Long-time problem solved.

Since I started playing golf, in my 20s, when lateral epicondylitis ended my tennis career, my main problem has been getting too much height and spin on my shots. Seen pros, read countless books and articles, and now, finally, at age 68, I diagnosed and cured the problem. Now my drives run out, but I can still put enough spin with the wedges to stop the ball after one bounce (on the hard greens) or spin it back on the softer ones.

The problem was coming in to the ball too steeply. The solution was to reverse engineer my swing. I recognized that all that talk about hitting down on the ball to take a divot might work for someone else, but I had been unconsciously letting my left arm bend early in the downswing -- actually, letting it bend a lot in the backswing. The bend was caused by too quick a backswing for my relatively unmuscular arms to manage. Slowing down the backswing allowed me to pay more attention to the transition, which now consists of three consecutive feels (to use Percy Boomer's term): 

1. the left shoulder hitting my chin (a result of rotating my torso, not just moving my left shoulder independent of the right)

2. rotating my right hip clockwise to complete the turn (Hogan's term was 'like a mechanic giving that last little pull with the wrench' or something similar). 

3. contracting the left tricep as the forward swing starts. I should mention that the whole transition leads into the hitting area, or what I think of as the delivery phase of the swing.

Yeah, golf sure is simple!