Golf disaster relief

After a particularly disastrous last round, in all areas of my game, I've been forced to ruminate on what went wrong. Here's what I believe I should have done or been doing and what others would benefit from incorporating in their golf game:

1. Have a plan, perhaps a 'realistic' score to aim for, and maybe a plan B in case disaster strikes early. We need to have something to focus on, but without adding too much performance pressure.

2. Take extra pains with set up, that is, make sure you set up square and parallel to the target line. The key, especially for slicers, is to square or even slightly close the shoulders to that line - rarely done by the average golfer, who insanely continues to believe s/he can straighten out her/his shots without doing this.

3. Keep the lead upper arm connected to the chest until the follow through and use body turn to power the swing - while keeping the arms powerless. I'm voting this the 'secret of good golf', but it's not the whole story of course.

4. Start the downswing with the knees, hips, torso and shoulders all together. At least this should be the feeling one has. This is a (quite rare) tip from a fairly good ball striker (Adam Scott) - don't know why I keep forgetting it! If one maintains the 'connection' mentioned in 3. above, the dreaded 'over the top' move is not an issue at all; ones swing will resemble the very repeatable (Jim Hardy) one-plane swing.

5. Minimise sway and dipping, but with all shots other than driver find a way to get onto the front foot at impact.

6. Stay positive, and this includes the principle of acceleration, as opposed to the fatal sin of deceleration, in all short game areas, including putting. My 39 putts last round make me realise that for an allegedly one time good putter I need to take a good hard look at myself.

Anyway, golf disaster relief; simple as that.