Can you "wear out" a driver?

[TXjammer]

I have a Titleist 983, love it and have grown with it for the past 3 years.  When I first got it after my motorcycle accident which left plates and screws in my shoulder and arm, I could only hit it about 210 yds. As time went on, got stronger and stronger and for almost 2 yrs, could hit it an average of 275.

However, lately the sound of contact with the ball just isn't the same regardless that all ball marks are still in the center range of the face.  Also, am noticing a slight drop in yardage, now averaging about 260 yards.

I have inspected the face for cracks and what not, nothing. I'm not doubting it could be me or my swing, but I have not purposely changed anything or noticed any dramatic change in how I swing my driver.  A little input or some gained knowledge on this would be appreciated.  Thanks ahead.

[Mark5]

I would have the graphite shaft checked out first.

[GaijinGolfer]

The face will fatigue over time and lose some of its pop, but you would have to hit thousands and thousands of balls for that to happen.  Most people will never, "wear out" a driver.

[TXjammer]

Well first thing to consider, I have hit thousands of balls with it, and I bought it used, so no way of knowing how many were hit before I owned it.  I guess it's not that big of a deal to know, I can always buy a new driver.  Was just curious.

[TXjammer]

Ran a little experiment with the driver in question here....

Went out and hit a dozen or so drives at 3/4 speed....got my distance back!  Apparently some new-found confidence had me swinging harder than before, and the shaft wasn't supporting the new speed. I was having to move the ball more and more forward in my stance to keep it straight (to get the club face to close)...therefor the "whip" of the club had already released mostly before impact.  Makes sense to me anyway.  What do y'all think?

[spearq8]

Oh yes you can absolutely have a driver head go off, especially if it is made of a composite.  I played with a Callaway FT3 driver and used to blast that driver over 280 yards.  Then after some time I started to notice that I was losing distance, and was having a hard time getting over 250.  I figured it was something to do with my swing and started doing all sort of swing changes, more hip rotation and exagerrating swing speed and basically screwed up my pretty decent swing.  My brother then noticed that his identical driver has a different sound, and sure enough after checking the head I noticed a crack in the composite area.  I then bought an FT5 and again the same problem happened with 2 of them ... great for a while and then it just dies after a couple of months.  My brother's FT3 also started getting a crack and he also said he felt dramatic distance loss.  After googling the subject it turns out that this is a common problem!  This put me off so much that I will never again use a composite driver.  This also happened with my FT3 3 wood.  I now use a Ping G15 driver and wood and G20 drivers, and since they are all titanium, I don't worry about the head going off.

To be fair I live in a hot climate and it gets extremely hot when I play.  That could be a contributing factor to composite club head failure.  But I don't want to ever risk going through that horrible patch of my golf game ever again.