If you’ve played golf for long or watched much golf, you’ve heard of the yips. But if you’re still asking yourself, “what ARE the yips” read on!
The yips are actually a general term for the loss of certain skills in ANY sport. So you can have batting yips, catching yips, putting yips, and as was the case recently with Brendon Todd, yips with your driver too!
What are the yips
This quote from Ernie Els after his 6-putt from 3 feet explains it pretty well: ”
Solutions for the yips
Try a different putter. Sometimes, just getting a putter with a different style can help. Suddenly you might have more confidence with THAT putter. It’s probably psychosomatic, but if it works, then who cares?
Lots of short putting drills. Hit your long putts to within 3 ft from various positions on the green and then practice the short putts. Play a few rounds by yourself and practice, if it’s slow that day, on the greens you actually play on.
Put a line on your golf ball to help with aim and trust it.
Change your grip. It seems almost every tour player has a different grip, and you can tell which players are or have dealt with the yips. They have claw grips, lead hand low grips, etc.
Think about making a good stroke, not the result. Yes, of course you want the putt to go in, but if you’re soley focused on the result you may fear missing the putt. That in itself will cause you to make a wonky putt or move your head.
Finally, look at the ball and listen for it to drop!
