The face also continues the tilted bulge and roll axis that aligns with the high toe to low heel miss pattern that most golfers have. The King F9 face continues with the same circular Milled CNC pattern of the F8 that is more consistently thin from one head to the next than if it was finished manually. The King F9 crown now also features ‘Power Ridges’ that act as air tripping devices to smooth the airflow, so the whole package is quite a departure from what Cobra has done before. However 75% of the aerodynamic gain comes from the softer leading edges on the carbon crown that carries over from the previous King F8 driver. The Speedback design features sculpting around the sides of the head, where the yellow graphics are, to improve the airflow and it looks a bit like the back of a high performance motorbike. This does of course hurt the aerodynamics a little, but the gain in performance from the better CG position offsets this. However for a low CG you need to get the weight down, so the Speedback design combines this aero shape with a weight that protrudes from the sole at the back to lower the CG position.
This high ‘tail’ is what improves the aerodynamics as it looks more like the shape of an aeroplane wing.
In order to make the head go through the air quicker with less drag, they have softened the leading edges, made the crown a little flatter and moved the skirt or trailing edge of the driver upwards. I just wish it was easier to get tips or custom shafts.Driver design tends to focus either on aerodynamics for club head speed or low CG for forgiveness, but Cobra claim that the King F9 Speedback driver can do both equally as well. If you read a number of my other reviews, you will see a similar thought, stock shafts just don’t cut it for me most of the time. If you are going to buy one off the rack, check to see how your numbers are, the head is amazing, but just make sure the shaft is fit for you, otherwise check into custom ordering one with the right fitting shaft. I like this head so much I am going to track down a tip so I can drop in a lower launching, lower spinning shaft. I didn’t have access to additional tips with this club, but I think that there are some that might find this stock shaft perfect, but I think that if could just tweak the shaft, this would be my favorite driver of 2012. I think that a 65 gram low spin, mid-launch/low launch shaft would be It feels very loose, it spins too much and is just too light. The 55gram Aldila RIP is just not enough shaft.
So the only downfall of this driver is the stock shaft. In just the right conditions I did hit a couple of huge bombs with this driver. I found many fairways with this driver, I just wasn’t quite maximizing distance with this shaft. It really comes off the face with a pop, but seemed to spin more than I would like, especially into the wind. On the course, I found it fairly high launching in the neutral position so I opened it up and it was pretty close then to a good launch angle. While the combo is bright, I like how it looks. IT also comes with a nice stock headcover with some cut-outs for easy removal and a Lamkin 3gen orange grip. The sole is a mixture of orange, black and silver which I like the looks of. It was only ¼ of the size, but still I like the looks of the AMP driver. The black face looks great too, it even allow you to see where you are hitting the ball on the face. I actually kind of like it, I had a driver the exact same color when I was growing up. It was my first driver after persimmon and had the exact same silver color. The head color is eye catching with the nice metallic silver.