Learning how to putt well starts with developing the right fundamentals and hours of practice time on the putting green. But sooner or later many golfers get a case of the jitters when it comes to those short two and three foot putts. In golf this has also been referred to as the “Putting Yips”.
This symptom is more like an anxiety attack where a person losses their confidence and becomes over whelmed with fear. A very easy short putt all of a sudden becomes a huge challenge. The main cause is due to a lack of self confidence and an accumulation of negative thoughts. The remedy is simply to rebuild their self confidence and replace the old mind set with new positive reinforcing thoughts. Outlines below are five simple steps to follow to help anyone cure their putting yips.
1. At the beginning and end of your time on the putting practice green include a sufficient number of short two and three foot putts.
2. Stop taking the so called “gimme putt”. Make it a habit to take all your short one and two foot putts. In making the short ones you will be filling your mind with positive thoughts and thereby eliminating negative thoughts and building your self confidence level.
3. Before every putt visualize a perfect putt in your mind prior to taking your actual stroke. Again this is reinforcing positive thoughts.
4. Use your memory bank of great putts in the past. Use the feeling that you had experienced when you made a difficult putt in the past to your advantage.
5. The last recommendation is to stop over analyzing your putts. If you spend too much time before taking your stroke you run the risk of unnecessarily second guessing your decision and this can be disastrous.
Learning how to putt with out experiencing the jitters can be challenging. Eventually putting problems will surface but with a few simple adjustments you can get your putting game back on track. Like a lot of problems the first step is to be able to recognize the problem and then the solutions often fall into place.
