Ping Crossover off the tee?
From my limited experience, driving is something like putting in that so much of it is confidence based. If you hit a club off the tee that you love you tend to make a smoother swing with better rhythm, not rushing, keeping width etc...which results in better strikes and more fairways found. Also, depending on your swing you might be better suited to longer irons (steep) versus woods (shallow sweeping) and then a hybrid or crossover might be a good option, but its only an option. What I mean by that is, depending on what standard you want to get to, you are going to struggle to get to single digits hitting a 5 iron on every par 4 and 5, if you are happy with a mid-teens then it will might be good enough on most courses.
I cant remember who said it on here in a post a couple of years back, but it was an amazing piece of advice and they said course management is largely about preserving confidence. So my suggestion would be:
1) Keep taking lessons and improving your weakest clubs/distances by working on them on the range and on the course (different things)
2) Forget what your playing partners are doing and take the club that is going to result in the best scoring average on a hole for YOUR game. Sounds simple enough, but not easy to do for most. I often see someone standing on the stroke index 1 which is 420 yards with a tight fairway and heavy heather and rough on either side and they just hit driver because of the distance. Hit your hybrid, hit it again to just short if you dont catch it right, chip on, make a putt. This will result in some pars or easy stress free bogeys. On a stroke index 1 thats fine no matter what handicap you are. However if you hit driver really well, then no problem, hit driver. Even with your favourite club you will still hit the odd bad one, but it needs to minimised and you need to look at the average.
Bottom line is its about continuous improvement and while your game is in flux (which is every day) then you do whats best for your game to score at that time. You need to balance both. I personally take my 3 hybrid when I need to find the fairway, goes 230 yards for me and I will hit the fairway 8 out of 10 times (have measured). My driver goes 270 yards and will hit the fairway 5 out of 10 times). So when its open AND I can play from the rough AND I need the distance I hit driver, otherwise I will score my best by hitting hybrid and in the meantime I will keep taking lessons to improve the 5 out of 10 times with the driver.
Hope that helps, I am no expert, just telling you how I have managed the same issue. Good luck
