Curing the yips!

Now now Bob no need for that, .......breathe

Returning to the thread , it seems clear that the (proper) yips is an actual psychological condition that stops you from pulling the trigger or which causes you to hit the ball wildly,
It's causes are probably bad technique, leading to a massive lack of confidence, leading to an actual psychological issue.

Kevin Na had the driving yips a few years ago.pretty well documented on here at the time.

Now I have no idea if Del has had the proper yips or he is just a rubbish putter.
Most of us havnt met him or played with him and so it is wrong for us to comment on that.

He does however seem to have a fixation with the yips, and as such his problem won't go away if he keeps reminding himself of it.

I think proper yips are very rare. But lack of confidence is just round the corner for most of us, so we do need to be aware of the difference
 
That's a very broad description though isn't it Bob?

Was it Langer's lack of confidence that caused his? And at what level? Lack of confidence in his overall game? His putting in general? Or (just) his short putting? From memory, it was just his short-ish putts

With 2 of the guys I've known who have had yips, it has been restricted to just short puts, even 15" ones - and it was scary! One of the guys 'cured' it by putting left-handed, originally just for short ones, carrying both a left and a right-handed putter, but eventually went to left-handed for everything.

If it was just short putts, is it not possible that it is fear? I'm no psychologist or neurologist but it strikes me that the only reason to not be able to make short putts is fear of missing.

We all miss short putts, and quite often when you miss one, you get another of the same length a hole or two later and it is very easy to let the missed one get into your head and miss the next one as well. This can easily build into a fear of short putts.

The very fact that people with the yips don't have the same issues on longer putts would seem to back up the fear theory.
 
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I've always been what people might say "streaky" with a putter........ I'd say "not consistent enough" :D

I had a 15min "MOT" putting lesson earlier in the year, and my issue was a break down of the left wrist through the hitting area. Ball position has always been forward. I tried everything , nothing improved.......until, while messing about one afternoon , I hit some putts with the ball back in my stance and instantly started holing putts......I Took it on the course and was amazed with what I saw.

I have been putting with ball back towards my right foot for 6 months now and I've never putted better. I have no plausible explanation why it works and on camera it looks awful, but it's working and I've played a ton of golf this summer with no bad putting round. Can't remember last time I missed inside of 4ft.

So my advice is try some different, whacky, odd, whatever gets that silly white thing in the hole!
 
I think there are several things being mixed in here. There are some people who develop almost a phobia of putting where they can't pull the trigger or twitch at it and send a 3 footer 12 feet past. I reckon that is pretty rare, though.

What is probably more common is people who just get worse at putting as they get older. Maybe they weren't great to start, but as they get older, they ir eyesight gets worse, including depth perception, they get some essential tremor, their grip gets affected by some arthritis or tendonitis and all of these add up to them missing a lot of putts.

In fact, I have just found a scientific reference which described the yips as on a continuum (spectrum) between focal dystonia and choking. That sounds sensible and likely. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12477375

As for the Mayo Clinic, it is a sign of all that ails the US healthcare system if people are going to an international tertiary referral centre because of bad putting. Of course, the middle aged yippy golfer probably has some money to spend, and the US healthcare system is a business first.

I can't accept that the yips are caused by old age and failing faculties. If that was the case I would be equally bad at putting using the claw grip as I am with a conventional grip, which is simply not true. As for tremors, I have already quoted the case of playing a match against a guy with Parkinson's Disease. He definitely did have shaking hands, but was still a pretty good putter! :)

P.S. The conclusions in the abstract you published a link to are probably about right. The yips are a real problem for some golfers, but the exact cause of them is not fully understood.
 
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This sort of thread annoys the heck out of me. The article in GM too. The guy who wrote it is clueless at best. Most junk putters don't have the yips, they are just poor putters. End of.

But. There are those who do yip. It's not about technique. It's not about being a poor putter. We don't wish it on ourselves. It just flipping happens. And it's a nightmare.

I'm a good putter. Most of my friends would say this about me. I don't miss much. The rest of my game is shonky, but my putting is pretty good.

But every now and then, I'll go through a few months when I get the yips. It's like there is a trigger point in my hand, such that when the putter hits the ball, I flinch, and my hands jerk. The ball could go anywhere. I won't have a clue. Short putts are the worst.

If you haven't had this, you're opinion counts for zip. You have no idea.

I hope you never get it. Because if you do, you might understand, but then you won't need to post on this thread.
 
