Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Short Putt Yips is a very common problem for golfers and it’s also very demoralizing problem to have as well, but once you understand what's causing the yipping actions happen and we have got a good strategy for how to improve it, then you are well on your way to ridden yourself of them forever. So let's look at what a short putt yip actually is. A yip is just simply, once a golfer over the ball, they either freeze over the ball and find themselves unable to move the club or when they do move the club, it becomes a very jerky action, it’s not a smooth flowing action at all. And the jerkiness of that action then causes problems with connections, obviously it gives you distance control issues and from something like 1, 2, 3 feet where really it’s a situation where you feel you should be holding the pot is very, very easy to miss from that area.

Okay, so let's have a look at why this problem has developed and what's led up to this. So, really, a short putt yips comes from you fearing or dreading this situation. You have been in this situation before and you failed, because you failed, you then start to dread the situation and you start worrying about what other people are going to think, oh what they are going to think of me when I miss this one. You seem to lose value in other people’s eyes, so it’s really important that you address this situation, we have got a really good strategy to help you move forward from it. So when you perceive yourself to have a weakness or there is a real weakness in your games, so if you do either view you putt, your short putts an issue or your short putts actually are an issue, the yips can develop. They will also be some sort of elevated stress level. Now this can be golf related or non-golf related. For example, you may have decided to stop smoking at the time, because you’ve stopped smoking you feel you are under more stress, you find it a stressful situation and because you have got this perceived or actually real weakness in your game, it’s now starting to culminate into a bit of an issue.

Then, you have got this area where you have had this failure, you may have had it just once and then it’s become multiple. So you have got multiple embarrassing frustrating failures, if you have got those three ingredients the yips are going to happen. But it’s quite straight forward, if we have got a good strategy and a good plan for how to kill yourself off them. This won’t happen overnight, because it needs time for you to alter certain things that are happening, but we basically need a full step plan. The first thing we have got to do is alter your approach, alter your attitude to the shot, so rather than looking at the shot as a situation where you are going to get embarrassed in a situation where you are going to dread it, I want you to view this as an opportunity to see improvement, an opportunity to uncondition yourself from having the yips.

And that’s the biggest, biggest improvement you can make is move away from dreading the situation to now actually viewing it as an opportunity, a challenge to get better. The second thing we have got to do is as you are walking up to the putt is help you relax. Do anything you can, whatever it takes to get your mind off the situation and to get you relaxed. Some people would use the breathing techniques, loosening their muscles off or the people will count the steps, some people will [Indiscernible] [0:03:44]. Just distract yourself and get yourself away from worrying about that situation and help yourself relax. So we need to change the attitude and we then need to help ourselves relax. Once we have done that, we also need a good pre-shot routine.

So if your pre-shot routine, work on standing behind the target and the ball, decide on the line that you want to hit the ball down, really work on visualizing the ball doing down that line, work on seeing what you exactly want to happen, the ball finishing in the hole at the end of that putt. So work on having a really good pre-shot routine where you are committed to the shot, you are committed to the target and you have visualized. So you are then relaxing, you have changed your attitude, you have got this pre-shot routine, finally all I want you to do is not judge yourself on where the ball goes. Judge yourself on how well you have done those three steps beforehand, how well your attitude or how good improved your attitude was to the shot.

What you are looking at is a challenge, if you were great, you have been successful. Look at how you are relaxed, if you worked on relaxing, then you go into a more relaxed state than before, great, you are working on improving. And if you are really committed to going with the pre-shot routine, after you have done this for two months or so, your yips will be gone.