Gary Woodland's emotional Houston Open victory was both memorable and inspiring, and it was an interesting one from a gear perspective, too.
Woodland's winning bag in Houston featured clubs from his sponsors Cobra as well as Ping, Wilson, Cleveland and Scotty Cameron.
It is the driver that we found particularly interesting, as his Cobra OPTM Max-K ended a 1,000+ day drought on the PGA Tour winning podium.
Cobra consistently makes some of the best golf drivers year-in, year-out, yet a player had not used one to win on the PGA Tour since June 2023 when Rickie Fowler won his sixth title at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Fowler, who came close to winning US Open at Los Angeles Country Club two weeks earlier, had Cobra's Aerojet LS driver in the bag.
Then 1,004 days later Woodland strolled home at Memorial Park by five strokes with his forgiving OPTM Max-K - a model that boasts over 10,000 MOI and is just as useful for an elite player as it is for a mid-handicapper.
Our tester Joe Ferguson found it to be "remarkably stable with an exceptionally tight dispersion" and coined it as a "fairway-finding machine."
Woodland's model comes in a loft of 9 degrees and is cranked down to 7.8 degrees, and he has it fitted with lead tape on the toe area of the sole to perhaps reduce some spin and also promote more of a fade ball flight.
The 41-year-old has had it in the bag all year after upgrading from the DS-Adapt Max-K version from 2025.
He has been using it to good effect so far this season, ranking 5th in Strokes Gained: Off the tee with an average of 0.678 and a driving distance of 324.6 yards, which is second on Tour.
He also tops the clubhead speed charts with a huge 128.19mph.
While Cobra's drivers are among the best on the market, its lack of PGA Tour wins in recent years has been somewhat surprising. It also did not have a win on the DP World Tour or LPGA Tour last year, either.
A key reason for this is due to its two star names both being on long droughts, with Max Homa not tasting victory since joining the brand at the start of 2025 and Rickie Fowler still winless since June 2023 in Detroit.
Cobra has had more recent driver wins than Fowler, though, notably when Angel Hidalgo took down Jon Rahm in a playoff to win the 2024 Spanish Open with a Darkspeed LS driver.
