They have gotten to be much more smooth and consistent now, but for a while landings were the bane of my existence. Given that it's the one thing you have to do at least once every flight, I spent quite a bit of time practicing and struggling. It appears that a lot of people have the same problem.
This month's AOPA Flight Training Magazine has a nice list of online resources that explain the art of landing. Haven't had time to go through them yet, but having a list with 10 different resources is immensely useful.
If my experience is any guide, people get stuck on something (like landings), it's very easy to fall into a rut. There was a couple of weeks or so during my primary training, just prior to my first solo, where I was determined to nail "this landing thing". For those two weeks (about 6 or 7 sessions total), I did almost nothing but pattern work. This was incredibly frustrating, and in retrospect I was probably reinforcing my mistakes as much as anything during those two weeks. And after two weeks, I just had to go and work on something else, even if it meant pushing the first solo back a bit.
In retrospect, part of the problem was that the approach that Tom was taking wasn't working. This is not to disparage Tom's skills as a CFI. Tom is a great instructor, and he has taught me well. But for this one task, his approach wasn't working for me---I just was not "getting it". Even so, after literally hundreds of landings, I got to a point where they were passable. Good enough to pass the initial pre-solo check, then the private pilot check ride, then a handful of other check rides since. But I always knew this to be my weakness, and each landing made me tense.
It wasn't until I had flown with a few other instructors---Kyle who did the stage checks, Peggy who has did my private and instrument check rides, Stanley who did my PFC training, etc.---with each imparting to me their little tidbits of wisdom about landing that all this started to make sense. After that, the things that Tom was trying to teach me "clicked".
This is a long winded way of saying that, if you are struggling with something, it often helps to have multiple perspectives and approaches. So, the AOPA list of online resources on take-offs and landings should be invaluable if only because it provides that diversity of perspective.
