pgaloom,
I lean a bit towards this perspective also. Can not say for sure, but it seems that WGT has built a lot of the randomness of this game into the swing meter, and I THINK we are on the same path where we think it should be programmed elsewhere, to keep it more realistic.
When I hit the elusive 'dinged' shot, I expect the ball to come off the club head where I aimed it, and not randomly left or right off the club face. Now a bad hit on the swing meter, absolutely it should affect the ball launch, which it does, but I believe WGT has error-ed somewhat in its usefulness and degree of affect.
There are far too many other ways to make this game more challenging than using random shot deviation (if in fact vemmie is not just a myth) and programmed swing meter fluctuation (if in fact they exist). A ding should mean a perfect hit, and the ball should at least START right where it was aimed. A small miss should affect it a small way, and show a larger affect as you miss the ding by a larger amount. I understand that it does this now, but that is ALL it should do, and I am simply not convinced that the swing meter isn't programmed to cause missed hits.
One GREAT example of using other option to help keep randomness in the game, is to implement shot shaping (hook/slice. etc). Just like using backswing, it is a non-perfect way to change the shots, ensuring that each and every shot is not the same and is hard to duplicate.
Another would be getting RID of the avatar movements that are being used to judge distance with. That is supposed to be a touch sensitive part of the game, not a programmed reaction. Using this as a gauge or measurement is similar to being able to enter a yardage that you want the ball to travel and letting it go, this seems to remove the user input/variation of distance, which is what a real put is all about. Again, the meter should affect take off path only, as compared to how far the 'ding' is missed.
//end rant