I can't accept that the yips are caused by old age and failing faculties. If that was the case I would be equally bad at putting using the claw grip as I am with a conventional grip, which is simply not true. As for tremors, I have already quoted the case of playing a match against a guy with Parkinson's Disease. He definitely did have shaking hands, but was still a pretty good putter! :)

P.S. The conclusions in the abstract you published a link to are probably about right. The yips are a real problem for some golfers, but the exact cause of them is not fully understood.

What I said was that there were clearly some people who have a proper twitch or tic which may have a neurological or psychological (hard to separate the two sometimes) basis and which causes serious problems, but in my opinion most people who had putting crises do not have any such neurological/psychological condition, but simply declining putting to which various factors can contribute. There is no question that faculties fail with age, often imperceptibly. If you haven't noticed that yourself, you must have a painting of a fairly decrepit looking version of you in your attic.

There is a parallel with ME. ME is a post viral condition characterised by extreme fatigue, and it undoubtedly exists, but has come to be an umbrella term for a range of other ailments and complaints of varying degrees of actual pathology. See also autism, ADHD and a bunch of other diagnoses. A genuine core but a questionable halo.
 
I can still vividly remember the first time I yipped a putt, even though it was 15 years ago. I was playing in a knockout foursomes competition. We were two up with two to play. At the 17th we were on the green in two, quite close to the hole, while our opponents missed the green on the right. They chipped on reasonably close, so I had a putt for a birdie to win the hole and the match. It was about 4 feet, slightly uphill and slightly right to left. Almost before I knew what had happened, I stabbed it 6 feet past and way left of the hole. To make matters worse my partner missed the one coming back, and our opponents made their up and down putt to win the hole. They also won the 18th and the first extra hole to win the match. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory! :(

After that my putting got worse and worse, particular under pressure, until I seriously contemplated giving up golf altogether. I tried putting left hand below right and even borrowed a long putter for a couple of weeks, but couldn't get on with either method. Then I tried the claw grip which I had seen Chris di Marco using, and bingo, I could putt again! :)
 
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So when I responded to one of your many previous posts on the subject saying that the yips was just poor technique, was I infact right?

No, not really. You know that you have the yips when you can make a smooth practice putting stroke, but when you put a ball in the way all you can manage is a horrible jerky snatch at it! It's as though the putter goes off in your hands! :(

Del, having just gotten around to reading the article that you based this thread on I'm afraid I am going to have to ask you to re-answer my post quoted above, taking into account the following lines from the article;

"...but most golfers yip because of bad technique, not mental issues. Look at it this way - if your stroke is technically weak, and you never work on improving it, you're going to miss a lot of putts, even short ones. As your misses add up, your angst skyrockets. Enter fear, doubt, tension - now you're psyched out. In this very common scenario, yipping has manifested itself as a mental problem, but the root cause - the thing that demands attention - is your technique"

So I ask you again (although I am sure I won't get a straight answer), is it not true that most of the people you claim to know who have the yips, and possibly even you yourself, simply have poor technique and not some as yet not really explained neurological disorder?
 
Yips always involve an involuntary twitch or movement (a dystonia), so not just a question of poor technique! Many golfers who develop the yips have been good putters in the past. As the Mayo Clinic suggested, changing your technique may effect a cure. :)
 
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"...but most golfers yip because of bad technique, not mental issues. Look at it this way - if your stroke is technically weak, and you never work on improving it, you're going to miss a lot of putts, even short ones. As your misses add up, your angst skyrockets. Enter fear, doubt, tension - now you're psyched out. In this very common scenario, yipping has manifested itself as a mental problem, but the root cause - the thing that demands attention - is your technique"

Is there some (hard) evidential preamble to that paragraph? Otherwise there is really no more basis for that being true - rather than being qualified by 'I believe' - than any of the opinions on here.

Watching someone who Yips defies logic. While the ex-Touring Pro I know who had them was also prone to the occasional 'panic attack' when 'in contention', the 2 other guys were both very smart business folk - one a retired Director of Sainsbury's, the other a Risk Director for several big Financial organisations - and an ex Minor County Cricket player! The latter was fine with long and medium length putts, but would twitch and jab (when he could actually move at all) at a gimee length one! :eek:

Murph's experience above seems very similar! So it's more than just 'poor technique' imo. I do remember seeing a 'plan' - from the_coach - that may reduce some of the effects, but the only true 'solution' seems to be to find another technique that removes whatever is triggering the effect - often related to the right (fore?)arm!

However, those who simply write it off as simply 'poor technique' are just plain wrong imo!

I still can't understand why anyone who has truly been cursed by them would even consider being tempted back to re-experience them though!! :confused: Maybe it's all part of the decreasing performance issue to find a specific cause rather than simply admitting to getting weaker from ageing. I can certainly relate to that! :rolleyes:
 
That's a very broad description though isn't it Bob?

