Golf is a difficult game at the best of times but when it comes to the dreaded ‘yips’ with the putter, it makes things nigh on impossible.
The yips have been a thing in golf more as long as we can remember and it essentially stops a player from being able to putt – or chip – as they might normally do.
Oftentimes, the explanation for getting them and then subsequently getting over them cannot be explained and it can, at times, be fatal for some players’ golfing careers.
Indeed, one man who has suffered over the years is Lucas Glover. The six-time PGA Tour winner is over his issues now, having won twice as recently as 2023.
But getting to this point wasn’t without struggle, and Glover has explained just what it’s like to have the yips as a golfer.
How Lucas Glover developed and got over the golfing yips
Glover is an experienced and intriguing character in the golf sphere and he’s been giving an interesting interview to the Stepping Into the Fire YouTube Channel.
And in doing so, he’s revealed just how bad it got with the yips for him personally.
“I remember like it was yesterday. I four putted the fifth hole at Colonial Country Club probably about 12 years ago now. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden, it just happened. Looking back on it now, 12 or 13 years later, there are a lot of change going on in my life. A lot of things going on. Some positive but some which required more responsibility like getting married and getting ready to have a child,” Glover revealed.
“All of a sudden I wasn’t the only person I was responsible for. There is a lot of reflection in that. After that incident at Colonial I just remember thinking, when is that going to happen again? Is it going to happen again? What do I do if it happens again? T
“The what ifs, the unsure and just the uncertainty not knowing what had happened, not knowing if it would happen again. All of those things. All of a sudden it started recurring more and developed into a full case of what we call the yips.
“I remember saying to my wife after my round, after of course now looking back on it, the worst thing I could have done was go on the putting green for an hour and then got in the car and left and she said what happened there.
“I said I don’t know. It was the first time in my career on the golf course that I could say I don’t know. She said explain that how do you not know, you have been doing this your whole life? I said I could not feel my hands and I felt like I had zero control of the putter.
“I would relate it to a panic attack. I lost all faculties. I lost all motor skills. As an athlete and as a golfer our touch and our feel is our bread and butter and all of a sudden I didn’t even feel like my hands were attached to the club. I hit this putt and it was literally like what was that?”
Famous golfers who got the yips at some point in their career
Some of the most famous names to ever play the sport have developed a case of yips of waggles, or whatever one wants to call it when over a shot.
One current day player who got embroiled in a mental battle with his game was Sergio Garcia, who went from smooth operator to master of the waggle back in the 2000s.
Bernhard Langer is a multiple major winner who has suffered, while the famous Ben Hogan got a case of the yips with the putter that was so bad that he ended up caving and simply stepping away from the game in the end.
Other big names like David Duval and Kevin Na have also struggled at times, with many others in PGA Tour history also falling foul.
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