Chipping Yips - Lesson by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer
Chipping Yips - Lesson by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer

In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer will talk you through the process of how to reduce your chipping yips, why you have the chipping yips, and the best way to reduce this affliction. We will show you the process of having a short backswing to create a longer follow through which allows the body to turn better towards target and encourage a more accelerating chipping action. This combined with a raising of the rear heel through the impact area should result in less of the yipping action and an improved all round chipping game.

Matt I think when we're talking about golf there are two words that nobody wants to hear in the golfing landscape one would be shank. You know even physical reactions to the word shank that when you think that's bad and someone says that about yips. Even worse, so yips is something we never want to have associated with golf. Particularly with our own golf now yes quite often related to putting they can also be related to what we're going to talk about in chipping. In it would it be fair to describe as an involuntary reaction something that you didn't want to have in anyway? Definitely and it often results in a very poor shot sometimes a complete duff a miss an air shot and pretty poor, yeah real inconsistencies as you go into contact. So it's not easy but bad for putting and bad for chipping, and the difficult thing with a yip is that there's not really sort of one hard and fast cure. Although we're going to try our best to sort of understand what the yip is and how we can guide people around that. Yeah definitely I think the sort of stigma attached to it sometime and as soon as people if you bad chips “oh I've got there yips” you know if you have the yips properly you'd know about it. It keeps you awake at night. Sometimes it might just be that you're going through a bit of a poor spell chipping it's not as drastic as it may seem, but I think one of the common things is actually getting a bit of confidence with it. You know once you've hit a few chips it can be a little bit nerve racking as you start over the next on you get into a bit of a dark place in your thought process so it's you know “right I can do it” having a bit of belief and then playing a few technical things as well.

It's interesting that everything we've talked about so far is mental. The twist on the physical aspects or the technical aspect of hitting the shot it's much more about the mental and again we see the same in the putting yips and the chipping yips it's a very mental thing. Maybe poor technique started it but then the mental approach takes over and we believe that we've got the yips we've caught the yips and top get rid of them is tough. Exactly and you know if we are looking at technique wise even relating confidence technique the thing we'll see in the poor one when we do see it is you know sort of stopping or quitting down into impact we don't actually have to get a follow through it looks very short abbreviated quite stabbing would be a word I would relate to it. So we're going to try to do you know to alleviate them a bit more is something where once we have taken on our normal set up. What would seem like it's a something we generally would see along the back swing and a real stop down and stab into impact so what we're going to try and do is make a slightly shorter back swing and then a full follow through a longer follow through turning our body to target and allowing the rear heel to start to come off the ground instead of. So they were 50/50 your back swing your follow through wasn't 50/50 there your follow through was longer? Yes we're letting the club flow a little bit more let it go on its journey let it go through let it actually hit the ball than gather it up instead of stopping down at impact and being scared of actually what's about to happen. We've got to take the set up nice and relaxed good set up short and a little bit more through as we go through it and we start to see a little bit of contact going through instead of the one where we did see someone get a little bit too long and that was where we jump into the finishing position. You can definitely tell that is that is a physical restriction in the swing the club was meant to be doing its follow through and the mind set took over when you said “don't hit it you're scared of it don't go over there.” Exactly and you know another little takeaway from it if we can just like to say let the club go on its journey if you were to have some one handed practice swings where if you just have your trail or your lead hand which ever one you feel is a little bit more dominant with, and you were to just allow it a nice and smooth start to brush through to target. You'll feel more of the weight of the club and it just feels that it's dragging you along through impact into post-impact and you're starting to see quite a smooth journey now as I make these practice swings here and then when we get back into hitting it.

We've got to try and allow the same thing happen a bit of a shorter back swing and let's just see that we turn on nice loose grip, and we see that we start to get some nice smooth pitches as opposed to that one that's a few yards in front of us. Freedom of movement to come through and actually you talk about that one handed motion I personally use that a great deal as a coaching tip in lessons. Generally I would look for the golfer so they don't wind up without striking aspect but I put a lot of balls on tees I'll just say hit one handed and you would be amazed they're better one handed than two. The right hand really nicely some golfers then go for the left and do the same thing really nicely because they're probably focusing more on just making the goods single hand it's when both hands get involved they argue that it really difficult. Exactly is a change of thought process as well as you said before it's a mental thing so as soon as you put one hand on it when did you chip last with one hand, you didn't so your thought process changed you know changing your thinking around a little bit and getting out of that sort of dark stigma attached to the yips. Change it up a little bit even just those small practice swings with the one hand see that gain a bit of confidence even striking those then get back into the two handed. So a one handed chips maybe using a tee peg one handed chips with the other hand using the tee peg as well. Then the main thing would be shorter back longer through and that's the something to go takeaway on the golf course as well isn't it actually next time you get the golf course you get this yip shot or you're this that might be a yip short but long through accentuate our follow through try and fly that ball high, and once you start to get that better striking we've really got a flood of confidence haven't you. Yeah that you can nail in again we've got to say I'm over that yip I've got the positivity I'm no longer getting this I can chip well practice hard to in but you've yet to word that you're no longer scared of saying it again how could you.

