Better contact with 3w than Driver

I played some golf and Saturday and ended up keeping my driver in the bag and used my 3w off the tee.  I was consistently making better contact and driving it further with the 3w. Every time I tried to use the driver I was pushing it right. I was playing with a buddy who is a great golfer and he couldn’t give me a reason on why I was doing that. Y’all have any ideas on what my problem might be?

Driver is a RBZ Stage II with a stiff shaft and the 3W is a RBZ with a regular shaft.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your swing is one for which regular flex is a closer match than stiff flex. Any particular reason you have the mis-matched flex on these two clubs?

Most likely the trouble is your mind set and resultant change of swing motion due to belief that theshaft  length and large head of the  driver, and the ball teed up so high, is telling you 'smash into the ball with every ounce of your strength'..  Result: multiple failures of technique.  With the smaller and shorter 3W, you feel more control, and less fear,  of the clubhead and your mind/body interactions.   Nearly all players of HD >18 suffer the same, often or usually.

My problem was even worse. I was not able to even hit my 3W except at the driving range. So, I needed to go to a 3 hybrid. I could only hit wedges and hybrids with any degree of certainty.

In the last month or so, I had been making some major changes to my swing. Thanks to my new coach, I am able to hit all but one of my clubs well enough, for now. The changes were to keep the wrist flat, keep my spine angle, push off with my legs to initiate the downswing, increase the lag, swing more vertically, find the "slot", changed to an inside out swing.

In short, he taught me how to swing a golf club correctly.

This has improved my ball striking for all my clubs. Still work in progress, but I am extremely happy with the progress.

I kept my 3 wood in my bag the 1st 4 months of this year. I was hitting the 3w solid and with more distance, but the driver could go either way. I was not bothered by it either. Whatever gives me the optimum chances for getting a good score. Before that I would pull out the driver thinking "This one will be good, I have been hitting my 3W great all day!" only to put it back in the bag 3 holes and 3 missing balls later..

If my go to club off the tee is my 3W and I can get it in the fairway 230-250..I don't have a reason to pull out the driver until I am comfortable enough to be consistent with it.

I do find that when I take a more relaxed swing with the driver and keep my left shoulder (righty) under my chin for as long as possible on the downswing, I find that it allows my lower body to start the swing and keeps me from swinging out and around essentially bringing the club over the top..but I need a lot more work with it before I use it on the tee box...

I figured most of it would be in my head or over swinging so I'll keep some of the things mentioned above.

I'm going out to play 9 holes tonight and will probably keep the driver in the bag but we will see how it goes. I'll post an update after.

I think you are correct in the over swinging part. The fixes my coach made me do are to prevent this from happening.

It's going to be hard for you to trust that you have more power with a much shorter "feeling" swing.

However, like I said earlier, my swing is still work in progress.