The loft on a driver (or any other club) also tends to nullify sidespin, and it's sidespin that makes slices and hooks. This is why someone who might hit a 3W with just a slight slice may find that they get a really nasty slice with a 10* driver.

I'm not a beginner, but I do tend to play like one. I didn't buy a driver until about this time last year (i.e., I had been playing for about 4 or 5 months). I didn't know anything about lofts or anything else, so I just picked up a 10.5* Cougar X-cat driver with a 400cc head at Target, for not much money. Getting enough loft on the ball is not usually a problem, but hitting it straight is. If I were buying one today I'd probably look for 12*. I don't know how much difference that would make, not having tried one, but my guess is that it would be a bit straighter.

The other variable is swing speed. The less lofted the driver, the less loft on the ball. If the ball flies lower, it needs to spend more time in the air to get decent carry, and that depends on swing speed. I'm told the way to do this is to go to a shop where they can clock your swing speed and then recommend a driver loft based on that. I haven't done this, but based on my own experiments, I estimate my swing speed at between 90 and 95 mph. At that speed, 10.5* degrees of loft is about the lowest I can handle. And in fact, when I hit the ball well, it goes about 250 yards.

I think that it's possible that my swing speed can still increase, even though I'm 52 years old, because I imagine that various inefficiencies in my swing slow it down. So I'm probably capable of a somewhat faster swing, maybe up to 100 mph. I doubt that I'll ever need less loft than 10.5*, but who knows?

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Todd
Philadelphia, PA
USA

The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing. ~Phyllis Diller