Was it Langer's lack of confidence that caused his?

Absolutely.
How can you have confidence in a stroke that doesn't get the ball in the hole?
A slip in technique or a bad 'bounce' can lead to a lapse in confidence which spirals downwards.
This can be caused by one missed putt which puts doubt in the mind which affects the confidence on the next one and so on.
 
Absolutely.
How can you have confidence in a stroke that doesn't get the ball in the hole?
A slip in technique or a bad 'bounce' can lead to a lapse in confidence which spirals downwards.
This can be caused by one missed putt which puts doubt in the mind which affects the confidence on the next one and so on.

Do you have a actual solution? As opposed to 'become confident'!

I'd venture there are many folk that could benefit if you do! Especially as one of the 'crutches' - the braced technique - is being banned soon.

Have you actually 'cured' anyone of them? If so, how?
 
I never said it was easy or that I had a simple solution.
All I was saying was you can dress it up and call it what you want and clever people can dream up scientific names for it but at the end of the day, the more difficult you make 'the cure' the less likely people will be cured.

I will ask anyone out there, have you ever seen anyone 'yip' from the shoulders or is it always in the wrists and forearms?
 
Absolutely.
How can you have confidence in a stroke that doesn't get the ball in the hole?
A slip in technique or a bad 'bounce' can lead to a lapse in confidence which spirals downwards.
This can be caused by one missed putt which puts doubt in the mind which affects the confidence on the next one and so on.
The vast majority of putts fail to go in anyway. A good putter will hole 95% of 3 footers or less, 50% of 6 footers and maybe less than 10% of 20 footers. You have to accept that. I miss putts using the claw grip, but I still have confidence in the method and haven't developed any tendency to yip putts with it as yet.

I can sort of understand the principle that repeated failures to hole putts could lead to a lack of confidence that eventually causes your brain and body to lock up and say 'I don't want to do this'. Maybe the cause of the yips?!

We have a member at our club who seems to have the full swing yips. His problem is starting the backswing. He often seems to freeze over the ball for over a minute, swearing at himself to get on with it, but usually hits a good shot once he can get moving!
 
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All I was saying was you can dress it up and call it what you want and clever people can dream up scientific names for it but at the end of the day, the more difficult you make 'the cure' the less likely people will be cured.
Certainly wouldn't disagree with this. It's also the reason why, having found a 'fix', true 'yippers' simply stick with that and never return to the technique that triggered them! I bet (Sir) Paddy Hine is still putting 1-handed, left-handed - and he was a fairly good Golfer in his youth! :rolleyes:

I will ask anyone out there, have you ever seen anyone 'yip' from the shoulders or is it always in the wrists and forearms?

The 'yip' always seems to be fingers/hands/wrist. But I'm not certain whether that's cause or simply effect. Fingers/hands/wrist is certainly the 'easiest' to move physically so more likely to be where any 'jerk' is triggered/detected.
 
The vast majority of putts fail to go in anyway.

Really?

In a round of golf 18 putts MUST go in in order to finish each hole. If you take less than 36 putts for the round then you've holed more than you missed.

If I took more than 36 putts per round I'd be throwing my putter in the bin and claiming a medical disorder.
 
Really?

In a round of golf 18 putts MUST go in in order to finish each hole. If you take less than 36 putts for the round then you've holed more than you missed.

If I took more than 36 putts per round I'd be throwing my putter in the bin and claiming a medical disorder.
The vast majority of long putts don't go in. You can only hope to leave the ball near enough to the hole to make the next one a virtual certainty!
 
The vast majority of my long putts also don't go - ?! That's the same for every golfer
 
Yips always involve an involuntary twitch or movement (a dystonia), so not just a question of poor technique! Many golfers who develop the yips have been good putters in the past. As the Mayo Clinic suggested, changing your technique may effect a cure. :)

So you define yips as bad putts arising from a focal dystonia. Therefore focal dystonia is always the cause of yips, because you use a circular logic.

The Mayo Clinic didn't make the same assertion, though, saying that there was a continuum between dystonia and choking. That makes sense.
 
The vast majority of my long putts also don't go - ?! That's the same for every golfer
When I had the yips they were most likely to happen on the sort of 3 or 4 footers that you should really make, or on long putts when there was some pressure to get the ball close to the hole. The ones in between were generally OK. Maybe the problem was caused by something simple like getting anxious and looking up too soon, although in that case I am not sure why a change to the claw grip would have cured it! I didn't change any other aspect of my set-up. :mmm:
 
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