> Golf cannot be played in tidy 1-yard increments.

Sure, but it requires tidy increments of effort and practice. At least according to advice from a reddit thread about golf[1].

> To make a golden necklace, you must start with gold.

But maybe practice with silver or copper necklaces first, or you’ll waste time and money for no good reason.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/golf/comments/sgppbe/whats_the_best... e.g.: “Get a lesson to identify flaws and get drills to work on said flaws. Go to the range and practice those drills to get them down. Rinse. Repeat.”

The golf swing is extremely non-intuitive for several reasons, not the least of which is the physics of trying to swing a hunk of metal at the end of a 3-foot rod around your body at 100mph. Fixing one thing will often send something else out of whack. Improving the golf swing requires system-level analysis, trying new things to see what else is affected, and then fixing the regressions.