I’m not a golfer, but my dad used to give me similar advice in bowling. If the ball didn’t do what I wanted it to do (i.e. knock all 10 pins down on the first try) he’d often ask me what arrow on the lane I was aiming for (all lanes have tiny arrows). Similar to your story, I’d name a vague region of the lane rather than an arrow. That was my problem. How could I course-correct if I didn’t even have a spot that I could adjust from, left or right?