the yips

Perhaps because there is no pressure in sports, being alone on a crucial putt can be a harrowing experience. Not only for professionals like Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus, who are 18th at a US Open or Augusta National, but also for club golfers from all over the world. And this pressure can often be compounded by a case of yips.

Whether you’re a low handicap player playing in your club tournament or a ’90s shooter looking to win your ring for your team, the Yips can stop you in your tracks. This nervous condition is represented by a sudden loss of fine motor skills, and you may find yourself on a putt unable to retrieve the club.

If the yips hit you at this inopportune time, you might find yourself swinging the club around like a 30 handicap, or you might not even be able to move. It has happened to professionals at all levels. Yips have gotten the best of 8-time major winner Tom Watson, Champions Tour hero Bernhard Langer and all-time powerhouse Johnny Miller.

Yips can be known as twitching, stuttering, wobbling, or jerking, and are anything but conducive to low rounds. This distraction from your game is caused by past trauma, probably on the greens, tees or fairways, and can be difficult to eradicate.

If your yips find lost putts, can’t think about the course, or can’t move, you may have tried to get rid of them. But the most common cures attempted for yips are often done incorrectly, changing the mechanics or altering the fundamentals of your game.

Using this method for golf yips is like opening a leak in your kitchen sink and trying to clean up the mess without turning off the faucet. Yips are a nervous problem with your internal energy, and changing your game is like picking up that mop. You’ll still have the yips with the new mechanic on him if he doesn’t “turn the water off” first.

To look at it another way: the Yips’ shifting mechanical approach is like trying to mow the lawn, just to get rid of a week-old problem. Mowing the lawn will kill the weeds for a few days, but they will inevitably grow back. Changing your mechanics to an unnatural style will have the same effect. You’ll be concentrating on your new grip, putter, or swing for a few days, but the yips will be back in this new style, too.

These yips can be handled but it takes knowledge of the right methods and the right ways to eradicate golf yips problem for good.

With golf yips, you have to attack the weeds in the bud. In your golf swing, you must attack the cause of your problems, which is the yips, not your swing. Attacking the yips themselves will allow you to take your swing, whether fundamentally new or old, without the twitches, jerks, wobbles, or freezes that are holding your game back.