An aside:
I'm suspicious. I trust no one these days.
I used to trust the 'experts' too easily; it's been my downfall.
When I first took up the game, the experts told me that good players can hit every shot in the bag, and work the ball both ways. So instead of just trying to develop some kind of basic & repeatable swing, I set off instead on the arduous (and, for a fellow in his 30s, ultimately depressing) task of being 'a good player' -- only to realize later that Monty won dozens of times using nothing but a fade except in the most extreme cases, and Calc won a whole boatload of money hitting nothing but a draw.
Luckily (ha ha) just then the former NASA engineer Dave Pelz came to prominence loaded with an armful of stats and told me that I should buy 6 wedges and put a metronome on my putter so I could time and measure my backstroke - you know, one-two for a 6 foot putt, one-two-three for my 10 foot putt, etc: and the result was that I got so inside my own head that whatever natural, intuitive skills and abilities I had went out the window.
(Not a word of a lie: a friend and good golfer I first started playing with nick-named me "Chips" after our first few rounds together -- because, while I sprayed the ball all over the course, back then I could get up and down from just about everywhere, and with nothing but instinct and feel. He still calls me "Chips" to this day, but now it feels like a cruel joke!).
And in music: the 'experts told me at every turn to remember that Charlie Parker could play in every key, and so again I set off not to get some good basic technique and start making music but instead on a futile quest (for someone who started playing in his 30s) to gain mastery in all keys -- only to just recently discover that, while of course Bird could play in every key, at least 70% of the tunes he ever wrote and played were basic blues, and in the 3 *easiest* keys for the clarinet & sax, Bflat, F, and C!
So now the experts tell me: no no, you don't suck because you can't make a putt outside of 5 feet -- we were wrong about that, but now we're *right* about this. Really; we're sure we are. Trust us. (Ha ha.) Just replace your 10 degree driver with a (brand new) 12 degree driver, swap your 3 wood for a 4 wood; and take your 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 irons out of the bag and put in modern 18, 20, 23, 25, and 27 degree hybrids (oh, and you'll hit them much further), and then get out on the range and spend 3 hours hitting balls -- without turning your hips (no, turn your hips but don't dip your shoulder; no, dip your shoulder a lot but create torque with a big turn....oh, and don't lift your left heel off the ground, unless you *do* lift your left heel off the ground, and then you should finish up on your toes).
No. Thank you. I trust no one, and no stat -- at least none from the last 40 years.
I've got on my desk right now two books: Play Golf the Wright Way, by Mickey Wright; and Swing Easy-Hit Hard, by Julius Boros.
That's it. Come spring, I'm just going to go "play golf'.
(Wow, that rolled out in barely the time it took to type, with no thought whatsoever. Man, it must've been pent up inside me for years. Thank you for listening. I feel better now)