Putting Yips: What Causes Them and How to Fix Them.

Got the putting yips and wondering how to fix them? In this episode, I’m breaking down what causes the putting yips—from wonky mechanics and inconsistent routines to fear, doubt, and self-imposed pressure.

You’ll learn how to determine what’s feeding your nervy putting stroke, what to work on first, and a few simple putting drills to help you feel calmer and more confident over short putts.

No shame, no panic, and no pretending a new putter will solve everything. Although…it might be worth a try.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hartwood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of underperforming so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are going to learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Let's get to it. Hello my girlfriend. Welcome back to Think Above Par. I'm super happy that you are here. I hope you're having an amazing summer. I'm going to do something that's a little unusual. I'm going to talk a little bit about golf and golf mechanics because the topic of the yips comes up all the time. And there are mechanics that play a role in your mental game. Sometimes we actually can have some mechanical errors that are going on that contribute to our mental state and kind of mess with our thoughts and our emotions a little bit. I'll have a whole other podcast about that, but I want to talk to you today specifically about putting yips. And I want to start with why you get the yips. Then I'm going to tell you how you can start to minimize the yips or get rid of the yips. So if you have the yips, this is definitely a podcast for you. If you don't or you have never experienced them, I just want to let you know that statistics say, and I'm not wishing this on anybody, that 25 to 48% of people actually get the yips at some point in their golfing career. Now, what'll happen is sometimes people feel like they have a neurological deal going on with their body, right? That it's actually physical. And that could be true, but it's only true about 5% of the time. So that means that 95% of the people are actually getting the yips because of a few reasons that I'm going to tell you right now. The first thing is it can be mechanical. You could have a little bit of a wonky stroke that is contributing to the yips, right? Which is a little nervy stroke where there's a lot of club face rotation, and it's usually on shorter putts, though I have coached people on long putts that they yip on all of them. But it's typically on those shorter putts. So mechanically, you could be too wristy, right? The putting stroke is not meant to be wristy. Wrist produces speed, and there's not a whole lot of movement in a stroke. So it's really just one motion, one power source that you want to have. So the wrist getting in play, now there's too many power sources going on. In other words, you're creating too much speed for how far you're trying to hit it, and then we can get a little yippy. Your stroke could be not balanced, meaning you could take it back really long, and your brain kind of knows that's too much stroke for this short of a putt, and then you put on the brakes and you decelerate. So it's not balanced. It's either too long on your backstroke and too short on your follow-through, or vice versa. So it's not a very balanced back and forth motion. And you're trying to make adjustments on the go based on what your eyes are seeing, it doesn't line up. You know, you might have a two-foot putt and you're like, oh my gosh, I have enough enough stroke for a 20-foot putt. You know, something's gonna happen that you're gonna put on the brakes. Because typically we don't run it by the whole 19 feet very often on a really short putt, not very many times in a row. You'll figure out using your hand-eye coordination how to adjust and change things. So you could have an unbalanced stroke. You could have really poor tempo. You know, we talk about putting being a lot like a pendulum and back and through and using a metronome and putting. We've done all those things. And your tempo could be really off and really wonky. And that's something for you to uh work on. In other words, you could take it back really fast and then you slow down going into the ball. Or vice versa, you could take it back super slow and then you add a lot of speed. So that's something that you could look at. And then it could be that your aim is just horrific. I have seen this happen with people where they're aiming so far offline that your eyes do know this, and then it twists the face to get the ball to go back online. Now you've got a risky stroke that has a lot of motion and movement in it, and it doesn't feel very secure to you and safe to you, right? So it becomes very inconsistent. So it could be your aim and your setup. Now I'm gonna say too, you could have a bad grip. Your hands aren't very balanced on the club, so they're fighting each other. There might be a grip size that is a little bit better for the size of your hands. So that's something that you can look at, making sure that your hands are placed on the club properly so that it can minimize the amount of wrist hinge in your stroke, work on your tempo, get your stroke to be nice and balanced, minimize that face rotation. Yes, for sure, check all those things because those can contribute to getting a case of the yips or just having some nervy little putts. It could be that you have a lack of routine or consistent routine in putting. So, in other words, maybe on a longer putt, you have one routine, and then when you get shorter or closer to the hole, you're doing something totally different. Maybe you're standing over the putt much longer. You're overthinking, you're questioning some of your decisions. Where you're standing over a longer putt, and maybe you stood over that putt for five seconds and then you pulled the putter back and you hit it, and then you stand over a shorter putt and you're standing over it for 20 seconds before you pull it back. That's giving you lots of room to overthink and it's very inconsistent.

unknown 5:25

Right?

