, playing the golf ball I was playing – so, playing the (Titleist) Pro V1x – that’s a big change. The golf ball is more than all of the clubs. I mean, you gotta make sure every club works with that ball. At least I knew I could keep my ball, that was a big part of it. And then, second, it was just, I was always most concerned with switching irons. That was like the single most surprising part of this whole process, was how much I liked the irons. These (Cobra King MB irons) are 3D-printed, which, please don’t ask me to explain (Homa is an admitted non-gear head!).

But yeah, the first time we hit, I told Schomin they felt really good, and they were performing good, the numbers were great, all that was good. But I was just like – it was kind of a throwaway comment – that it was just going to take me a minute to get used to the topline because it’s a lot thicker than the ones I had used for 20-some years.

So, a month later, Schomin came out with these that look way thinner on the top, and they look kind of just like what I had been looking at for awhile. And then after that, I had kind of got past my biggest worry.

I knew the driver was good; a bunch of the guys I play with use a Cobra driver, and I figured the wedges were good – almost no getting used to those. And it was really just coming down to the 4 and 5 irons, which were great.

So I just didn’t get to a part of the bag where I didn’t think at the very least I was staying the same, if not improving, and they all looked great. Like I said, the irons shocked me. They’re my favorite part about this set.

GolfWRX.com: You’ve worked with a lot of different players, a lot of different gear minds. You know, different players want this, they want that, different offsets, toplines, stuff like that. What was different about Max that really separated him from some of the other top players in the world?

Schomin: Like he mentioned, he was definitely particular about what he wanted to see. Our stock MB (iron) was pretty close to what he had – a little offset difference, a little topline difference. Like Max mentioned, it was “OK.”

But I could tell. I could get him into (the stock irons), but having the 3D technology, why waste the time trying to get used to something when we can kind of match where you were at as far as the visual goes, and still get a similar or better performance? I mean, having the ability to do that, and do it fast, was a game changer I think, really.

GolfWRX.com: That’s big for Cobra these days, the 3D printing technology. And for you, you’ve been through so much with the prototyping process in the past. What clubs did you guys really get into with 3D printing, where it’s different than what’s already in the Cobra lineup?

Schomin: Obviously the 6 through pitching wedge, which are the MB’s, being 3D-printed, they’re obviously different, but I think the 4-iron. The 5-iron, and testing the 4-iron especially. Max will tell you, but I think he was shocked, he thought it was going further (than what it was). I think it was more the feel. And that 4-iron, the Limit3d 4-iron is very forgiving for a 4-iron, especially for its size. And I think that’s – I don’t want to say it’s a false feeling, but I think he’s not accustomed to maybe hitting it off the toe a little bit, and it traveling almost the same exact distance. Because, you know, you hit it off the toe, but when you look up and you’re still getting all that carry number out of it, I think that was more, like Max said, he had to prove it to himself, and actually see it and do it over and over and over. Finally he was just like, “Well, I think it’s better.”

Homa: Yeah, I told him I didn’t want to use this 4-iron because it felt like a driving iron. And I mean that, like, off the face, it truly felt like a driving iron. It didn’t perform like one, it just felt like it was my fairway finding shot. So I just kept going to the CB, and, you know, I would hit that one better. Every time I grabbed this, the 3D-Limited one, it was just more solid and I hit it better.

So I was like, “OK, I’m just going to use this and I’ll figure out how to not make it feel like a driving iron, if that means hitting a high slice,” or whatever. Then I hit more balls on the launch monitor, and I realized it was literally flying what you want a 4-iron to fly, it’s just – I think to Schomin’s point – I’m hitting it so solid, it does feel like it’s coming off like a rocket ship. Right off your hands it’s like, “That’s just too hot, it’s just a tee ball club.” But I was wrong. I just think that’s how much easier it is to hit. Especially when we’re talking about a 4-iron, even we don’t flush ‘em all the time. It’s not like hitting an 8-iron. So I think that’s where it came in. I had to see that over and over again. Moreso on the golf course than on the range. And that was cool, because now I have a 4-iron that I feel like when I hit it, I’m going to catch it pretty solid…

GolfWRX.com: I think one of the most fascinating looking clubs in the bag might actually be the 60-degree wedge. I’m curious what went into that, and what’s different about it.

Schomin: So our T-Grind that we’re actually going to be selling this year is a grind that I’ve been doing for a long time. There’s a couple similar grinds that exist on the PGA TOUR, this was just one that came out of years of evolution with Rickie, for the most part, and making changes to it over the years. But it was always a grind that he would go back to, and I would get other players to go back to. Not just him, there’s some other non-staffers on Tour that play it, as well. And it was like, “Hey, we need to sell this specific model, it seems to work pretty well. We should let the masses have it, too.” Yeah, I was definitely stoked when Max took a liking to it, just because it’s been one of the more popular – it seems pretty versatile, he seems pretty good out of the sand with it. So, so far so good.

Homa: Yeah, it’s been the best out of the sand. To me – novice brain here – but the grind is really what makes all wedges matter. I’ve never really noticed a massive difference, other than feel, with a wedge off the turf, like just hitting an 80-yard shot, but it’s really the chipping and pitching around the greens, the bunker shots. So, you brought like 4 or 5 of these out, and the moment you told me this is what’s closest to my grind I had before, I chipped with it and immediately knew it was good. But I’m really surprised with how nice it’s been out of the bunkers. I haven’t really found a type of bunker that hasn’t worked really well with it yet. I’m not a big grind changer – I don’t really like to switch it up week-to-week. I like to use the one that I typically use. So that’s been nice to know so far that I haven’t found a type of sand where I haven’t been able to deal with it.

It looks clean, too. I know that sounds silly, but it looks really clean. It’s rounded really nicely. It sits good both square to hit a full wedge shot, and it sits really well open to hit either a flop or bunker shot. You know, I’m a visual guy, so that’s really an appealing thing.

GolfWRX.com: It seems like driver was maybe the biggest struggle out of anything, I’m wondering what that process was like, and what you eventually actually settled on – whether it’s draw biased, fade biased, etc.?

Homa: It wasn’t difficult in that the moment I hit it the first time, I knew I loved the head. It’s just that, you know, you’re hitting the driver the hardest and obviously swinging the fastest, so, you’re very picky about how much spin is coming on it. This turned into his problem (points to Ben), but I was also going through a swing change, so I’m going from hitting up on it quite a bit, to trying to get way more level, so even as weeks were going on, my spin numbers were going up a lot. I was curving it too much at times. Not enough at times. And I wanted a driver that eventually, as we got deeper into both processes, that I could feel like I could cut it as hard as I wanted, and I was inclined to try and slice it. He actually built me a backup to this that would be one iteration stronger in that – where if I wanted to feel cut more, it will cut less. So that was more the issue, because from the jump I loved the head, we just couldn’t quite find the one that matched the spin to the launch to all those things. It was kind of like a pulley, as the golf swing changed, the driver had to kind of move around, so that was kind of tricky.

Schomin: Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a struggle, because again, our first meetup he loved it, and loved how it sounded. Loved how it felt and flew, so, all those things were very positive. To Max’s point, he was making some swing changes. So everytime we had gotten together, there was a tweak made – and thankfully we have FutureFit33, which was a huge help. Now, we weren’t moving it a ton, you know, we were moving it a half degree, maybe upright, or a half degree flat, or taking loft off.

Read the full Q&A on PGATour.com.

See Max Homa’s full WITB here.