Max Homa (and Cobra fitter Ben Schomin) go in-depth about Homa’s big equipment change

The rumor mill cranked this off-season concerning Max Homa, and who his eventual equipment sponsor would be to start the 2025 PGA TOUR season.

At The Sentry in Maui, the speculation concluded, as Homa showed up to the season-opener with a Cobra staff bag full of the company's driver, a mixed set of Cobra irons and Cobra wedges. Homa, a six-time PGA TOUR winner, has officially signed a multi-year endorsement deal with Cobra-Puma to use the company's clubs and wear its footwear.

On Wednesday at Kapalua, GolfWRX.com caught up with Homa – and his new Cobra club fitter Ben Schomin – to discuss the new deal, and all of the equipment changes that he’s made thus far.

In this dual interview on the range at The Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort, Schomin stood on the right side of Homa’s Cobra staff bag, and Homa stood to the left. We felt it was important to capture their insights in tandem because both parties played such an integral part in the star’s new setup for his Cobra debut this week.

As Homa has learned, finding the right club fitter is an extremely important aspect of the sponsor-finding process. So far, Homa has found the right fit with Schomin, just as Schomin has helped Homa find the right-fitting clubs.

In the interview below Homa and Schomin discuss the importance of 3D printing in the fitting process, navigating driver changes while making swing changes and truly trusting the consistency of his new Limit3d 4-iron.

Enjoy the full Q&A below, which is packed with all of the information you could ask for regarding Homa’s new Cobra clubs.

Andrew Tursky, GolfWRX.com: You had your choice of what company you wanted to go to – or go the free agent route. Why did you end up going with Cobra?

Max Homa: 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. You have to 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, 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.

The first time we hit them, 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 just like what I had been looking at for a while. And then after that, I 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.

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. They all looked great. Like I said, the irons shocked me. They’re my favorite part about this set.

GolfWRX.com: Before working with him, what did you know about Schomin? What have your experiences been like working with him so far?

Homa: The joke answer is, "Far too much. More than I had ever wanted."

No, everyone loves him. My caddie Joe (Greiner) has a really good relationship with him, and that helps a lot. Joe’s like the most integral part of this team. More so than myself.

Working so much with J.J. (Van Wezenbeeck) and Liam (MacDougall) at Titleist, I realized that in this process of potentially switching clubs, I was more so interviewing the fitters, because I realized how important they are. J.J. and I worked really intimately. I’ve always heard Ben’s an amazing fitter. It’s hard to know because the times I’m around him he's always being an idiot.

Ben Schomin: True.

Homa: We’re just goofing off, we’ve never worked together. So that first day we did work, it was eye-opening because I was like, “OK, good, I’m not losing anything here, I really trust him.”

And it was also really great because there's not as many players (at Cobra). We took a while to get into the driver. I liked it immediately, but it wasn’t necessarily perfect as far as flight goes.

It was really cool to just be able to call him. I mean, one day he just drove out literally the next day. That’s a pretty uncommon thing in this world. We all know he cares a ton about this, but it was cool to be able to get to work with him intimately and get to see it first-hand.

GolfWRX.com: You’ve worked with a lot of different players, a lot of different gear minds. 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: Ben, you’ve been through 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-iron 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. 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.

Schomin: Yesterday was actually a super good example of how consistent it was. I think your yardage carry delta was 3 yards…with a 4-iron!

Homa: Yeah, with a club that feels like it’s coming off really fast, which you would think you’d have a 10-yard, 15-yard dispersion, where you would catch one 235 instead of 225, but that didn’t happen. Even the ones I thought I actually nuked were going the normal yardage, so I think, yeah, it’s just the feel of it that makes it seem like you are.

Schomin: You know, with game improvement irons and you have a floating face, you do get those hot shots out of the fairway. But, again, him doing it over and over and seeing the same numbers over and over. The face is obviously supported by the 3D, so there’s no additional face flex that you would feel any different than, say, a forged golf club. I think it was just him proving it to himself. Like, OK, this is the right fit.

GolfWRX.com: Have you noticed anything about how quickly prototypes can get made between Cobra and any other company, or anything like that when it comes to the prototyping process?

