Johnson column: Therapy may be the only way to cure yips

by Martin Johnson

Television has a well established mechanism for protecting the squeamish, involving the programme presenter giving advance notice of things like flash photography, strong language and nudity. In which case all future screenings of Ernie Els’ six putts on the first green at Augusta last Thursday should be prefaced by a stern warning that what is about to be shown “contains scenes that some viewers might find distressing”.

You can, of course, access the footage on You Tube, a medium which offers many other examples of Ernie squinting at a hole which clearly looks to him to be the size of a frozen pea, while clutching an implement which is about to have 10,000 volts fired through it. The poor bloke has quite a bit of previous, including a shank from eight inches at last year’s Dunhill Links, and all may soon be available under a title that sounds like a department store fashion range.“The Ernie Els Collection.”

For the more minor putting issues, most professional golfers head for the practice green with their coaches and a variety of teaching gadgets, but when you’ve got the yips, it’s very much a private matter, to be worked out by yourself in the confines of  your hotel room.

It was hard not to conjure up a picture of Ernie returning to his room somewhere in downtown Augusta, drawing the curtains, pulling out his putter, and aiming for a glass on his bedroom carpet. Only for the ball to shoot off at right angles and end up in his bathroom.

It’s a strange business, the yips. If you’ve got the other dreaded affliction, you have to call it the you-know-what’s, or the J Arthurs, for fear that using the actual word will cause the disease to spread, like the Bubonic Plague. But for some reason it’s okay to call the yips the yips, even though they’re just as likely to leave the victim in need of counselling.

Some of you will remember an eccentric American pro called Mac O’Grady, who attempted to cure his legendary shortage of patience by going out in his car, finding some old lady pottering along at 10 mph, and driving along behind her. I wondered at the time whether it might be something for Colin Montgomerie to try out, but all I could conjure up was a vision of honking horns, intemperate language, and lollipop ladies diving for cover.

O’Grady, though, also thought there might actually be a scientific remedy for the yips, and actually donated $30,000 to the University of California to study the condition and try and find a remedy. It could catch on. Instead of coming out of Sainsburys with the shopping, and being invited to make a donation for cancer research, or dogs’ homes, the person ratting the collection tin at you could be standing next to a placard reading: “Help Find The Cure For Yipping.”

One of our columnists, David Howell, is on a video out there somewhere extolling the virtues of the ‘coin drill’. The idea being that you leave your 5p piece behind the ball, and keep your eye on that, rather than the ball, when you’re putting. Maybe it would work for Ernie, although from what we witnessed in Augusta, he’s liable to miss the ball and hole the coin.

The yips is not something exclusive to golf. In cricket, for example, it’s an affliction which seems to prey mostly on left-arm spin bowlers, and maybe Ernie could try the method adopted many years ago by Derbyshire’s Fred Swarbrook, who would put a pebble in his trouser pocket, and rub it just before he bowled in order to take his mind off the possibility of a yip.

However, one day the ball shot straight up in the air, and when it finally returned to the earth’s atmosphere and almost landed back on his head, it drew a not especially sympathetic comment from his captain, Eddie Barlow. “Hey Fred,” said Barlow. “Have you thought about rubbing the ball and bowling the pebble instead?”

That was one of the more extreme examples, and the worst case of the golf yips I’ve witnessed came from a chum of mine who would occasionally make a three-foot putt take off like a one-iron. “Have you no concept of the game’s etiquette?” I once felt obliged to ask him. “What do you mean?” he spluttered, still quivering from the aftershock. “Well, the next time you leave yourself a three-footer, have the courtesy to shout ‘fore!’ after you’ve hit it.”

Most of us have been there, or thereabouts, and have resorted to various tips and tweaks to try and sort it out – changing putters, altering grips, plumb bobbing, you name it. Although, for all you plumb bobbers out there, I have to say this. Quite how anyone of sound mind can convince themselves that holding a putter out in front of them and squinting at it with one eye closed can be of any possible assistance in determining the line is right up there alongside Lord Lucan and the Marie Celeste in the history of unsolved mysteries.

Listening to Peter Alliss commentating on the Masters for the 1,000th year running was a reminder that his own illustrious playing career was cut short by putting demons, and the great man occasionally had the commentator’s equivalent of the yips during the final round, which featured a couple of relative unknowns in Justin Spieth and Dustin Hoffman. However, there were many reasons to prefer the Beeb over Sky, not least the fact that whenever I flicked across to the satellite channel, what at first glance appeared to be live coverage of the golf turned out to be that irritating advert which finishes up with a bearded Irishman saying: “Tell them Darren sent you.”

On top of which there’s Butch and Monty. Harmon has an interesting technique, which involves calling people like Justin Rose (who’d have been Jason Rose on the Beeb of course)“Rosie”, and saying things like “wow!” and “attaboy!” As for Monty, if we ever doubted the wisdom of hiring expert pundits to provide the piercing insight  viewers crave, Monty dispelled it even before the tournament began by writing off the chances of every English golfer in the field.

As Butch might have put it when Jordan Spieth was helping Danny Willett into the Green Jacket…. “Attaboy Monty!”

Tagged Butch Harmon, Ernie Els, Peter Alliss