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Your putting yips may be easier to fix than you think. Take a look at these 3 common culprits and ask yourself whether or not they are getting in your way of a successful putt:

Over-analysis: You may get so caught up in the mechanics of your stroke that you paralyze your natural movement. You become so self-conscious of your body position, putting stroke, and movements, they can barely take the putter back in any simple, straight fashion, along the target line. You may find yourself watching the putterhead go back and come through the ball or looking up to see how the ball rolls.

Steering: Instead of letting the putterhead freely swing through the ball and propel it toward the hole, you may find yourself trying to steer the ball into the hole. Steering is typically a tension filled attempt to guide the ball into the hole due to a lack of confidence in the putting stroke. Tension can cause you to push the putterhead toward the hole and mistakenly get your wrists or legs into the act.

Insecurity: Getting nervous and insecure over a putt, especially a short one, is a sure way to miss it. Without confidence, you allow all manner of negative thoughts to enter your head and your play. What can you do to make the putt? Will it go in? Can you lose the hole or the match by missing it? Will you feel embarrassed in front of the other players by missing it?

Ernie Els Swing

Ernie Els is one of the greatest ball strikers in the game – his seemingly effortless and beautifully rhythmic swing disguising serious power and great compression of the golf ball at impact.
It’s one of the many reasons why his iron shots fly so pure, straight, and far!

There is much in Ernie’s swing that every golfer can learn from, such as the way his arms are fully extended as he swings the clubhead into and through the ball. This helps him carry good speed into the ball and deliver that all-important descending blow.

To emulate Ernie’s positive move through impact, visualize your right arm extending fully toward the target and the clubhead traveling low to the ground after the ball. This will encourage you to swing freely through the ball and extend your arms like Ernie does.

* The right arm should be fully extended at impact.

* Keep the clubhead in line with the target through the shot.

* The legs provide a solid platform for the powerful unwinding of the body and a free swing of the arms.

A pulled iron shot is a nuisance, mainly because when you pull one you tend to repeat the mistake, much as you do when you start shanking. Of course the pull doesn’t look too bad, as it does not hook or slice, and it feels firm coming off the clubhead, but it ends up 25 to 30 yards to the left of the green.

There are 3 common causes for pulling an iron:

1. Hitting the ball with an outside-in swing.

2. Closing the clubface somewhere during the swing.

3. Starting with the ball too far forward in the stance.

The first thing to do is check your stance. Every iron shot should be hit off the left heel, but no further forward than that. Now concentrate on taking the clubhead back in a straight line and bringing it onto the ball on that same straight line.

Finally, make sure that the follow-through throws the clubhead out towards the hole and that you finish with your hands high. A proper follow-through like this makes it almost impossible to pull the ball.

As odd as it sounds, you have to hit the ball with a downward descent from the club in order to send ball forward and up into the air. This is true for every club in your bag, besides the driver and your putter,

Beginner golfers tend to miss this important factor when learning to swing their clubs properly.  It is easy to reason that you should hit the ball upwards in order to send it flying into the air, but quite the opposite is true. 

By hitting the ball with a descending blow, this enables the clubhead to hit the ball into the air because of the club’s built-in loft. When you make the mistake of hitting “up” on the ball,  as most new players do, it only ends with missed hits and lack of distance

To get a better understanding, watch a good player swing his or her club the next time you are on the golf course.

Many golfers think that over-swinging automatically creates more power, that there is a direct ratio between the size of the swing and the power it generates. But this thinking is wrong.  You get maximum power only by swinging within the confines of your feet. There are two basic rules governing this:

1. You do not want to let your weight to be on the outside of your right foot during the backswing.

2. You do not want your weight on the outside of your left foot until after you make contact with the ball.

Here is how you should work with your knees, ankles, and feet during a swing:

Start with your weight evenly distributed on the balls of your feet. As you shift your weight to the inside of your right foot on the backswing, roll the left foot in. The knee turns in naturally, but the right knee remains fairly stationary.

Now, as you come into the ball, your right knee should turn and your weight should move off the ball of the right foot and onto your left. Meanwhile, the right knee is moving straight at the hole. After impact the weight moves farther, until it is on the outside of the left foot. Eventually your weight will be far off to the left and your right heel off the ground.

