Okay. So, how can I stop the yips? Well, the correct answer is to accelerate the putter through the impact. So, what are yips? Well, I guess you already know because you’re actually looking at this tip, but let me explain for the people who are not sure. Yips are basically caused by nervousness, lack of confidence. It tends to kind of come from a swing that kind of goes back and then we – from here, we tend to decelerate on the shot or sometimes we kind of go here and kind of jerk. It really is a horrible sort of condition and its confidence basically.

So, yips is something like short, jerky or a long back swing and stopping on it, but its all in the mind. A lot of it is in the mind, the yips. So, what we want to do now is say right this. We know what causes it. That setup. Let’s get this right. Easiest way of going about this is I’ve got the ball here, I’ve got a tee peg about 6 inches behind and not so much in the hole is 18 inches, a foot and a half away, okay. And what we want you to do is we want to set yourself up, and we want to swing the putter back to the marker there, which can be a tee peg, back and then take the putter through to the hole. So, you can see what I’m doing here is actually keeping the swing very, very smooth. So, if I actually set myself up here, give myself 6 inches behind. Let’s go here. So, from here, if I actually take this putter back – so, from here, back and through to the ball. So, back and through. You can see a nice smooth stroke. Back and through.

So, what you have to do first of all is build up a routine. Go onto the putting green, put yourself not around the hole because let’s get the stroke right first of all, let’s get the fundamentals right, set yourself up. Remember the yips, it’s one of these – how many times have you been over the ball in your life? And all of a sudden everything that’s on the green from that far, people are making you putting because they know you got a problem. But let’s get rid of that problem. So, we want a smooth stroke. So, a shorter back swing will encourage a much longer followthrough. So, a short back swing and a longer followthrough is going to be a smooth stroke.

What you can do also to kind of help this because you’ve got basically a nice exercise to put in place there, but what you need to do is you need to be a bit more relaxed. Now, easier said than done I’m sure you’re saying that, but how can I get myself relaxed? Well, first of all, take some nice deep breaths. You’ll find some of the world’s top players when they’re coming to the final round of a major competition. And they need to go say, “Par, par.” You see them quite often, taking big deep breaths and letting them – exhaling very, very slowly. If you try it, you got to take a big deep breath and you just let it out nice and easy, you’ll be amazed at how relaxed you actually will be. I’ve done this many times with people and so on. They can’t believe something so simple that we don’t think about.

So, the yips, we know what’s causing the problem. We’ve got an exercise here and it’s that word again, it’s practice. How often do you practice? Don’t go to the putting green with five minutes to go and just have a few putts. Go there, practice your technique. The incorrect answer, the biggest incorrect answer for curing the yips is to stand here and go longer with your backswing. If you go longer, the likelihood is now you’re going to come in and stop the impact because if you didn’t, that ball is going too far. You’ve got the knowledge, knowledge is key in life. So, go and put this into practice, don’t have any fear about it, you’re in the putting green. Let’s get that technique right and get rid of those yips once and for all.