SPEAKER_00 5:25

So check how consistent is your routine. Do you have a putting routine? From the minute that you mark your ball and put your ball back down, do you have a routine? That is going to help you create a lot of consistency with your putting and minimize your yips. And then the third thing, for the most part, it's going to be mental. And most of the time, I'm going to tell you it is mental, but it can get contributed and started and fed, so to speak, because your mechanics were off. One of the ways that you know that it is mental is that what are you doing on the practice green when there's nothing at stake? When you're using your practice brain versus your on-course brain, which is dealing with a lot more elements that produce fear and anxiety and pressure. On the putting green, if you're stroking it great and you're making all the short putts, and you know, you feel like a champ out there, and then you go out to the golf course and you show up a different person on the putting green, it's mental. I'm sorry, my friend. But it's curable for sure. The yips happen because there is fear or there is doubt over the putt. Fear and doubt are going to show up with you squeezing tighter. There is going to be more tension. You might have more tension in your dominant hand, right? This would be an imbalance too in your putting stroke. Though some people love to have that imbalance, it might not be something that works for you. Meaning some people like to feel their left hand a lot when they putt, other people like to feel their right hand or right arm a lot when they putt. But when the tension rises, because you have fear or doubt, they get imbalanced or even more imbalanced. The other thing that we have a tendency to do is we end up steering things or decelerating. We start overthinking. We start questioning our decisions. We have a lot of doubt, which means that we don't trust ourselves, whether we're reading it the putt right or whether we're going to make it, right? Which goes back to my point that if you're hitting a putt and you're not in a state of calm or certain or confident or neutral or hopeful, something that works for you, then you're not going to be able to access your talent, the talent that you had on the practice screen. So the first question I would tell you is like, which state are you in? You're in one of those. You could have pressure that you're putting on yourself or you're saying, I have to make it or I need to make it, and then you yip it. Okay, good to know. That's self-imposed pressure that isn't serving you or working for you because it's creating tension. It's amplifying potentially the mechanical errors that you have, the too much movement in your stroke that I talked about earlier, if that is the case for you. It gets exaggerated. When you're squeezing the club a little bit tighter, you're more tense. You start steering it and decelerating and guiding it. That is a breeding ground for yips because what happens there is there's too much club face rotation. It's much harder for you to keep the putter face square longer and the stroke to be nice and balanced and even and have good tempo so you can make those putts. So then, okay, fine. I'm sharing all that with you so that you can understand why one would get the yips and maybe you could prevent them. Or if you have them, maybe you'll get to understand yourself a little bit more. But you first need to self-diagnose a little bit. I think it's hard for you to know what you're doing with your putting stroke unless you have some eyes looking at you. So go get a putting lesson and just check your mechanics. So your first step is to start with the mechanical, just eliminate that as an option. So you're not grabbing straws trying to figure out which one it is. Just eliminate that you do not or you do have a mechanical issue in your stroke that is contributing to too much club face rotation. And then, of course, the yips. Go and build yourself a really solid routine. That's the second thing. Do it consistently every single time. Video yourself putting and time it on your camera. How long are you taking over those putts? How long are you taking over a longer putt? Check the difference between what happens on the practice screen and what happens out on the golf course. Are you a different person out there? Are you not doing the same things that you do in the practice screen when you're having success? Okay, and then the mental part is you want to listen to what you're saying to yourself that is producing the fear and the doubt. The antidote for fear is safety. So, how can you create some safety for yourself on the golf course? Meaning I'm okay. There's nothing to be afraid of if I miss a putt. I'm gonna have my own back. And the antidote for doubt, and really both of them, is certainty. Right? So doubt is like, I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know if I'm gonna make it, I don't know if I'm gonna miss it. I don't know what I'm doing over the putter. I don't know if my face is gonna twist. You want to create some certainty for you on what you know. For instance, you might say, you know, on the practice screen, I made 10 out of 10 of these. I can do this. There's nothing wrong with my stroke. I have some things I can do that I can minimize my club face rotation. I'll give you a couple in a second. I know which way this putt breaks. I have a good idea of the speed. I'm gonna go through my routine, which I've practiced and I trust. I know that my stroke doesn't have a whole lot of movement in it. I've been working on that. Let's go. Create some certainty for yourself versus the doubt and the fear. Then that is gonna show up maybe as less fear and less doubt. I'm not saying that you're gonna quickly go to being super confident over putts if you've been yipping for a while because your brain has some history. So you want to take a win as less yips, a little smoother stroke. You want to find that evidence and give yourself credit of it, so credit for it, so that the next time you can go in and build on that. But where we get frustrated, actually, we slow our progress down, is we're thinking we're supposed to do a 180 in one round. You didn't get to the yips overnight, most likely. And it most likely will not go away overnight. It doesn't mean it can't. I'm just saying you give yourself grace there to finding any little win you can find. It's very, very important for your brain to keep going. Otherwise, you're gonna give up. You get frustrated. So a beautiful sentence for you to have is like that was better. That felt smoother. I'm feeling calmer over it. I want you to pay