How do you have greater control over whether your code generates garbage in Go? The only difference between Java's memory model and Go's memory model is that, in Go, you can put structs inside other structs (and unsafe code I guess, and note that you can get some of the "structs inside other structs" benefit from inheritance in Java). That's it. The stack/heap distinction is no different between Go and Java.

The idea that "the suboptimality of Go's GC is much less significant" is just wrong -- Go has the exact same memory model as Java, only it's less well equipped to deal with it than Java is because its GC is so suboptimal. I'm just countering the oft-quoted statement that Go's memory model is somehow closer to the metal than that of Java -- it isn't.

To optimize allocations in Java, you use free lists and make fewer variables escape so they can be stack allocated. To optimize allocations in Go, you use free lists and make fewer variables escape so they can be stack allocated. Java has a wealth of allocation profiling tools available at its disposal. Go has some too. Go doesn't provide anything over Java here.