The two most important things to keep in mind when exploding from the sand are:

1. That the swing should be a normal one.

2. That the the grip should be choked down somewhat at address.

Too many people climb into the sand trap already paralyzed by fear and suddenly start doing things with their swing that they would never think of doing on the fairway. They stab or they dip or they lurch, and they leave the ball in the sand more often than they get it out.

How To Explode

The explosion is much the same as any other shot, only your aiming point changes since you are trying to hit a spot in the sand some 1 to 3 inches behind the ball instead of the ball itself.

1. Begin by picking the spot – perhaps marked by a discolored grain of sand – and concentrate as hard on hitting it as you would on hitting the ball. The shot should be played pretty much like a short pitch, with the ball off the left heel and the stance slightly open.

2. At address you will have dug your feet into the sand one or two inches to insure a firm stance. This means the ball is that much nearer your hands than usual. You must compensate for this by choking down on the grip. How far you choke down determines how far the ball will fly.

A crucial part of getting the right putt is to:

a) Obtain the ideal ball position.

b) Have both your eye line and shoulder line parallel to the path that you want the ball to travel on.

To easily check that both of these elements are being properly maintained:

1) Take the putter and hold the shaft along the top part of your chest, with the line of the shaft matching the target line (this will help your stroke to be perfectly in line with the hole).

2) Now hold the shaft right along your eye line. Check to see that it corresponds with your target line. When it does, this helps you to better visualize the correct path needed for the ball to make its way towards the hole.

The golf swing is nothing more than a series of unnatural turns and twists that, when properly executed, produces a fluid-like athletic movement that sends to ball into the desired location. So it should go without saying that to get better at your golf swing means making every attempt to make it more natural.

Let’s discuss what I like to call the “stiff arm” problem.

It seems that most golfers come in one of two groups: Either you position your elbows at address so they are pressed towards one another tightly, or you twist your arms so much that they are coiled and the elbows are both pointed at your belt buckle.

Either positioning is rigid placement, which may work for a professional golfer, but most players that attempt this will just waste time with a poor shot due to having too much tension.

Now what I like to do is to let my arms remain loose when at address. This helps them feel as natural as possible. It may be a bit awkward for you to start your swing off like this in the beginning, but a regular practice routine will eventually make it a habit:

1. Start by relaxing the shoulders.

2. Drop the arms to your sides so that they are “hanging” naturally.

3. Now just simply reach out and grab your club.

Every golf player loves the feeling of hitting the ball with everything they’ve got, coming from a smooth and graceful swing, and giving all their power in order to send the ball skyrocketing down the fairway.

There is no better feeling!

That is all well and good, so long as your power shots are done with enough accuracy. In order to achieve having the right strength and precision, the key is to make contact with the ball on a consistent basis, and every time you swing.

For this to happen you must:

1. Learn to make contact with the ball on the club head’s sweet spot. The sweet spot, as it’s called in golf, is a small central area on the face. Hitting the ball even just a half an inch from the sweet spot will reduce power and lessen accuracy.

2. Hit the ball so that the club face makes contact in a perfectly square matter. In other words, perpendicular to the ball’s target path.

3. Swing your club in a certain way so that when the ball has been hit by the club head, the club head is moving in the direction which is directly down the intended ball flight path.

What exactly causes the yips? Sadly it is not a condition for which we can just go and buy a pill that makes it disappear.

Anxiety: Your yips may be caused by anxiety over making a putt. If you look up too quickly to see the ball falling into the hole, you may not complete the stroke properly, pulling or pushing with your hands. Your hands may even shake and wobble.

Wrist Breakdown: A breakdown in your right wrist (for right-handed golfers) can result in the yips. Often, a breakdown or flick of the wrist happens just before impact. This is a mechanical flaw that can send the putt off-line.

Alignment: If you line up improperly before you hit the putt, and you misalign on your putterhead, your body may subconsciously cause you to alter the swing path in mid stroke in an attempt to make a correction. Attempting to correct the path of your putter in mid stroke is immensely difficult and likely to result in a push or pull, or the putter head may cut across the ball and cause it to spin.

If you are struggling with the yips check and see if any of the above are causes.