Glocks handle recoil well. My .45s seem noticeably easier than my friend's 1911s. The grip on the two larger Glock 45s, the 21 (full size 13 + 1 with expensive preban mags) and the 30 ( compact frame 10+1 and accepts the 13 +1 clips but they stick out the bottom) are too thick for some people. I think they are fine.

The Glock 36 is a smaller single stack .45 that holds 6 + 1.

I'd look at a Glock 30. Glocks are easy to learn quickly on. They were designed to be easy to use and operate, are accurate out of the box, are very simple and reliable as they have very few parts and are nearly indestructible. The angle of the grip makes them natural pointers-you don't have to "break" your wrist to align the sights.  The barrel is also closer to your hand than on many other pistols, reducing felt recoil.

They certainly lack the romance and beauty of a 1911, but are excellent fighting guns.

Um-how far away are you shooting? 50 yards is kind of a long shot, especially for a beginner. I don't shoot pistols very often past 25 yards, and a lot of guys think that is far (for combat type pistols). Most pistol fights are under 10 yards. Get up to within 30 feet or so and see how you do.

Also are you shooting off a bench, or free hand? If I was concerned that I had a problem pistol I'd be shooting off a bench and from pretty close. Your pistol could have a problem with how it was manufactured or assembled that is giving you trouble. I'd get someone who is an experience pistol shooter to let you use a gun he knows is good and kind of keep an eye on you as you shoot (of course take class etc etc eventually).

Striker wrote a good basic description on shooting pistols and rifles if I can find the damn thread.

I'm no Wyatt Earp so I hate giving a lot of advice, but strength is probably not the problem. A guy I hunt with is a pretty pistol shot, he shoots well at 50-75 yards with a .44 mag, but he would probably lose an arm wrestling match with my mother.

You just need a little help getting going and practice practice practice.

I think the pistol ranges at your club are  a little long to start out with for a defensive handgun. I shoot at 25 yards quite a bit because the range I usually go to is similar, but I sure started out a lot closer than that.

I'll look again for that thread about hand gun shooting-there are also a bunch of books and videos that are of some help in learning the basics-I'll see if I can dig some up.

For a start read this-I'd print it out also
www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?id=78439

A good basic book on shooting pistols is The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery by Chuck Taylor. This is a good place to start

I also like "Surgical Speed Shooting" by Andy Stanford

"Tactical Pistol" by Gabe Suarez is another one I like. The author was a police officer who ended up in jail, I guess for worker's comp fraud (i.e. teaching handgun shooting courses when he was supposedly too hurt to work) I really know nothing about the underlying facts and don't really know if that makes a difference or not-but someone else mentioned it when I brought up this author before and I was a little surprised to hear about this.

These books are geared toward defensive use of a pistol, rather than just target shooting, only because I'm not that interested in straight target shooting. I've heard that "Shooting from Within" by Brian Enos is a good book on target shooting but don't have it.

Jim Grover's Defensive Shooting Series-is a 4 volume video series-ain't cheap about $ 80 I think. I haven't coughed up the $ for this yet either-but it is supposed to be very good on teaching shooting and you can actually see it instead of just reading about it. I think "Grover" is a made up name that some well known security guy uses, but I can't remember his real name.