socallefty
G.O.A.T.
I think string breakage is extremely level dependent. When I was a beginner and up to the 3.5 level, I played only with gut and wouldn’t break it for many months. Now, my wife has been playing for about 2 years and she never breaks her gut strings either. I felt that the tension and playability with gut would last more than 50 hours in those days and only then I would start noticing that the control started going down. Whenever I tried multis in those days, I didn’t break it either too soon, but the tension maintenance and playability wasn’t even as half as good as gut and so, for me gut offered good price/performance benefits. When I tried poly, I found it too under-powered in those days as my swing was not good enough.The issue is that full bed of gut doesn't last as long as a hybrid. The string-string friction of full bed gut leads to breakage in half the time of a gut/poly hybrid. And full gut is more expensive than gut/poly. Gut/poly hybrids offer the goldilocks combination of spin, longevity and playability at a reasonable cost over a premium multi.
The key is to use a soft resilient co-poly like Cream or YPTA. It lasts a good while before it loses that resilience and you can pretty much keep it in until it breaks with only modest loss of control over time. For a lower level player it will also offer a bit more free power allowing them to invest in a more low powered flexible frame.
Once my swing got better and I started hitting the ball harder with more spin, I started breaking gut too soon and switched to gut/poly hybrids which is what I play with now. I like also the extra spin and control I get with poly crosses which ends up with me swinging out more freely and hitting more powerfully. I break the gut/poly in about 15 hours now or cut it out by then as either the gut gets very frayed or the poly feels too harsh. I still miss the comfort of full-bed gut though. Since I have a somewhat sensitive elbow and I like racquets with mid-sixties RA, I‘ve tried fullbed poly only a few times and always find that I miss some pop on serves. So, the gut/poly hybrid is going to be my go-to for a while.