This whole idea and others that wish to make this game easier for the masses saddens me a touch. The best part about this game is this meter in its current form, despite the occasional sticking, skipping, or or spiking.
In real golf you don't have a guide to tell you how much power to use on partial shots, you have to gauge by feel and estimation. Efforts and wishes to simplify this game by adding meter marks, 3-click meters, and other so-called improvements are not what this game needs, because if I wanted a simple, mindless, and stiff simulation I would hop on my ACME rocket and go play over at the cartoon network like I occasionally do for kicks. If anything, I think they should focus their meter improvement efforts to perfecting the smoothest meter possible in all forms of gameplay, not changing it to make it easier. The scores are low enough as it stands.
Lets face it, for the most part, the partial meter shots only really come into play when using wedges and the putter. As for my own personal method of gameplay, I never utilize avatar movements and exclusively use the meter as a judge for power. I don't mark up my meter by using tape either. I use a simple method I like to like to refer to as halfsies. Its rather easy to gauge a halfway point just by eyeballing it, and then perhaps dividing that in half, and so on. Simple math is always easier this way to gauge potential distance hit. I would be happy to provide examples to anyone if they so wish.
I do respect others opinions, but this is mine.