"Forgiving" clubs

Back in the day, golf clubs were designed by golfers, who then hired manufacturers (or golfers were paid by manufacturers to design clubs). They were tested by the designing golfer, and others, and tweaked by what golfers felt and saw on the range and on the golf course.

Now, golf clubs are designed by engineers. The first really "engineered" golf clubs were designed and manufactured by the genius who invented the rabbit-ears TV antenna. He (Karsten Solheim) designed his putters and irons with some of the weight removed from behind the sweet spot, or the center of percussion [pc], and relocated at the toe and heel of the club. Some more pc metal was relocated along the bottom of the club, and hey presto, balls struck on the sweet spot went higher. Balls struck off the sweet spot, toward the toe or heel, went straighter than they had with the older, "golfer" designs, and lost less distance, to boot. 

Solheim reckoned he could market these clubs to the average golfer, since they would require less precision to get a semblance of a golf shot. And right he was.

Still, the men who played golf for a living didn't want clubs that hit the ball higher; they knew how to do that, and actually preferred to flight the ball lower, where it would be less affected by wind. Nor did they want a club that straightened out their shots; most of them considered the straight shot the hardest to produce, and preferred curving the ball left-to-right or right-to-left, to gain access to the more difficult pin positions.

We call the modern clubs [designed by engineers and tested by machines that grip the club mechanically, hit without a backswing (thereby not "loading" the club) and input motion at the beginning of the stroke, never adding power with hand action, never rotating the head around the shaft, the way human beings do] forgiving, because they let us get better results from off center contact than we would get with the golfer-designed clubs.

I call the older designs rewarding, because they allow golfers to shape shots and keep them down out of the wind, because of their more uniform distribution of weight in the clubhead.

As far as actually learning how to hit golf shots, the more you can observe the results of a mishit, the easier it is to build a stroke that allows you to shape shots, access difficult hole locations, and become a better golfer. 

It's all a tradeoff, of course. And you don't have to be doctrinaire. For example, I have several sets of clubs, some very rewarding, others more forgiving, and neither is best for all conditions, all rounds.