To be honest PFL's to 500ft are not much use.
With the permission of the farmer ( well he used to phone up and complained we wern't using his when we used other fields) I used to take them down to 10 ft.
By far the most handeling mistakes were done in the last 150ft.
Some students do struggle with PFL's and not for any handeling issues. Its purely a mental thing. They get all flustered and instead of flying the aircraft they get hooked on the added extra stuff. And thier SA goes out the window.
If you give them one in the over head of the airport they will put it in sweet as you like.
I used to enjoy teaching PFL's and usually didn't have any problems. But then again I was totally crap at them until an old Heavy driver PPruner took me up out of PIK when I was still hour building and showed me his method which was totally unstressful and worked. It's the method I have taught since.