Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Here we’re going to look at how to correct the yips if you’re struggling with your putting and you are suffering from them. Yips are purely jerky motion, stopping action with the Putter towards the ball so you’ve lost the smoothness and the flow to the stroke and it’s become very jerky. So if you hit a nice putt with tempo and smoothness you would look like this, but if you’re hitting a putt with the yips, the stroke will become very stoppy and jerky, very quick sudden movements rather than relaxed smooth rhythmical tempo.

So we’re going to have a look here at how to correct that. One of the issues with having the putting yips for me would be alter your grip. So if you’re using a traditional palm facing nature of the grip that will allow you to become quite wristy. It will allow your dominant hands to take over during the stroke and that’s what can put the sudden movement and the jerkiness into the stroke. So one of the things I’d suggest to move you away from a yip stroke would be to alter and possibly try the claw grip, because that will minimize the use of your right hand if you’re a right handed golfer, and you’ll start to smooth the stroke out, because you’re not dominant with one hand making such a sudden jerking motion through the stroke.

So if you’re going to have a go using the claw grip to correct the yips, set up as you normally would to have the ball in the center of the feet. The feet, shoulder at the per. Your eyes directly over the ball or just from the inside of the ball and allow the arms to dangle so they’re nice and relaxed.

Place your hands on as you normally would and that would see you that you’ve your palms facing each other. What you want to do now is just take the right hand off, put your index and middle finger on the front of the hand and your thumb around the back, and then just allow the ring finger and little finger to just sit on the side of the shaft. Now this really minimizes the use of this hand. So you’re going to start to use the left hand a lot more, but when you’re hitting a yip type of stroke, the right hand really makes a quick sudden movement so this will tie that straight away from you and you’ll start to hold a lot more putt. So work on the claw grips. It feels awkward to start with, but it minimizes that right hand action.

The other thing I would suggest you do again just to build the smoothness and the tempo into the stroke would be just to hit putts with your left hand only. So I wouldn’t worry about putting towards the hole or whether the ball is going in. Just set yourself up, go for your claw grip, and then take your right hand off if you’re a right-handed golfer. Put it into your pocket or put it around the back of your right thigh and just practice hitting putts just with your left hand. It doesn’t matter whether the ball goes into the hole or hole not. Practice it away from the hole just so that you’re practicing the smoothness of the stroke.

That’s what you’re looking for there is that you’re very smooth, there’s a lot of rhythm in the stroke there, the tempo is good, and there’s no jerky action. So just hold with one hand, practice the stroke, get the confidence back, and then when you go to actually hit with two hands, use the claw grip to minimize the dominance of your right hand. You should find that your stroke becomes a lot more rhythmical, gets the tempo back and you start holding a lot more putts.