Understanding the “Yips” and How to Fix Them

The “yips” are a malady afflicting athletes in a number of sports.  To golfers, they are a condition where the hands “flinch” involuntarily just before the club comes into contact with the ball on a putt, chip, pitch shot, or even a tee shot.  The yips are generally considered by many to be a mental or nerve condition, but are, in reality, caused by poor mechanics.  They will certainly work their way into your psyche, but they occur because the brain senses a disconnect between the core of the body as a power source, and the hands.  When the brain detects “slack” between what should be the primary power source (the core) and the club-head, it will attempt, at the last instant before impact, to cover the slack spot with a muscular flinch (tightening) in the hands and wrists.  It feels like getting zapped with a “cattle prod,” and is a horrific feeling when you are trying to apply a soft touch to a putt or chip.  They afflict many players, amateurs and professionals as well, and have driven many great golfers from the game.  The inability to set the downswing into motion, such as you see in Charles Barkley, or an inability to start the backswing, as we have seen in pros like Hubert Green, Sergio Garcia, and Kevin Na, are forms of the yips.

The body has a certain degree of potential slack in many of its joints.  The slack allows independent movement between our parts, similar to the way couplers do for train cars.  In a full swing, the backswing is long enough to provide time during the downswing, for the turn of the body to remove the slack and smoothly engage the club-head.  In a putt, however, this is not the case.  With a putt, the backswing is so short, that there is insufficient time for the slack to be taken out before the putter head reaches the ball.  What the brain senses, is a lack of a power source in the downswing, and tightens the hands and wrists involuntarily, in order to cover the slack and provide an internal source for moving the club.  Two of the most undetected areas of potential slack, are in the spine, which has great flexibility, and between the thorax and the shoulders.  By assuming proper posture, pre-stretching the spine to its maximum length, and slightly turning the thorax within the shoulders in the direction of the putt, all the slack can be removed.  Once this occurs, power can be applied properly, and the impulse to “yip” the putt will go away.  There is great subtlety in doing this properly, but once you understand how to keep your putting and short shots “slack free,” you’ll quickly gain total control over one of golf’s most dreaded “diseases.”