Homa: It’s hard to say because I haven’t necessarily had anything like that being made. I’ve never had anything – I’m really not a gearhead. I’m not too picky. But it was really fascinating. It really caught my attention when Ben came out a month later with these irons, and they were these ones (points to his bag). To his point, you don’t want to waste time getting used to something. I didn’t think of it as some big deal, I mean, we’re very spoiled out here. I wasn’t expecting somebody to just make an iron that was exactly what I wanted it to look like. But the fact that, within a month, you know, I got to grab a club – if you honestly asked me, for the first week I was using them at home, I would have forgotten what clubs I was hitting as I was hitting balls because I was also changing coaches and doing all this swing stuff, I would forget that I had a Cobra club in my hand just from looking down. That was all that I was concerned about. Not that I thought it would be a big deal, but a month can turn into two months really quickly if you’re getting used to putting a club down, and you’re like “Oh, this is what a 7 iron looks like now.”

So it just completely mitigated that process, and yeah, I couldn’t believe how quickly they were able to do that. And it’s definitely something I think would be useful in the future, too, if you wanted to tweak something, you know that it’s possible, and again, there’s no learning curve to it. You just put it down and it looks how you want it to.

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 are a couple of similar grinds that exist on the PGA TOUR, this was just one that came out of years of evolution with Rickie (Fowler), 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 Schomin), 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 every time 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.

Homa: We messed with loft a lot. I first wanted a lot of loft, so I could feel like I could hit it low, but we actually found that I could get into one with a little less loft than I had intended, that had a little bit more – it was almost a little more stable so it was able to get up in the air without loads and loads of spin. And I’m actually launching it a bit higher than I used to, without dropping tons of spin. But it was good though, for me, because you don’t want to feel like you’re tinkering and hoping something works. I knew the driver, the head was fine the first time we hit it. I knew we would figure it out. It’s just that to me always tends to be the longest process, just again, because you’re swinging it the fastest. A little mistake goes a really bad way, so we were just being very, very picky, and again, it was nice to have Ben be able to do all that. And 33 options is a lot, so it’s nice he was able to run through all that, and not me.

Schomin: And we had a shaft change in there, we went from a 60-gram to a 70.

Homa: And a lefty one.

Schomin: Yeah, we have a left-handed tip (in the fitting arsenal). So I built one with a left-handed tip (accidentally), so as we were going through the process…

Homa: I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t hit it (laughs)

Schomin: He needed a little more loft to get some more spin, and it kept flying lower and lower and lower, and I was just beside myself, it didn’t make any sense. And finally I popped it off to make a setting, and I looked, and I’m like, man. I couldn’t blame it on Preston, so I couldn’t fire him for that, so I had to fire myself.

Homa: We rehired him shortly after.

Schomin: So yeah, we had a little hiccup there, but for the most part, I think that shaft change was good going up (in weight), it helped his dispersion out a little bit. I think he was able to go after it a little bit more and worry even less about left. But the process, trust me, I’ve had way more struggles over the years. And like Max said, he knew it was going to work, it was just finding the right settings and the right combination.

GolfWRX.com: OK, last question. What are those shafts in the irons? Because they’re all blacked out.

Homa: Oh yeah, I forgot, because I used to have the wraps on them so people could see. Eh, maybe we’ll just leave it up for mystery.

Schomin: Yeah, we’ll keep it a mystery.

Homa: I forgot these don’t have the tape on them.

Schomin: It’s a KBS secret shaft. I think you’ve been playing them for a couple years.

Homa: Yeah it’s just a KBS, it’s the same one I’ve been playing forever. It’s the KBS $-Taper 130, and the wedges are slightly different, the Hi-Revs. But yeah I’ve been using them for six or so years. And they just paint them black, so everyone thinks they’re graphite, but they’re not. Absolutely nothing cool in there, just the same stuff.

Schomin: But definitely a shaft that’s worked for him, and that helped, too. Having a player that knew what he liked from a feel standpoint, with the shaft.

Homa: These irons were really, like, throw in the bag and go. I never questioned it for like half a second. That was really easy, it was nice.

Schomin: No, it was actually pretty cool. Because you were like genuinely excited, like, yeah these are in.

See everything in Homa’s 14-club setup at The Sentry 2025 over on GolfWRX.com.