The first thing you need to know is that “The Yips” don’t exist. So if you think you’ve “Got the yips” think again – you can’t have. Yipping is an action you do, not some strange thing that you “get”, like some terrible disease! If you want to fix your “yips”, you need to stop calling them “the yips”. By thinking that something you do is actually something that you’ve got, you give away your power to do something else.

The process of yipping, twitching (or more accurately spasm-ing) on putts is quite a popular one! Many great players would have won far more if they hadn’t got twitchy on putts – Hogan, Snead, Langer, Singh, the list goes on. In fact up to a half of all good golfers experience some kind of twitching at some point. If you’ve never done it, give it a go, it’s pretty funny – although mostly for people watching!

If you’re serious about un-yipping yourself, you need to know that yipping is a learned skill. I’ve had a go and I find it pretty hard to yip, even though I’ve had a few expert clients try and explain to me how they do it! Maybe I’m just not a good enough golfer to get it. So to those of you who are experts at yipping, I doff my cap to you! The problem is with skills is that sometimes they can very unconscious, so most people good at yipping find it hard to do something else instead. BUT because yipping is learned, it is a skill that people can un-learn too. You don’t need a pill to sort out this disease, you just need a new state and a new process.

Yipping is the result of adrenaline pumping up the smaller muscles in your arms, wrists and hands to create flicky, twitchy putting strokes. Many solutions offered to yippers are therefore physical interventions that deal with the physical symptoms:

• The putter – change putter regularly, heavy putters, broomstick putters
• The grip - lock the putter to the left arm, the saw or claw grip, cack handed grip
• The technique – short stroke, long stroke, long follow through, putt left handed

Any one of these can work so I don’t knock any of them. If you’re bleeding, put a plaster on it I say. The problem is, you may be so good at yipping that you’ll find new ways to do it despite the plasters, requiring more elaborate plasters each time!

My issue is, all of these “solutions” don’t tackle the cause of yipping, only the symptoms. So what is the cause?

A NEGATIVELY ANCHORED STATE OF FEAR. Negative “anchors” around putting are like less intense versions of phobias. They are negative associations that get formed through one or more intensely emotional experiences that you’ve had whilst putting. So just as you learn to associate that green means “Go” and red means “Stop”, putting means “Aggghhh!!”

So here’s your key to stop yipping, (if you don’t find it as funny as others do!).

Change your state and your process. Here are 5 ways I use with my clients:

1. Resolve the old emotional experiences you’ve had whilst putting to change the negative association (the ultimate solution that I use with clients, and so have on my CD’s. This is not so easy to do yourself, but is a guaranteed solution)
2. Stop playing in the past or future and play in NOW. Use the Playing State to see the ball and the hole at the same time with your peripheral vision. Do this before, during and after your putt. After you stroke the putt, only see the ball go to the target in your peripheral awareness. Only turn your head once the ball has stopped. Keeping your awareness outside on joining the ball and target (see Join the Dots), stops you from going inside to feel nervous.
3. Use positive anchors – as you step up to putt, think of something that you absolutely love doing. It’s your mind, so imagine what would happen to your nerves if all you were thinking about over a putt was having fantastic sex – balls in holes and all that?
4. Use breathing techniques to change your state and remove the pressure before you putt. Breathe in through your nose and twice as long out through your mouth. This will slow things down inside and help you become ready to focus.
5. Rather than treating putting like a problem, find ways of loving the challenge of putting. Find one putter you love to use. Find one style that you love putting with. Develop one routine that gets all the thinking done away from the ball, so that time over the putt is reduced, there is no doubt, just freedom to love making the putt. (Read more on putting routines and confident putting).

If you’d like to receive more input on how to use golf psychology to lower your scores, grab 6 free audio tipcasts here. As always, I welcome your feedback and questions on mental golf to help you enjoy your game even more.

Love every putt!

Adam Sprackling

Mental Golf Coach