Control the Flinch

A lot of people have the yips when they putt. But I don't think people realize that they can have the yips (or a flinch) with any golf shot, including full swings. I've been a victim of this, and you must really pay attention to yourself to catch it, because it's very subtle and insidious. It often occurs right at impact or anticipation of impact.

I call this full swing yipping phenomenon "the flinch." Yips usually involve just the hands and small muscles in the forearms, but the flinch can involve muscles in your entire body. I've flinched with my left shoulder. I even flinch with my legs--even to the point of lifting with my legs and spinning out my front foot, and part of me believes that this is left over from my tennis days. In reality, it's just tension that tries to release itself at the ball, and a flinch swing is really the opposite of a smooth swing. The tension can be due to a variety of reasons, including the effect that the golf course's hazards and obstacles have on the psyche (e.g., a long forced carry over a lake, etc.).

In a smooth swing, the small muscles of the hands and forearms don't activate. This means there's no conscious or unconscious attempt to add power to the shot, rotate the forearms, flip the wrists, or any number of other handsy movements. But a smooth swing also means a smooth lower body. The left foot doesn't spin open from its address position; the legs don't try to unconsciously add lift to the shot. It's a smooth, gradually accelerating motion of the lower body that should move passive arms.

There are probably other movements I'm missing. Heck, for all I know I'm probably gritting my teeth, flaring my nostrils, and raising my eyebrows at impact. All are signs of tension and denote a high potential for flinching at the ball and causing crazy mishits.

 

Ironically, a slower, smoother, rotational swing imparts far more energy to the ball than a faster yip swing that uses small muscles and causes mishits. It's like a lot of things in golf--the opposite prevails. The mind must learn that a smooth swing without small, jerky movements of the twitch muscles will give the ball it's best distance and direction.

I believe that part of beating these flinches is to first realize that you're doing it, and this requires an ability to be aware of yourself and body through the swing. If you mishit a shot, ask yourself immediately if you flinched or not. Chances are you probably did. When addressing the ball, remind yourself to relax and not flinch--especially in situations where you fear hitting the ball short or too far wide and into a hazard. Try different grip pressures, grip more in the palm with the left hand (and more in the fingers of the right) or even trusting your setup and not looking at the ball (something like this worked for Hank Haney's driver yips). Thinking of your swing as having perpetual motion (as Shawn Clement teaches) might help reduce flinching at the ball.

She recalls starting to flinch in her swing during her junior year of college, right after coming off of the U.S. Women’s Open. Following that tournament, she first noticed she was flinching through impact, better known to amateur golfers as the ‘yips.’ Instead of taking a step back and figuring out what was causing the flinch, she continued to play through it. She assumed it would solve itself over time. The flinch progressively got worse. It became mentally draining for Henderson, but she refused to stop competing.

Selanee Henderson | Golf Channel

In the latest Golf Illustrated was a good article called Quick Fix for the Yips by Stephen Aumock as he states that this word can cause a chill to go down your spine if they feel this is happening to their putting stoke. As the article states that most golfers don’t realize they have it and if they do they seem helpless in ways to fix it.

I know my son who is a great golfer has had this problem and he has tried everything from going to the long putter and tried different methods to help him to relax. This author attempts to give some suggestion on how to overcome this affliction. He mentions the Yips can happen in all sports, from baseball to basketball so it isn’t all in golf.

Yips and What it Means - Golf

Many amateur golfers flinch at the ball at impact. They have a very free-flowing practice swing, but when they get up over the ball their swing looks completely different. I called this a hit impulse. The hit impulse is the moment you put a ball in front of you, you hit at the ball instead of take a full swing through the ball. A good friend of mine used to call this chopping wood. I don’t think I would consider a hit impulse full-blown yips with your swing, but is a very close cousin.

What are The Golf Swing Yips?

Small spasms or twitching of the muscles in the arms at impact causes an unpredictable clubhead movement, just as you see with the putting yips. When you suffer from the yips, the way your brain and muscles controlling your hands communicates is disrupted somehow, causing you to unintentionally move the club in anticipation of contact. As you would with the putting yips, you need to change the way you perceive the point of impact either mentally or physically.

Try different gripping styles with or without overlapping your fingers and see if this helps. Start by aligning your fingers onto the grip or squeezing the grip with your palms and then wrap your fingers around it for support. This can change the way your brain interprets the signals it receives from your hands. The simplest way to cure the driving yips is to change your preshot routine trigger. For example, one golf pro says that her trigger is to touch her golf bag and it mentally prepares her to swing. Try changing your key thoughts as you swing. These are thoughts you use to improve your swing; such as, keep your head down or make a full follow through. Most people watch the ball as they make contact and think: keep your eyes on the ball. One thing you could do is to start staring at your nose instead of the ball. This requires that you trust the way you set up to the ball and your swing. The benefit to this is that it reduces your anxiety or simply changes the way your brain interprets the swing in hopes to prevent the yips.

Golf Medic | Driver Yips

The technical name for the yips is focal dystonia—and changing where you focus your eyes can help solve the problem. Hansson had him hit balls with his eyes closed so he could focus on a different feel in his release.

How I see it | Hank Haney: Golf Digest

However, Hank eventually developed the bane for his demons. He changed his grip, incorporated a bizarre pre-shot waggle and avoided looking at the ball. You read correctly, he found the ball to be distraction to his swing!

Grouchy Golf Blog

 

 

Add Speed at the Bottom

"Swing faster for more distance." This is a refrain that we've heard from many instructors; Hank Haney recently told Joe Namath (The Haney Project) to speed it up and swing "OUTSIDE" himself. He was pointing out to Namath that he was capable of far more club head speed than he was demonstrating. I've had my beginning swing speed measured at about 84 mph on average, and I believe that's on par with many golfers at my level of play. With my driver, I can hit it about 210 on average, which isn't really great.

