How Can I Stop Yipping My Golf Putts? (Video) - by Natalie Adams
How Can I Stop Yipping My Golf Putts? (Video) - by Natalie Adams

How can I stop yipping my putts? If you’re suffering from the yipps with your putts, it’s quite a debilitating and embarrassing problem that you’re suffering from, and it self-fuels itself because the more problem it becomes, the more embarrassed you are about it, and the worse that it gets, the worse the outcome becomes, the worse the stroke gets and then it makes you even more embarrassed. So it becomes a self feeling problem.

A yip a simply, a very jerky stopping action, with the putter; there’s not a lot of rhythm, the smoke isn’t -- the stroke isn’t smooth as your playing the putt and it really does become just a jerking action towards the hole and that produces a very quick movement in the ball, a very fast ball speed and it goes to the right or to the left. So it’s very difficult to sort of hole the putt. And it’s from a short distance sort of two to three feet, or four feet where you’d really be expecting to at least hit the hole if not hole the putt. So a yip when you’re yipping looks more like this, you’ll get frozen over the ball, maybe not able to move, and then a very quick and sudden action which doesn’t allow you to control it very well at all. And it’s really caused -- obviously there’s a technical issue going on in there but it’s really caused a lot in the mind as well. You’re getting very tense, you’re getting very apprehensive and anxious about hitting the shot and whether the yip is going to happen or not, but it becomes difficult to control it. The hands, the wrist the fore arms get very tired with the muscles, and then you lose control of the putter, and make this jerky action. So what we’re going to do here; is look at a great way to help you improve that putting stroke, and what I will do is take two head covers; the next time you’re out on the putting green and just put them about three or four feet apart, and what we’re going to do is just work here without the ball, we’re just going to work on the rhythm and the tempo of the stroke and I'm getting you more relaxed. So the first thing to do is to focus on your breathing. So your breathing is nice and deep and it’s very slow. So just start to relax, feel the whole body relax, concentrate on your breathing and as you’re doing that, work on this touch drill. So it’s set in the middle of the head covers and we’re just swinging back, touching this head cover, touching that head cover. And we’re going to work on the rhythm of that. So nice and relaxed, nice and slow, and we’re just going touch, touch. Touch, touch; a bit like listening to the ticking of a clock, we’ve just got that tick tock, that really nice relaxed rhythm. So we’ll start doing that without the ball, and get you feeling happy with that, touch, touch drill, and maybe do this a good 10 times just working on that rhythm, tick tock, tick tock, and then once you’ve done that about 10 times, you just step forward to the ball and repeat. Tick tock, so you’re just concentrating on the same drill touching the right hand head cover, touching the left hand head cover. Don’t pop up anything; just transfer the stroke into the ball. Once you got feeling more comfortable doing that, then you can put a little bit more pressure on yourself, and start to put the ball next to the hole. But start it off really close, maybe a foot, eighteen inches away from the hole. With the same principle, and shorten the head covers in for that smaller stroke. So we’re just going to swing back and go touch touch, touch touch, touch touch and then step forward and then stroke the ball into the hole with the same rhythm. Once you got comfortable doing that, just stop pulling further away from the hole so go to two feet, then go to three feet, just keep pushing the head cover slightly wider as you do that. But just work on doing that touch drill and you should find that your putting strokes improves. 2014-05-21

How can I stop yipping my putts? If you’re suffering from the yipps with your putts, it’s quite a debilitating and embarrassing problem that you’re suffering from, and it self-fuels itself because the more problem it becomes, the more embarrassed you are about it, and the worse that it gets, the worse the outcome becomes, the worse the stroke gets and then it makes you even more embarrassed. So it becomes a self feeling problem.

A yip a simply, a very jerky stopping action, with the putter; there’s not a lot of rhythm, the smoke isn’t — the stroke isn’t smooth as your playing the putt and it really does become just a jerking action towards the hole and that produces a very quick movement in the ball, a very fast ball speed and it goes to the right or to the left. So it’s very difficult to sort of hole the putt. And it’s from a short distance sort of two to three feet, or four feet where you’d really be expecting to at least hit the hole if not hole the putt. So a yip when you’re yipping looks more like this, you’ll get frozen over the ball, maybe not able to move, and then a very quick and sudden action which doesn’t allow you to control it very well at all.

And it’s really caused — obviously there’s a technical issue going on in there but it’s really caused a lot in the mind as well. You’re getting very tense, you’re getting very apprehensive and anxious about hitting the shot and whether the yip is going to happen or not, but it becomes difficult to control it. The hands, the wrist the fore arms get very tired with the muscles, and then you lose control of the putter, and make this jerky action. So what we’re going to do here; is look at a great way to help you improve that putting stroke, and what I will do is take two head covers; the next time you’re out on the putting green and just put them about three or four feet apart, and what we’re going to do is just work here without the ball, we’re just going to work on the rhythm and the tempo of the stroke and I'm getting you more relaxed.

So the first thing to do is to focus on your breathing. So your breathing is nice and deep and it’s very slow. So just start to relax, feel the whole body relax, concentrate on your breathing and as you’re doing that, work on this touch drill. So it’s set in the middle of the head covers and we’re just swinging back, touching this head cover, touching that head cover. And we’re going to work on the rhythm of that. So nice and relaxed, nice and slow, and we’re just going touch, touch. Touch, touch; a bit like listening to the ticking of a clock, we’ve just got that tick tock, that really nice relaxed rhythm. So we’ll start doing that without the ball, and get you feeling happy with that, touch, touch drill, and maybe do this a good 10 times just working on that rhythm, tick tock, tick tock, and then once you’ve done that about 10 times, you just step forward to the ball and repeat. Tick tock, so you’re just concentrating on the same drill touching the right hand head cover, touching the left hand head cover.

Don’t pop up anything; just transfer the stroke into the ball. Once you got feeling more comfortable doing that, then you can put a little bit more pressure on yourself, and start to put the ball next to the hole. But start it off really close, maybe a foot, eighteen inches away from the hole. With the same principle, and shorten the head covers in for that smaller stroke. So we’re just going to swing back and go touch touch, touch touch, touch touch and then step forward and then stroke the ball into the hole with the same rhythm. Once you got comfortable doing that, just stop pulling further away from the hole so go to two feet, then go to three feet, just keep pushing the head cover slightly wider as you do that. But just work on doing that touch drill and you should find that your putting strokes improves.