The 3-Degree Putting Solution by Michael Breed

Author:Michael Breed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

GOOD-BYE, MR. YIPS

YOU’VE NO DOUBT SEEN IT HAPPEN. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF your round, and right before your eyes. A friend carefully lines up his putt and then takes his stance. He brings his putter back a foot or two, but as he begins to move through the ball, his normally smooth stroke gets all twitchy and jerky, as if gremlins have suddenly taken control of his arms and hands.

You cringe, and your friend barely makes contact with the ball as he pushes it off to the right. It makes an odd, almost clunky sound and then stutters to a stop well short of the hole. You quickly turn your head, as though you’ve just witnessed a car wreck and don’t want to look anymore. When you’re finally able to gaze back at your friend, you shudder at his pained, panicked expression. He appears shaken. All color has drained from his face, and you understand why.

Your fellow golfer has the yips. And that means his golf world is falling apart.

Sadly, a lot of golfers catch this dreaded disease, in which a good putter goes bad and can no longer put a good stroke on the ball. But there’s no reason to give up hope, or even the game for that matter, although those are very understandable reactions. As bad as the yips are, they are by no means incurable. In fact, the golf world is populated with players who have recovered from this insidious ailment. Many have done it several times, and those in recovery include not only your garden variety 36-handicappers but also some of the greatest golfers in the world.

Like Bernhard Langer. The Hall of Fame star from Germany has eighty-three professional wins worldwide, including two Masters (in 1985 and 1993) and both the Senior Open Championship (formerly the Senior British Open) and the U.S. Senior Open in 2010. But from that record and his remarkably consistent play over four decades, you wouldn’t know that he has struggled with the yips on more than a few occasions. He won the ’85 Masters using a conventional putting grip, for example. But by the time Langer had slipped on his second green jacket eight years later, the yips had compelled him to change to a lead-hand low, or cross-handed, putting grip in an effort to steady his stroke and once again putt at the professional level. That worked for a while, but then the yips came back with a vengeance, and Langer took to using a long putter to combat their debilitating effects. It was as though you could take his psychological golf temperature simply by considering the putting grip and stroke he was using at any given time. A new one usually meant that he’d had a new bout of the yips.

To be sure, putting has been quite a struggle for Langer over the years. He’s had the yips. He’s lost them. Then he’s had them again. He’s come down with the yips several times, but has always gotten over them.

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