attention to the sentences, though, that you are saying to yourself over these puts and ask yourself, what do I want to say and what do I want to believe? Even though that thought is going to be there and you're gonna hear it. It is not a problem. You're gonna say, I hear you, but I'm gonna think this other thought instead. And I'm gonna stick with this until my brain starts seeing evidence of it. Now, this is the tricky part about me diagnosing someone with Yips or helping them with a cure in a podcast, is because I can't see your stroke. So I want you to eliminate the mechanical part first. Have someone look at your stroke, whether it's an instructor or somebody that you trust, or just you video it and watch it. How much movement do you have in your putter face? How good is your tempo? How many putts are you making on the practice screen? Because you can have an amazing mental process, but if your stroke is wiggity-wiggity, your brain's like, something's off here. This doesn't feel very good. And now that uncertainty creates a lot of fear. So it can feed your emotional and mental state. So check your mechanics first. Get yourself a really solid routine, listen to what you're saying to yourself over the golf ball. And I will tell you, I am not against you trying different grips, meaning left hand low, claw grip, trying all the things you can watch the players on TV. It's like the grip of the week with the putting because they're going through the same things. It is a very nervy little shot. And they're trying to find a way to hold on to the club to minimize that club face rotation and that wrist movement. So you do you. Like try it all out. There is nothing to be ashamed of or no reason to be too proud to not go in and try the claw grip. I mean, one of the reasons why anchoring the putter against your chest, your sternum, or wherever people put it, I can't do it very well because my boobs get in the way, but guys had an advantage there. Sometimes I've seen guys' bellies get in the way, but yeah, I can't anchor it against my chest, even though you can't do that anymore. Anyway, but the reason you did that is because there was one lever, a lever from your chest, from your sternum down to the putter, right? One speed source, much easier to control, way less yips. So if you want to try a version of that where you're not anchoring it against your body, give it a go. Use a longer putter. Change your grip around. Go ahead and try all the things. Buy a new putter. I don't care. Whatever helps you create a little bit more certainty is all fine by me. I've done all the things. And now I'm going to give you a couple little putting drills that can help minimize the yips, but also help you feel a little bit more of what's going on your stroke. One thing is to do the old Jordan Speed thing where you're looking at the hole while you putt. I actually love this. I've been starting to use it more and more because sometimes I can stand over the ball and I see my face twist right away when I take it back, and I already create some doubt. So I actually, when I look at the hole instead of the ball when I putt, I can't see a the putter face twist, which is helpful, and B, it actually twists less, which is random. Probably not random, but it's a beautiful extra benefit. So you can try that. Practice with your eyes closed. I wouldn't do this on the golf course, but hit some short putts, get all set up, and then close your eyes and hit the putt. Feel your stroke a little bit more. Maybe you can feel some of the movement that is in your hands. Another thing I like to do from relatively close and a relatively, I'd start with a relatively straight putt, is get all set up, put one hand behind your back, one arm behind your back, and putt with just your left arm, and then hit seven or eight balls, and then go and switch and go to your right hand and do that only. What I find, I've done this, is that one hand is going to be pretty good and the other one's gonna be wiggity wiggity. It's not a golf term, but it's like you're like, oh my goodness, you feel so uncoordinated. It will take you about a dozen putts and all of a sudden you'll gain some more coordination. One of the things that I have found doing this drill is I have found that sometimes I can tweak the way I'm holding the club to create more security with the putter. So that's useful. Now, the thing I'm gonna put in a disclaimer on this, don't just go shimming into the golf ball. Get in your setup position, bet up in your posture, however you set up, both hands on the club and then put the hand behind the back. Don't just put your one hand in and kind of go in and you're not in your proper position. And I don't want you creating a new bad habit. But try that for a dozen balls with each hand and just observe what happens. And if I switch my grip out a little bit, am I a little bit more secure? And then put that other hand back on. That has been a very useful thing for me. Putting tracks are also useful. It's kind of like playing the game of operation. You know, if you if your putter is going a lot offline, you're gonna be hitting the edges of the track and get feedback right away. A chalk line is another thing that's very useful for your eyes, and you get to see how much your putter is going offline or the club face is twisting. So sometimes we don't know it's doing it because we've done it so much it feels comfortable, even though it's wrong. And for you to get your club face or your path more square and more online, it's gonna feel really horrible. But when you have the proof that it's the right thing to do, it just takes you a few repetitions and it'll start to feel more and more comfortable. All right, my friend. So while you get the Yips, things that you can go ahead and prevent so you don't get them if you don't have them, or maybe you know a friend, you can share this podcast with them, and then how to fix them. Start first with your mechanics and make sure you're not working with something that is creating some mental angst for you. Then get a solid routine and then start really witnessing some of the thoughts that you're saying over the golf ball because as those get more solid, the chances are that you're gonna see more evidence of a really repeatable stroke, and then the fear and the doubt are gonna be easier for you to tackle. All right, my friends, have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday. And also, I would love to see you inside your mental caddy in the community that we talk about all these things. It's free to join. Go to yourmentalcaddy.com. I'd love to see you there. All right.

unknown 17:53

Bye.