2006 was a pretty good year for Geoff Ogilvy and Cobra Golf.

In February, Geoff won the Accenture Match Play at La Costa Resort against Davis Love III, and then in June, he famously went on to come from behind and win the U.S. Open at Winged Foot—the site of this year’s competition, with clutch pars coming down the stretch.

It was an exciting finish to a fantastic tournament, and it was also an exciting time for gear junkies since it was also around this time Cobra, Geoff’s equipment sponsor at the time, relaunched a tour staff, which included the likes of Ian Poulter, JB Holmes, Camilo Villegas, Kevin Na, LPGA Tour player Jeong Jang, and of course the aforementioned Mr. Ogilvy.

Cobra’s back on tour!

Cobra had all kinds of cool prototype clubs on tour including long neck versions of Speed Series drivers and various iron sets—the above were the first “new” Cobra blades at retail.

I should also note that 2006 was still four years before Acushnet sold Cobra and its assets to Puma, and it was very likely that there may have been some back-and-forth trading of forged blade and CB iron designing with the R&D team over at Titleist while Cobra was outfitting its tour staff—but that part is just speculation.

Either way, some of the tour prototypes ended up coming to life in the retail market including the drivers used by Poulter and Ogilvy with the Cobra Speed Pro series. The Australian won the U.S. Open with a Cobra X-Speed Proto (seen below)

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Geoff Ogilvy WITB. Just based on the clubs I would say it looks to be from the early 2000’s. I’m thinking the Cobra Speed Drivers were about 2003-2004?

A post shared by Lyle Lingenfelter (@seve0992) on Mar 20, 2019 at 4:27pm PDT

Geoff Ogilvy U.S. Open WITB: Set breakdown

With Cobra under the same umbrella as Titleist, Ogilvy’s bag had a mix of both Cobra and Titleist gear, so let’s break down each club and its historical significance.

Driver: Cobra X-Speed Prototype with 80g Aldila VS Proto. This was strictly a tour prototype but it did become the Speed Pro D when it came to retail. Honestly, this is one of my favorite drivers of all time. To demonstrate how influential Ogilvy’s setup was, the stock shaft in the Pro D when it was released was a 65g VS Proto painted yellow to match the club graphics.

Fairway wood: Titleist 906F2 with TT Dynamic Gold X100. Here is an interesting piece of trivia: was Geoff Ogilvy the last golfer to win a major with a steel-shafted fairway wood? I believe the answer to be yes. Tiger had gone to graphite by then, but the smooth swinging Aussie was still using the tried and tested steel shaft.

Irons: Cobra Proto forged CB (2-iron) and Prototype MB’s (3- 9-iron). These irons looked so cool, and as much as you could argue that they were very similar to Titleist 690 CB and MB’s they weren’t, they were Cobra forged irons and that made them way cooler. What is also interesting is he only played the set to 9-iron and used a pitching wedge that matched the rest of his wedges—he was a man before his time.

Wedges: This is a great example of how tour player trends change the consumer and retail market. His wedges consisted of Titleist Vokeys: 50 degrees (bent to 48), 56 degrees, and 60 degrees (bent to 61). This was a time before wedge companies were designing matching pitching wedges to replace stock wedges in iron sets, and because of this, a number of players were bending 50-degree wedges strong to fill the gap—it also helps that his irons lofts were weaker to gapping.

Now, we see matching wedges up to 45 degrees as many players are opting for pitching wedges to match their gap and sand wedges for shot control around the greens.

Putter: Scotty Cameron Newport Prototype in oilcan finish, which I think we could all agree is the prototype shape of what is now famously referred to as the 009.

Ball: Titleist Pro V1

For more on Geoff’s 2006 winning U.S. Open clubs, check out the recent On Spec podcast hosted by Ryan Barath.