2018-11-09

In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer will talk you through the process of how to reduce your chipping yips, why you have the chipping yips, and the best way to reduce this affliction. We will show you the process of having a short backswing to create a longer follow through which allows the body to turn better towards target and encourage a more accelerating chipping action. This combined with a raising of the rear heel through the impact area should result in less of the yipping action and an improved all round chipping game.

Matt I think when we're talking about golf there are two words that nobody wants to hear in the golfing landscape one would be shank. You know even physical reactions to the word shank that when you think that's bad and someone says that about yips. Even worse, so yips is something we never want to have associated with golf. Particularly with our own golf now yes quite often related to putting they can also be related to what we're going to talk about in chipping. In it would it be fair to describe as an involuntary reaction something that you didn't want to have in anyway? Definitely and it often results in a very poor shot sometimes a complete duff a miss an air shot and pretty poor, yeah real inconsistencies as you go into contact. So it's not easy but bad for putting and bad for chipping, and the difficult thing with a yip is that there's not really sort of one hard and fast cure. Although we're going to try our best to sort of understand what the yip is and how we can guide people around that. Yeah definitely I think the sort of stigma attached to it sometime and as soon as people if you bad chips “oh I've got there yips” you know if you have the yips properly you'd know about it. It keeps you awake at night. Sometimes it might just be that you're going through a bit of a poor spell chipping it's not as drastic as it may seem, but I think one of the common things is actually getting a bit of confidence with it. You know once you've hit a few chips it can be a little bit nerve racking as you start over the next on you get into a bit of a dark place in your thought process so it's you know “right I can do it” having a bit of belief and then playing a few technical things as well.

It's interesting that everything we've talked about so far is mental. The twist on the physical aspects or the technical aspect of hitting the shot it's much more about the mental and again we see the same in the putting yips and the chipping yips it's a very mental thing. Maybe poor technique started it but then the mental approach takes over and we believe that we've got the yips we've caught the yips and top get rid of them is tough. Exactly and you know if we are looking at technique wise even relating confidence technique the thing we'll see in the poor one when we do see it is you know sort of stopping or quitting down into impact we don't actually have to get a follow through it looks very short abbreviated quite stabbing would be a word I would relate to it. So we're going to try to do you know to alleviate them a bit more is something where once we have taken on our normal set up. What would seem like it's a something we generally would see along the back swing and a real stop down and stab into impact so what we're going to try and do is make a slightly shorter back swing and then a full follow through a longer follow through turning our body to target and allowing the rear heel to start to come off the ground instead of. So they were 50/50 your back swing your follow through wasn't 50/50 there your follow through was longer? Yes we're letting the club flow a little bit more let it go on its journey let it go through let it actually hit the ball than gather it up instead of stopping down at impact and being scared of actually what's about to happen. We've got to take the set up nice and relaxed good set up short and a little bit more through as we go through it and we start to see a little bit of contact going through instead of the one where we did see someone get a little bit too long and that was where we jump into the finishing position. You can definitely tell that is that is a physical restriction in the swing the club was meant to be doing its follow through and the mind set took over when you said “don't hit it you're scared of it don't go over there.” Exactly and you know another little takeaway from it if we can just like to say let the club go on its journey if you were to have some one handed practice swings where if you just have your trail or your lead hand which ever one you feel is a little bit more dominant with, and you were to just allow it a nice and smooth start to brush through to target. You'll feel more of the weight of the club and it just feels that it's dragging you along through impact into post-impact and you're starting to see quite a smooth journey now as I make these practice swings here and then when we get back into hitting it.

We've got to try and allow the same thing happen a bit of a shorter back swing and let's just see that we turn on nice loose grip, and we see that we start to get some nice smooth pitches as opposed to that one that's a few yards in front of us. Freedom of movement to come through and actually you talk about that one handed motion I personally use that a great deal as a coaching tip in lessons. Generally I would look for the golfer so they don't wind up without striking aspect but I put a lot of balls on tees I'll just say hit one handed and you would be amazed they're better one handed than two. The right hand really nicely some golfers then go for the left and do the same thing really nicely because they're probably focusing more on just making the goods single hand it's when both hands get involved they argue that it really difficult. Exactly is a change of thought process as well as you said before it's a mental thing so as soon as you put one hand on it when did you chip last with one hand, you didn't so your thought process changed you know changing your thinking around a little bit and getting out of that sort of dark stigma attached to the yips. Change it up a little bit even just those small practice swings with the one hand see that gain a bit of confidence even striking those then get back into the two handed. So a one handed chips maybe using a tee peg one handed chips with the other hand using the tee peg as well. Then the main thing would be shorter back longer through and that's the something to go takeaway on the golf course as well isn't it actually next time you get the golf course you get this yip shot or you're this that might be a yip short but long through accentuate our follow through try and fly that ball high, and once you start to get that better striking we've really got a flood of confidence haven't you. Yeah that you can nail in again we've got to say I'm over that yip I've got the positivity I'm no longer getting this I can chip well practice hard to in but you've yet to word that you're no longer scared of saying it again how could you.