How much does this all matter really?

1 plane v 2 plane, cupped and cocked, in to out, out to in, on plane, over the top, etc etc.

I only ask because yesterday a guy teed off in front of me and and plonked his ball 230ish down the middle. Not world beating I agree but the point is that on his back swing I doubt if his hands got much beyond hip height, shoulder turn - whats that? or weight transference come to that.

So there's me trying to work on some of the advice on here and wondering if I'd be better off just taking the club back and forward and biffing it?

I talk about that in my first page of my website. And played in the podcast. Exactly what you are asking.

http://members.cox.net/gregjwillis/GolfLessons.htm

the best would be to find someone who really knows what is going on, which is very hard to do. I have seen 8 or so instructors and did not get much out of it, they just all had the same basic stuff that you can read anywhere, x factor, connected, one piece take away, keep the hands out of it, blah blah blah. then I found one who could explain why reading all this stuff did not work. Hey also could explain in detail why the set up is so important and the role that hands actually have in the golf swing. The hands are the mind to the golf swing. Once I changed my set up, educated my hands (cupping the right wrist first was the biggest part of it) and kept my spine angle, my ball striking did a complete 180.

you are on here reading all these different opinions when some people know something about the swing and what really goes on, while others dont and that is not really there fault, they mean well. So how do you figure out who to read and who not to. A clue I can give you is this, my instructor said that when he has taught pros the main thing he did was tweak their set up and alignment because that is where most all problems start. So when you read if someone never questions a persons set up, do they really understand the cause and effect of the golf swing.

Guys you are both right of course.
Actually I was only making a (I thought ) light hearted observation about how we over complicate things sometimes and how sometimes simply walking up and hitting the ball might be better for our peace of mind.

But yes, as per Greg's site ,we have to make a decision on what we do with our golf (sorry I hadn't read that page properly until today), I've decided I want to get better so Option 2 is out for now.

The problem is that I've had some poor lessons in the past (or rather lessons which weren't right for me) so for the moment I'm looking at opinions on here which as S4P says has its own issues.

In fact I think I've only taken one piece of actual swing advice as such; mostly I'm working on creating a consistent pre shot routine, setting up correctly every time rather than at random, and incorporating a pre-swing relaxing movement (for me more of a mini takeaway than a waggle).