I feel for you renniw52 because I was having exactly the same problems, meter jumps exactly when water came into play, balls coming up short but especially on the putting green. The ball would come up short when thousands of times before it would just go in. Breaking right or left 4 inches short of the hole became hard right or left.
The way I got round it was to play no lag shots at all and give enough to reach the hole so breaks didn't become an issue. Of course that meant dealing with longer shots back on missed putts. I honestly felt like throwing the towel in until I was given some advice by someone who had been there before me,I quote,thanks Richard,
"@Cheats, its the way the program is designed. The better you play, the more random the shots become. The better players battle the shot randomness constantly and just play around it.
As far as your meter problems go, there are many things you can do to smooth out your meter as you may well know.
Keep at it, we all have bad days and weeks from time to time. Even the good players will attest to that."
You are really close to climbing on to the Legend tier ren, just look at it as if its your final test ,so suck it up and just think WGT are throwing everything at you so you don't make it. Its the way I looked at it and it gave me the final push I needed to get over that elusive Legend line. We are all rooting for you, so come on, stomach in chest out and get over that line and thats an order.