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The “yips” are a signal that your performance strategy is out of whack. Something’s messed up in your mental program that’s interfering with taking the proper stance and generating the proper swing effort. When the programed performance strategy gets back in gear, the “yips” will fade away.

The Short Game During Competition

Throughout this book I have emphasized the importance of thinking about nothing when you hit the ball. This holds true for all parts of the short game, too, even though there’s a great deal of thought that goes into planning approaches, chips, and putts before you address the ball.

The practice techniques I have described for determining swing effort are all conscious techniques. When you’re playing a competitive round, conscious mental processing should be considerably reduced. It’s still important to consciously plan the trajectory, roll line, target line, and target spot so you can generate the feeling of the swing effort. But if you’ve practiced these techniques in advance, they can be done quickly during your preshot routine while waiting for your playing partners to hit their balls.

To do this take a couple of practice swings before you set up to the ball, while you’re waiting for the others in your foursome to hit. If it’s your turn to hit first, do this quickly to avoid slow play. With each swing visualize the flight or roll of the ball from club face to target, and feel the amount of swing effort to get the ball to the pin. If the image of the ball’s flight and feeling of the swing effort don’t fit together, then change the swing and the image until they do. In other words, the practice swing is actually a rehearsal swing. Then, and only then, step up to the ball and swing mindlessly.

If you’ve done your homework—if you’ve thoroughly practiced reading greens, if you’ve etched in your mind and muscles the look and feel of shots from different distances—then mental preparation during a round of golf can be done quickly and easily. Just step up and swing without any further thought at all. That’s the time to trust your unconscious mind. But if you feel doubtful, trust your feeling of uncertainty and quickly replan the shot, allowing whatever anchors you’ve created (e.g., music, color, metaphors, images, movements) to take over automatically.

Summary

Here are some reminders and suggestions for regulating swing effort. They are organized according to desired outcomes and can serve as a ready reference when you are deciding what to practice.

EFFORT CONTROL

Estimating Distance

Create a club-distance chart and practice seeing it in your mind.

Create imaginary distance templates. Check their accuracy by stepping off the distance during practice rounds.

Reading Greens

Check the firmness of greens underfoot.

Observe the trajectory and roll of many good shots by yourself and others.

Use the Get-It Process to estimate the swing effort of playing partners as a basis for determining the speed of a green.

Determining Energy Level

Analyze distance of pregame practice shots.

Determining Trajectory and Line

Use Greenprinting.

Use practice swings to generate an imaginary trajectory and roll for each shot.

Imagine a ball’s entire trajectory and roll from club face to hole while taking practice swings.

Determining Club Speed

Use Imaginary Ball Toss to estimate the strength needed to swing club faster.

Use the Uptime Anchor to identify the feelings of balance, grip strength, length of backswing and follow-through, and sharpness of impact that are associated with different distances, trajectories, and roll lines.

Determining Swing Effort

Determine your energy level at the start of each round.

Maintain a consistent hand position on the club.

Develop the mental skill of the “third eye.”

Anchor the swing effort of various types of shots with metaphors, music, color, images, sounds, and movements.

Use the V-K Weave.

Eliminating the “Yips.”

Use the Sherlock Holmes Exercise to identify what happens in your mind just before you have