Physics backs the notion of velocity adding much craved distance. For every extra mph, about 2 yards in distance is added. But how to add speed the right way?

We see players like Ernie Els swinging in apparently slow motion but with clubhead speeds well in excess of 120 mph. How the heck do guys like Els and Couples, with their languid, lazy looking rhythms, manage to hit the ball so far? These guys take 9-irons and hit them 150 yards. How do they swing slow and lazy but obviously still generate club head speed?

When I think of swinging fast, the first thing my subconscious brain tries to do is throw the club from the top really fast. And this causes mishits, OTT moves, slices, and no end of other errors, because as Namath said to Haney: "I'm trying to swing WITHIN myself." Haney was trying to relate to Namath that his swing was too slow where it counts--down in the impact area at the bottom.

In other words, a violent transition and adding speed too early will cause errors and the swing will ironically slow down before it gets to the ball. We need to start down SLOWLY and gradually add speed in the right place.

Shawn Clement had a beautiful swing analogy for speed. When pushing a child on a swing and satiating the child's desire to go higher and faster, the adult must ASSIST MOMENTUM where it makes sense--AT THE BOTTOM! The adult gives the child a gentle but firm extra shove at the bottom to increase the speed. When thought of this way, it's easy to see why many of us amateur golfers screw up the speed part and lose distance or accuracy or both. Applied the analogy above, we might kill the child with this way of thinking.

You can swing "within yourself" (with an Ernie Els-like rhythm) and still get the club head moving through impact 20 mph faster than you do now. You'll be more likely to keep some accuracy while adding distance. Start down slowly and gradually add speed at the bottom. This feels very subtle, gradual, and dynamic. Use counting rhythmic meters at a moderate tempo to help pace your swing. Just think of Clement's swing analogy and practice it that way. This also will give you two speeds to swing every club: your "normal" pace, where you get moderate distance and your "boosted" pace, where you get extra the distance.

You must also ensure that you're creating a wide swing arc going back and extending fully going through; really concentrate on straightening the right arm as the torso continues turning left. (Updated 1 Mar 15)

Simple: speed. Adding extra miles per hour to your swing is the only thing that's going to allow you to hit each of your irons farther. Most amateurs think of speed as something they generate from the top, but that's a recipe for almost every bad shot you can imagine. The secret is to maximize the fastest part of your swing, and that comes after you strike the ball.

How to Add Juice to Your Irons | GOLF.com

 

Off-The-Shelf Drivers Are Too Long

Gripping down on the club (especially the longer ones like the driver and fairway woods) may be a great idea for some golfers that will lead to gains in accuracy while sacrificing only a minimum in distance. As a matter of fact, this is a testament to why many of us should just forget the driver and use a 3-wood to tee off. I recently played several rounds using only a 3-wood and noticed no real difference in my score; I also hit the fairways a lot more, which feels fantastic.

To fool us into thinking we'll get more distance, golf club makers have been selling us off-the-shelf drivers that are two or more inches longer than the ones the pros play. And many pros grip down even still. So, that should tell us mortals that we need shorter drivers or we need to grip down.

Gripping down will change the characteristics of the shaft, making it effectively stiffer. But gripping down an inch or so won't make that big of a difference. Take care. If you're gripping down on your driver it will take some getting used to.

But where this quest for distance is abused the most is on drivers. We see the average driver in the store at 46-47" in length now, when the old standard was 43", then 44" up to about 6-8 years ago.

And average golfers are buying them like hotcakes. But do you realize that very few tour players are using a driver over 45" in length? Why? Because they know they cannot be reasonably accurate with longer drivers! So, if the tour players know they can't control a driver that is 46-47" long, what the heck makes amateurs think they can ?

A few years ago, GolfSmith did an extensive live golfer test at their huge facility in Austin, Texas, where they had hundreds of golfers hit drivers of all sizes, shapes and lengths. They found that almost every golfer achieved his best average driving distance with drivers that were 43-1/2" long! Now, that was when 45" was the new "standard", but the point remains clear to me: Your driver is probably too long for you to hit efficiently!

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So, I just began to choke up on these long drivers and my accuracy came right back, without a loss of distance! And I don't care what golf course you play, it's easier from the fairway.

Oh, and there's another significant side benefit to this alteration to your driver. When you shorten it, you can use lead tape to bring the swingweight back up to where it should be. By positioning those few grams of lead tape strategically on the clubhead, you can bias your driver for a draw (weight in the toe) or fade (weight in the heel).

You can also place the lead tape in the back of the head for a higher ball flight if you need it, or right on top of the crown behind the face for a lower ball flight.

[From Your Driver: Is It Your First Scoring Club?]

But I did toy with the idea, and even had Ping build me a driver with 5.5 degrees of loft and an extra-long, 48-inch shaft. The longer shaft, which many people assume is an automatic trick to generating more clubhead speed, didn't work at all. It threw my timing off, and I didn't hit the ball much farther even when I nailed it. I did much better with my standard 44½-inch driver, simply swinging a little harder.

Trying a longer shaft is a popular suggestion these days, but most players should, if anything, try a shaft half an inch shorter than what's in their driver. (The average, off-the-rack driver shaft today is 45½ inches.) Tiger Woods at his longest used a relatively short 43½-inch driver, with a steel shaft to boot. You'll find it easier to hit the sweet spot with a shorter shaft, and you can go after tee shots without losing much control.

[From 10 Rules From Bubba Watson: Golf Digest]