IN GOLF, there are two chronic afflictions. One is the yips and the other the shanks. I occasionally suffer from the latter when the extreme heel of my club sends the ball off on a 90 degree angle, placing whoever is standing to the right of me in jeopardy. My father recently escaped one of my shanked drives, but just barely. Others have not been so fortunate. Once I smacked another player on his knuckle. On the driving range, I actually struck a man on his lower back. It doesn’t happen to me as much today, but once it starts, it’s hard to stop. As soon as it enters your head, even before the club is pulled back, you already know it’s coming. You brace for it. And for the embarrassment that is sure to follow–as well as the waning confidence in your game.

But I hear the yips are worse. They occur on short putts, when, even at a distance of three feet (or less) a mental block prevents the player from sinking the ball. It sometimes takes several putts back and forth to finally get it right, and by then it’s a double or triple bogey. Sometimes the yips can last years. They certainly did for professional golfer Tom Watson during the early 1990s. As he recently noted, “You miss a couple you think you’re going to make and you start to think more about them the next time around. The next thing you know, it’s inside your head, and people start whispering that you have the yips.”