The Yips

I don't know about you but I write my articles the way I read. I would read several or many books at a time, bookmarked them to come back later only to find that the returned trip took too long and I had forgotten what was in that book in the first place. It's the same in writing for me because I have to jot things down sometimes and later expand on it and now find I have so many articles to share and should I release them all or which one to come first as they are all good. 


I think perhaps it is easier if I were to just go to the Speakers' Corner to talk about golf, creating a new use for an old under-utilised space. If this is successful then I may organise a weekend flea market for golfers to barter trade on all things golf. Just make sure the sleaze does not come as golf is a clean game. We don't have to stick to Clarke Quay or Club Street. Or maybe Club Street is good as the name suggests. Talking about writer's block, it is just like a mental block or a similar condition in sports especially golf where it can lead to physical manifestation and affect performance and result. This is known as the Yips.

The "Yips" are not the family visiting from Hong Kong. Yips in golf occurs due to a disorder in movement known especially to interfere with putting. It seems to have been coined after being popularized by golf champion and teacher Tommy Armour in explaining such difficulties. Golfers have been known to have used terms like yips, twitches, staggers, jitters and jerks. Don't get angry, the latter is not describing you. Famous golfers like Ben Hogan and Sam Snead were said to have been afflicted too.

Cause

The actual cause of the yips may not have been exactly determined, possibilities remain that some golfers may have conditions that result from biochemical inbalance in the brain, excessive use of muscles or intense pressure in concentration and co-ordination. Though the condition is usually associated with putting, it can also occur during a golf swing or chippping and also in other sports such as cricket, football, tennis and baseball when talented players suddenly lose their abilities. Is the complete disability to convert a penalty kick in soccer then called soccer yips? What do you then call a sudden rush of blood to the brain? Yippee!!??

Do You Have The Yips?

Do you freeze over your putt, have shaky hands or a stabbing stroke? Is this physiological or neurogical? It is probably both - of neurological anxiety and focal dystonia. You have the Yips when you simply miss a crucial putt when under pressure though it is just a simple and short putt. Involuntary and sudden jerks that gets the ball off target, freezing at address, shaky hands or a long-lasting slump in putting ability are other factors. Or you simply believe that you have been cursed by some ancient gypsy or a chain letter you destroyed instead of sending it to ten people? Maybe, it's just that your underwear is too tight or quite simply your techniques and skills are all wrong? 


Yips does not affect only putting. It could be a fear of bunker, water, the short chip or when you lose your tempo or your swing. There is no such thing as a Yips-O-Meter invented yet so if you are some techinical wizard or a gizmos whizz kid, give me a call to start work on creating a simple test kit to measure the level of "Yipsness" and then by simply chewing or swallowing a pill (legally approved of course by USGA) you begin to achieve "Yippeeness!" instead. We can go to China and get every golfer tested and chewing, we get more excited and convinced the government to make the test mandatory even for non-golfers. 


I know what you are thinking but don't get greedy. Just make a dollar per pax will do. The Yips will become the Hips - Hip Hip Hooray! There we have it, the Yips-O-Meter test kit and the let's just call it the H2H1 pills (Hip x 2, Hooray x1). Go international, get IPO and public listed by middle of next year. I will employ ghost-writers for blogging. Have my own website "myS.com" set up MLM (Multi-Level Marketing), blah blah blah.........

The Chokes

To choke is to throttle, stop, block up, smother, stifle, obstruct. Your hearts get choked, drains get choked, pipes and sinks get choked. So to get choked in golf putts or sports is no big deal. Everything that gets used a long time gets the choke. Everything that is tense gets choked. If you laugh too much at your friends' golf skills you are likely to get choked - choked to death or left semi-alive by laughter or strangled by hand.

Fear

While the greatest thing in life is love, one of the worst things is fear. Hatred is the absence of love and darkness is the absence of light. You can make light brighter but you can't make darkness darker. Fear is dread, alarm, anxiety, to have an unpleasant emotion caused by coming evil or danger. When you have this feeling, you are afraid and shrink. When you shrink, you feel and become smaller and get torn to shreds. Your guts stop functioning and you kaput! To kaput is to be incapacitated and destroyed. As a result you may look small and feels even smaller. 

When I see you from far I thought you looked small and when you are right in front, you are still small. Look at all the people on roller-coasters, they all look small as they shrink in fear. I detect fear in you. Fear presents itself whenever we face the unknown - the dark, the future. Unbeknownst to us, when fear arrives, confidence dissipates. It is an overwhelming negative effect that will smother and consume us. Those of you who have read and knew Gordon Liddy would know that he tied himself to a tree during a thunderstorm in order to overcome his fear and phobia of lightning. I'm not advocating that you do that but you do get the point.

Give a putter and a ball to a non-golfer or a beginner and he shall have no fear. He hits it with no restraint and the ball zooms through the whole green or flies over your putting mat. For those who know, you are too concerned and knew where danger lurks that you would leave it short or too long and momentarily you freeze. Add some pressure to the value of that putt and pee may ooze out as well. A pro missing a crucial putt could cost him a cool million$. I liken it to some one who can't swim and have a fear of water. 

Throw him into the pool and he struggles and maybe drowns even though the depth is only 1.2m because he would panic and freeze. The brain freezes and the sphericals stop functioning or shoots up to the throat. But when you know the dangers, how to handle water, all you need to do is to just relax and you will float to the surface of the water. With tension and struggle you will sink, relax and you will float in the water. Golf is about relaxation. There mustn't be tension in your muscles. Haven't you notice enough how beautiful your shots flew when you were relax and confident.

Yippee!!

Set yourself free from the Yips. Free yourself from fear. Don't worry if you concede the hole, fret not when you lose the round, let your friends laugh for he who laughs last laughs best. You need the actual situation and simulation to grind out that desired result. Many people unknowingly have bunker yips too. They try to lift the ball with the club when they should be blasting the sand because they do not trust the club to blast the sand and the sand to blast the ball out. 


Then they fear taking too little sand and too much ball would result in scooting the ball away into the nearby pond or another bunker and too much sand and too little ball would just lift the ball into the air and drop back into the bunker. This is because fear arrives and confidence dissipates. We can talk sand play later but in the meantime, free yourself from the Yips. We have to rid ourselves of the Yips if you already have them or prepare yourself to face them when they come. 


If it is not something physical like you are lopsided somewhere, then it is just "mind over matter". This is when you should tell yourself that mind over matter means - "if you don't mind, it doesn't matter".

Get rid of the Yips and bring Yippee!!! back.

You want a quick-fix? Come to me for a test on my Yips-O-Meter and that magical H2H1 pill. Most likely I will patent it in blue. 

Don't swallow the wrong blue one and get a stiff neck all day.

Golf as in life, play as it lies!