If your alignment is “bad”…you better not have a “good” swing.
I’d agree with that.
Do you advocate using dowels when practicing to aid alignment?
“Alignment is overrated”
Steb
“Bullshit it is”
Styles
I like Lags approach which hope I am correctly summarising as it doesn’t matter where you are aligned as long as you know how you are aligned in relation to your target. So you can align yourself closed to he target and pull the ball towards it - Snead? Or align yourself to the left and push the ball towards it - Trevino.
I think that knowing the difference between your stance line, plane line, and clubface alignment is important. Opening or closing your stance does not have to have anything to do with alignment. However, it does change your hip action e.g. closed = free going back/retricted coming through. But, you do not have to do the train track deal to stripe it straight. Snead used a slightly closed stance but traced a pretty straight line through impact. It made it look like he was coming over the top.
And I’m yet to see an argument to convince me you have any point at all. 
I’m fighting a bad flinch right at the beginning where I start with a little forward press and fan my shoulders open as soon as I pull the trigger. Terrible move and it messes everything up. You don’t have to be square but you MUST be consistent and understand how you properly align yourself. It can be open, square or closed but it damn well better be correct and repeatable.
Compensations lead to compensations which lead to yet more compensations.
I have seen golfers aiming twenty yards left of a fairway due to their banana slice. 
Alignment is a tricky thing…
Heres’ the deal…
if you have the ability to work the ball either way by how you apply post impact hand pressures, then it gives you great freedom in how you align yourself… because alignment moves from technical to intuition.
That’s what the good players do…
You feel the ball to the target… even with putting…
When I won The Windsor Charity Classic, I was Trevino-ing it on the greens for 4 rounds. I was aiming 10 to 15 degrees left of the hole, and looping it from straight back to inside and blocking it out somewhere near where I FELT the target line was. Results? Very good with 24 birdies in 4 rounds… and the next week I played in a pro am and shot 66 65. So 37 birdies in 6 rounds… and 14 birdies the week before Windsor in Winnipeg. So that’s over 50 birdies in 10 rounds. No parallel lines going on at all. Is that wrong? Of course not.
Do we need to play golf from a set of railroad tracks from tee to green? Absolutely not.
As your golf swing improves… so then will your alignments accordingly if you are wise enough to pay a bit of attention.
That is a fantastic post.
I wish so badly we could see some “stuff” on TV & golf mags that push playing golf by “Feel”. It is as if the instructor’s are afraid to bring the subject up…PLAYING BY FEEL.
I have always been a “feel player”. Actually…I like to play most of my golf focusing on different clubs I can use and challenge myself to work the ball one way or the other.
I find that if I try to use RAILROAD TRACKS around the golf course, I get so focused on the “moment of impact” I totally lose my game.
Again…I love the post. Keep the “feel” coming.
Nice to hear from you again Happy:
Don’t play much anymore, but when I did and a hole or situation didn’t look good to my eye, I used visualization of a familiar situation to make setting up easier for me. Here’s what I did:
I did alot of practicing @ a certain facility to the point that I knew where everything was…the yardage signs, trees, poles, little valleys, elevations, etc. in my mind’s eye. In those situations on the couse that were cloudy to me, I would “superimpose a clear plastic template” of the range over the hole or shot and hit to those range targets that I knew, and could find easily- either thru set up or getting real creative with the motion.
I knew of this local guy who was a POW for many years during the Vietnam War. Most of that time was spent in isolation. In order to keep his sanity he completely designed “in his mind” the house of his dreams- every brick, plumbing routes, wiring, foundation size, etc. The story goes that he eventually built that house…although I’ve never gotten around to seeing it.
I thought it to be a neat insight into the minds eye… 
RR
It is no mystery as to why we play our best golf on our “Home Course”. We know all the trees, valley’s, traps, etc…much like you described in your example of using the familiar ground of the practice tee to make shots easier.
There is a fantastic “Playing Lessons” on Golf Channel that is airing some now. It is Geoff Olgilvy from a couple years ago…
His Message:
So often golfers show up each day for a game of golf trying to capture the “Feel” that they had the previous day when they were playing well. If they “found something” late in the day on the range, they would immediately attempt to recapture that “feeling” the next morning.
This usually doesn’t work.
So his message was simply. Don’t have any expectations when you arrive at the driving range. Just be aware of what your swing is doing and embrace that “feeling” for the day. Don’t fight it. Just go with it.
I loved this. Here is a US Open Champ telling us to forget any and all “swing thoughts” and simply just go out and hit the golf ball. Find your balance & play. Embrace whatever is going on each day on the course. Don’t expect it to be the same as yesterday.
Gotta love this game.