How to Stop the Yips: The Mental Game Truth Nobody Tells You

Let's Start with the Truth

The yips are one of the most misunderstood problems in golf. And the reason they're so hard to fix is that most of the advice given about them completely misses the point.

You'll read that the yips are a neurological condition. That they're caused by a technical fault — too much wrist, the wrong grip, standing too close. That they're all in your head, as though that means they're not real. That they only happen to older players, or players who've been playing for decades.

Some of that contains partial truth. None of it gets to the heart of what's actually happening. And I'd argue the reason so many golfers struggle with the yips for years — sometimes forever — is that they're attacking the wrong problem.

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What the Yips Actually Are

When I see a golfer with the yips, what I'm actually looking at is extreme mental interference. Performance = Potential minus Interference. The potential is there — these players have made thousands of putts. The interference has become so powerful it's overriding the physical skill entirely.

What creates that interference? Almost always, some version of this: playing to avoid a bad outcome rather than pursuing a good one.

There are two fundamentally different intentions you can bring to any shot. You can play to create something — to make the putt, to roll the ball down the slope you've read, to execute the stroke you've been working on. Or you can play to avoid something — to not miss, to not jerk it, to not embarrass yourself.

These two intentions produce entirely different chemical activity in the brain. The pursuing mind creates clarity and confidence. The avoiding mind creates doubt, tension, and exactly the kind of involuntary muscular response that golfers call the yips.

The yips aren't a mystery. They're what happens when the avoiding mind takes over completely.

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The Feedback Loop That Makes It Worse

Here's why the yips are so hard to shake once they arrive.

You have one bad experience — a crucial putt that jerks offline at the last moment, a short one you've missed three times this month. An emotional charge builds around that outcome. The brain, which pays particular attention to emotionally significant events, stores it prominently.

The next time you face a similar putt, the brain retrieves that memory. Not helpfully. It retrieves it as a warning. Watch out. This is where it went wrong before.

You approach the putt with a subtle but powerful intention to not repeat what happened. Your body tenses. The stroke changes. The outcome confirms the brain's warning. The emotional charge intensifies. The feedback loop tightens.

At its worst, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The harder you try to not yip, the more you yip. Because trying not to yip is still focusing on yipping.

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The Thinking Mind and the Observing Mind

The solution isn't technical, and it isn't simply about relaxing. It starts with understanding the difference between the thinking mind and the observing mind.

The thinking mind is the chatterbox. It's generating analysis, warnings, instructions, comparisons to previous attempts. On the putting green for a golfer with the yips, the thinking mind is deafeningly loud.

The observing mind is different. It simply notices what's happening without adding judgment to it. It's not trying to control the stroke. It's not reviewing the last putt. It's present — curious, even — without attaching anxiety to what it sees.

When I worked with players on short game issues, I used a drill that moves you into this observing state. Take a ball to the putting green. Set up normally to a putt. Look carefully at the ball — really look at it, the dimples, the markings, the colours. Hit the putt and keep your eyes fixed on where the ball was. You'll see a dark circular afterimage of the ball.

Do this five times. What you'll notice is that focusing your attention on observing rather than controlling the stroke does something unusual — it quiets the chatterbox. The mind settles. And when the mind settles, the body is freed to do what it actually knows how to do.

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Training, Not Just Practising

There's a critical distinction I make between practising golf and training for golf. Most golfers who struggle with the yips practise in a way that makes the problem worse.

They stand on the practice green and drill three-footers over and over. Every miss adds to the emotional charge. Every make is a temporary relief that doesn't neutralise the underlying pattern. They're practising the problem.

Training is different. Training means setting up your practice to create the conditions for a different emotional experience.

One approach I use is what I call consequence-based training. Instead of drilling the same putt repeatedly, you create games with genuine consequences — points, challenges, scenarios that feel real enough to engage the same mental state you'll face on the course. You learn to perform under pressure in practice, so that when pressure arrives on the course, it's not a new experience.

Another is deliberately working with the observing mind in training. Hit putts with your complete attention on something other than the outcome — the sound of the ball on the putter face, the way the putter feels in your hands, the grain of the grass. Train your attention to be somewhere useful, not somewhere damaging.

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The Shot Creates the Swing

One of the principles I've used throughout my coaching is this: the shot creates the swing, not the other way around.

For the yips, this is particularly important. Most golfers with putting yips are trying to control the mechanics of the stroke. They're focused on the swing, hoping the shot will take care of itself. But when anxiety about outcomes is driving the whole process, controlling mechanics becomes almost impossible.

The alternative is to reverse the focus entirely. Create a vivid, clear picture of the shot you want — the ball rolling smoothly on the line you've chosen, the pace, the moment it drops. Let that picture be the intention. Let the body respond to that intention rather than trying to manage it consciously.

This is how Seve Ballesteros played. He didn't think about the mechanics of a chip shot. He saw the shot in his imagination, then let his body create it. His genius wasn't just physical talent — it was his ability to stay focused on the picture rather than the process.

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A Final, Honest Point

I'll be direct with you. The yips, once they've taken hold, take time and commitment to unwind. There's no single session that fixes them. The feedback loop that created them was built over months or years, and rebuilding trust in your own hands takes patience.

But the way out is through the mental game, not around it. More technical changes will not resolve what is fundamentally a problem of interference. The mechanics haven't changed — your skill is still there. Clearing the interference is the work.

Start with the observing mind drill. Then look honestly at whether you're approaching your putting with a pursuing intention or an avoiding one. That distinction alone, taken seriously, has changed a great many golfers' relationship with the short stick.

The Mind Caddie app includes Karl's full putting mental game content, including the acceptance program that specifically addresses the emotional patterns behind the yips. You can start with a free trial today.

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