The Yips

Inside of PGA Clubhouses and MLB locker rooms, it’s a subject that is never brought up by players. Thought by many to be a mythological plague, the “yips,” are a real mental hurdle athletes develop, which prevents them from performing routine tasks like sinking a two-foot putt or throwing it to first base after fielding a ground ball.

The yips have been a phenomenon publicly talked about since as early as the 1920s.

Scottish golfer Tommy Armour, who won the 1927 U.S. Open, described them as “a brain spasm that impairs the short game.” Armour coined the term “yips” in the mid-1950s.

Many of golf’s greats have battled the yips. Harry Vardon, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Tom Watson, Ernie Els, and even Tiger Woods have all openly struggled with the condition. For whatever reason, each of these players has suffered from involuntary disruptive movements of the wrists and forearms.

Sometimes the yips affects a players putting, like Ernie Els. Other times golfers, suffer the spasms while chipping, like Tiger Wood. The yips even affect some in the tee box.

Though the exact causes of the yips are un-determined, most doctors believe that there are both physical and mental roots to the condition.