I don’t know how true it is, somebody was saying the proximate cause was a missed switch setting, a physical switch setting that was out; rendering the laser range finders inop. They would be disabled on the pad so it wouldn’t be energized at the wrong time, overheat, maybe blind people etc. So they had to send up a software patch to utilize a separate laser system intended for another application that was operating. like I mentioned I’ve no idea of the accuracy of that. But that might explain the extra hop around the bend.
Then it was not enough telemetry data to find a suitable landing location. Every Apollo landing, the computer was going to land them in a not quite good enough spot, or they were coming in too hot. So every lunar pilot elected to take manual control for the last several clicks down in altitude. A couple guys talked about letting the computer handle it for a 100% automated landing, which was theoretically possible, but nobody ever did. Imagine that.
It never hit me until years later that while landing on the moon is dangerous enough, the return to the command module relies on one switch and the engine performing perfectly as designed and planned. If the switch was somehow inoperative or the engine start a bust, the team was stuck on the moon forever.