At the beginning of the week, Tiger Woods admitted to going to a Nike driver with 10.5 degrees of loft.  Previously, he had been playing a driver that was probably closer to 9 degrees.  That may seem like quite a shock to Woods fans, but it is something he probably should have considered a whole lot sooner in his career.

You see, low loft drivers do not necessarily mean longer or straighter drives.  In fact, the opposite is true.

Tom Wishon is one of the best golf club engineers in the world.  He has written books that take dispel myths used to sell golf equipment to us amateurs.  And one of the biggest pleas that he makes in his books and his appearances on The 19th Hole has been that amateurs should play a driver with closer to 11 or 12 degrees of loft.

From a 2003 Golf Digest piece:

Golf Digest tested various swing speeds using a collection of different lofted drivers (9, 11, 14 and 16 degrees) provided by Tom Wishon of Tom Wishon Golf Technology. Not surprisingly, at the slowest speeds, the 16-degree club performed best, but for the speeds that represent the majority of average golfers (and even at a tour-level 115 miles per hour), the driver that provided the greatest carry distance had a loft of 11 degrees.  Conventional wisdom suggests that higher-lofted drivers produce shots that fly far and stop dead where they land, but even when total distance was measured, our tests showed that higher-lofted drivers didn't suffer much. Says Wishon: "The perceived penalty of less roll on higher-loft club-heads isn't as bad as golfers might think."

In other words, higher loft of your driver will give you a better launch angle and not cost you distance. 

From Tom Wishon's book, TThe Search for the Perfect Golf Club:

The more downward your angle of attack and slower your swing speed, the higher the loft must be to maximize your driver distance.  Conversely, the more you hit the ball on the upswing and the higher your swing speed, the lower your loft would need to be to maximize distance.  This is precisely how all the national long drive competitors can use drivers with 5, 6, 7 degrees and still achieve a high ball flight for their gargantuan carry distances.  They train themselves to hit the ball on a severe upswing so they can use a much lower loft to maximize their distance.

There is a certain point where the loft would be too much of a sacrifice for accuracy, but going to a higher loft in your driver may be a great way to improve your game off of the tee.